2 Kings 7 - NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible

7:2 officer. Refers to the member of the chariot crew whose job it was to hold the shield and protect archer and driver. Eventually the term evolved to designate the king’s armor bearer (see note on 1Sa 14:1) or administrative assistant. floodgates of the heavens. See note on Ge 7:11. This expression is usually used of sending rain, but the officer is using it more broadly to describe God’s provision, since the shortage here is food, not water.

7:6 hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings. The Aramean army was deceived into thinking that a mercenary army, drawn from Egypt to the south and the Hittites to the north, had been summoned to Samaria to lift the siege. The “hiring” of armies was not unusual in the ancient Near East, as the Kulamuwa Inscription (c. 830–832 BC) from Sam’al illustrates: “My father’s house was in the midst of mighty kings. Everybody stretched forth his hand to eat it. But I was in the hands of the kings like a fire that eats the beard, like a fire that eats the hand. The king of the Danunians tried to overpower me; but I hired against him the king of Assyria.”

7:15 The Samarians suspect the common tactic of setting an ambush after pretending to give up and go home. A well-known application of this ruse was used by the Greeks against Troy. The Moabites were tricked the same way by Israel in ch. 3.