More With Us

2 Kings 6: An opened hand, opened eyes, and a besieged city

The chapter begins with a borrowed tool and ends inside a city starving under siege, a remarkable range held together by questions of what can be recovered, seen, and controlled. Elisha makes a lost axe head accessible again, then repeatedly exposes Syrian plans that were supposed to remain secret. When Syria surrounds Dothan to seize him, his frightened servant is shown horses and chariots of fire already surrounding the prophet. The captors are themselves blinded, led into Samaria, and fed at Elisha's command rather than executed by the king. That temporary end to raiding does not become permanent peace. Benhadad later besieges Samaria so tightly that famine reaches prices and acts almost beyond speech. The king wears sackcloth beneath his robes but responds to the horror by ordering Elisha's death. The final accusation, "what should I wait for the LORD any longer?", breaks off at precisely the point where the next chapter will answer with an impossible promise of abundance.