Old Testament: 2Ki 7.3–4

To read the Bible in a year, read Second Kings 6–8 on May 13, In the year of our Lord Christ 2023

By Don Ruhl 

The Syrians surrounded Samaria, cutting it off from all resources. Consequently, the city was starving. During this time, four leprous men, feeling the starvation, decided to do something: 

Now there were four leprous men at the entrance of the gate; and they said to one another, “Why are we sitting here until we die? If we say, “We will enter the city,’ the famine is in the city, and we shall die there. And if we sit here, we die also. Now therefore, come, let us surrender to the army of the Syrians. If they keep us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall only die.”

– 2 Kings 7.3–4 

This was like Esther, who concluded, “If I perish, I perish,” (Esther 4.14), or like Jacob, who declared, “If I am bereaved, I am bereaved,” (Genesis 43.14), or like the children of Israel at Mount Sinai, who bewailed, “Surely we die, we perish, we all perish,” (Numbers 17.12–13), but in every case, things turned out great for these people who realized that their situation overwhelmed them, and there was nothing else they could do but surrender to the circumstances, and then the God of heaven rescued them! 

Questions: 

• What do you do when you are overwhelmed? 
• How have you managed to make it to today? 

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