Greater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 356. Famine in Samaria

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Greater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 356. Famine in Samaria


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II



Famine in Samaria



The next incident, though introduced without remark immediately after the last, evidently occurred at a different time. The king of Syria gathered a great army to besiege Samaria. Elisha encouraged the men of Israel to defend their city to the last. The wonderfully vivid narrative tells a pitiful tale of women boiling their children, of unclean food worth more than its weight in silver, of a king worked up to a pitch of frenzy and murderous designs, and renouncing his allegiance to Jehovah. Such faith as he had was strained to the breaking point. In despair, he turned his fury upon the prophet who, he thought, had power which he would not use, and sent to apprehend him. Then, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, the king apparently followed his own messenger, and confessed that the calamity was Divinely inflicted, and that he must surrender the city: “Behold this evil is of the Lord; why should I wait for the Lord any longer?” Then at this crisis of fate, Elisha spoke. The message was confident: “Hear ye the word of the Lord: Thus saith the Lord, To-morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.” One of the lords in close attendance on the king derided the prophet. Only if windows were made in heaven might such a thing be. “Behold,” was the only response, “thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.”



During the night there was a panic in the Syrian host, the camp was deserted and every part of the prophecy fulfilled. The very courtier who had mocked Elisha was appointed to guard the city gate, and was trodden to death by the uncontrollable rush of the hungry populace.



The unbelieving lord has not only his predecessors, but, alas! he has also his followers, crowds and crowds of faithless souls who follow in his footsteps. Some of them are like himself, utterly unbelieving. They believe neither in God nor in His power. They utterly deny the use of prayer. They sneer at the true believer. They turn into ridicule every attempt to acknowledge God in His dealings with man. We have all heard of such men; nay, we have doubtless come across them in daily life. In the office, in the railway carriage, in the workshop, in the place of business, in the street, their laugh of unbelief is heard. They are very active, and they do their best to get others to join them. They would fain ridicule all around them out of their faith in God. Let us beware of allowing ourselves, even for a moment, to be shaken in our confidence; let us remember that those who join in the sneer of the unbeliever will share the unbeliever's doom.



Here, I think, is the moral fault of unbelief:-that a man can bear to make so great a moral sacrifice as is implied in renouncing God. He makes the greatest moral sacrifice to obtain partial satisfaction to his intellect: a believer ensures the greatest moral perfection, with partial satisfaction to his intellect also; entire satisfaction to the intellect is, and can be, attained by neither. Thus, then, I believe, generally, that he who has rejected God must be morally faulty, and therefore justly liable to punishment. But, of course, no man can dare to apply this to any particular case, because our moral faults themselves are so lessened or aggravated by circumstances to be known only by Him who sees the heart, that the judgment of those who see the outward conduct only must ever be given in ignorance.1 [Note: Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, i. 322.]