They Ate First

Four men sat outside a city gate with nowhere to go. They were not allowed in, and the army that had shut the city up was camped nearby. By their own words, both directions ended the same way.

That is where the best news in the book found them.

The city was Samaria, capital of northern Israel, about eight hundred years before Jesus. An army from Aram, Israel's neighbour to the north, had surrounded it. Many Bibles call them the Syrians. That is a siege: you sit outside and let nothing in until hunger opens the gate.

It was working. A donkey's head sold for eighty shekels of silver inside the walls — an unthinkable price for the least edible part of an animal (2 Kings 6:25). Two mothers had agreed to eat their own children, and one had done it (2 Kings 6:28-29). The king blamed God's prophet, Elisha. A prophet was a man God spoke through.

Elisha's answer sounded absurd.

Tomorrow about this time a seah of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel... at the gate of Samaria.

2 Kings 7:1

A seah was a dry measure of grain, a shekel a small silver coin. In plain words: by tomorrow, food will be cheap. In a city where a mother had eaten her own son, that was either true or cruel.

1. Sitting still was also a way to die

The first move came from outside the walls, not inside. Four men made it, because they had nothing left to lose.

Now there were four men who were lepers at the entrance to the gate. And they said to one another, "Why are we sitting here until we die?"

2 Kings 7:3

They had a skin disease that Israel's law called unclean — unfit to be near others, shut out of ordinary life until it cleared.

He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.

Leviticus 13:46

That law likely explains where the story finds them: at the entrance of the gate, not inside it. Most of us know that spot — the table that fills before you reach it.

Then they did arithmetic on their own lives, out loud.

The famine is in the city, and we shall die there. And if we sit here, we die also. So now come, let us go over to the camp of the Syrians.

2 Kings 7:4

Inside is death by hunger. Here is death by hunger. Walking toward the army is the only choice with a maybe in it. They are not brave — they have noticed that staying put is not safe either.

Esther reasoned the same way centuries later. She was a Jewish woman who had become queen of Persia, and going to the king uninvited could get her killed. Her people were doomed anyway.

Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.

Esther 4:16

Same move, different century: walk toward the risk, because the safe-looking corner is not safe.

Jesus pushed it further, in a story about a son who spent his father's money and ended up feeding pigs.

I perish here with hunger. I will arise and go to my father.

Luke 15:17-18

He walks toward the one person with every right to turn him away. Both journeys, his and theirs, started with an honest sentence about where staying would end.

2. The camp was already empty before they got there

They got up at twilight and walked out toward the camp.

But when they came to the edge of the camp of the Syrians, behold, there was no one there.

2 Kings 7:5

Nobody. The next verses explain what had happened while they sat.

The Lord had made the army of the Syrians hear the sound of chariots and of horses... So they fled away in the twilight and abandoned their tents, their horses, and their donkeys, leaving the camp as it was.

2 Kings 7:6-7

The rescue was finished before anyone believed in it. No Israelite soldier fought. No prayer meeting is recorded. The city was still paying silver for donkey heads while the enemy fled in the twilight.

That order — rescue first, believing afterwards — is the shape of the gospel, a word that means news announced, the way a runner announces a battle won.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8

Paul, writing to Christians in Rome, is careful about timing. Not after we improved. While. The rescue came first and the knowing came after. That is a rescue, not a reward.

An older song names what did not save them.

The king is not saved by his great army... The war horse is a false hope for salvation.

Psalm 33:16-17

Samaria was rescued without an Israelite army doing anything. The horses that mattered in this story were the enemy's, abandoned where they stood.

Now the part that resists a tidy ending. The four men were not looking for God; they went for food. Isaiah says something similar about Cyrus, a foreign king God promised to use to set his own people free (Isaiah 45:13).

I call you by your name... though you do not know me.

Isaiah 45:4

God will work through someone who does not know him. That should stop anyone feeling proud about finding something.

3. They ate first, and then they said it out loud

Here is the detail most retellings drop.

They went into a tent and ate and drank, and they carried off silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them.

2 Kings 7:8

Then they did it again at a second tent. Eating, drinking, hiding treasure — while behind them the city was still starving. The Bible reports it without excusing it.

Then something turns.

We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news. If we are silent... punishment will overtake us. Now therefore come; let us go and tell the king's household.

2 Kings 7:9

The Hebrew word for "good news" here is besorah. It is not a happy feeling. It is the kind of report a runner carries from a battle to people at home who do not know how it went — useless until somebody carries it.

The same root turns up in a famous line in Isaiah, spoken to a people in exile waiting to hear whether God had acted.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news... who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."

Isaiah 52:7

Feet, not lips. Isaiah praises the part of the messenger that gets him up the hill. The four men had feet, full stomachs and hidden silver, and for a while they used the feet for the silver.

Paul quotes that line to explain why anyone has to speak at all.

How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

Romans 10:14

An empty camp does nothing for a starving city that has not been told. Truth does not travel on its own.

Paul is also honest about how the telling feels.

Necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.

1 Corinthians 9:16

That is not a happy overflow but a duty he cannot put down. The four men said nearly the same: we are not doing right, and trouble will find us if we stay quiet. Mixed motives got the news to the gate. Better than silence.

4. One man heard the promise and never tasted it

Go back to the day before. When Elisha promised cheap food, an officer beside the king answered him.

If the Lord himself should make windows in heaven, could this thing be?

2 Kings 7:2

He was not a villain but the sensible man in the room. His question sounds fair: not even windows in heaven could fill a starving city with flour overnight. Elisha told him he would see it and not eat it. The next day the people went out for food, and the officer — put in charge of that gate — was trampled there (2 Kings 7:17). Flour sold for a shekel, exactly as promised (2 Kings 7:16).

It is harsh and the text does not soften it. A New Testament letter names the same failure in Israel's ancestors, who heard God's promise in the desert and never acted on it.

The message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.

Hebrews 4:2

The news was not the problem, and neither was hearing. The message arrived intact and they filed it under unlikely. A careful, reasonable person can do that with the best news of their life.

John opens his account of Jesus with the same sadness, then leaves a door open.

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him... he gave the right to become children of God.

John 1:11-12

The people who should have recognised him did not. People with no standing walked in — in Samaria, four men shut out of the gate, eating in a camp they did not empty.

What to do this week

Name the direction you have decided is closed. The four men moved because they said out loud that sitting still was also dying. Write down the thing you keep avoiding — the apology, the appointment, the parent you have not called — and what staying still will cost. Then pick the day.

Do not wait until you have sorted yourself out to speak. The men who carried the news still had hidden plunder in the ground when they called to the gatekeepers (2 Kings 7:10). Tell one person this week what God has done for you, in ordinary words, with no speech.

Check what you have filed under unlikely. The officer's objection sounded reasonable and was wrong about the one thing that mattered. If you have quietly decided God will not act on one part of your life, say so to him plainly instead of carrying it unsaid.

The camp was empty the whole time. The city simply had not heard yet.