40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 6:31-7:20 (Episode 329)

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

Elisha is in his house when the king comes for him, and Elisha makes a seemingly impossible prophecy. Four lepers decide to roll the dice and approach the camp of the Syrians rather than starve. The sound of dual armies has resulted in a day of gospel. And Elisha's words come to pass. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! HWSS Livestream Signup 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 podcast network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. Make sure you check out all the other resources that are over there, all the podcasts, the articles, the events, the academies, all the things that 1517 is doing, the books. You can go check out all the books that 1517 has published. There's no shortage of things for you to peruse over at 1517.org. So if you haven't done that, make sure you take advantage of that. Chad, last episode, we ended in sort of a grisly way.

We had a famine. We had a siege. We had babies being or children being boiled and eaten and other children being hidden so that they wouldn't be boiled and eaten. We had the king tearing his his garments and and crying out that Elijah, that's the guy I'm going to blame. That's the guy whose head is no longer going to be attached to his body by the end of this day. And that's that's where we had to end. That's a real uplifting stuff. yeah happy times in israel let me tell you well uh sound like we need some good news yeah it does yeah yeah like we need a uh uh what tolkien call that uh a you catastrophe yes where yeah you have this you have this uh a good catastrophe they where all of a sudden you have this sudden turn of events where you know you you think everything is about to end just horribly and then out of

nowhere, there comes a beautiful resolution to the bad situation. So, we've got a eucatastrophe coming up here, and it's going to be quite an astonishing one. So, we are in 2 Kings 6, verse 32. Yeah, the king has just said that, sworn in oath, it didn't say, may Yahweh, but it does say, may God do so to me, and more also, if the head of Elisha remains on his shoulders today. Well, where's Elisha at? Well, verse 32 tells us that he's at home. Yeah, he's sitting in his house. Yeah, it's not going to be very hard to find.

It's not like he's hiding somewhere because he knows that his neck is literally on the line here. No, he's just sitting in his house, chilling. He's got company. We're told that the elders were sitting with him. I don't know if this was like a relatively common thing to happen in Israel or not, but there are two passages in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 8 and 20, where the same scenario is happening. So Ezekiel's a prophet, and we're told that we're given the dates, and he says, as I sat in my house with the elders of Judah sitting before me.

And then same thing, certainly the elders of Israel came to inquire of the Lord and sat before me. So you notice the elders aren't with the king. They're with the prophet. So they're wise elders. They know where to be. They know that the king is not the one to be hanging out with and said they're at Elisha's house, sitting with him.

No doubt, either discussing matters, praying, whatever it might be, they're together, elders and prophet. Now the king, we read, had dispatched a man from his presence. But before the messenger arrived, Elisha said to the elders, this is another case of Elisha knowing what's going on. We said in the previous podcast that Elisha knew what the king of syria spoke in his bedroom now we're going to see that elijah also knew what the king of israel spoke when he uttered this oath he says to the elders do you see how this murderer

has sent to take off my head look when the messenger comes shut the door and hold the door fast against him is not the sound of his master's feet behind him they're not taking the prophet by surprise yeah elijah's a tough dude to the jump on yeah he's he hears he sees he knows he knows what's going on uh before anybody else does so he knows this guy's coming to take off his head he knows the murderer is on his way so he says to uh shut the door hold it fast against him and his master's behind him uh so the king is going to show up shortly after the messenger arrives. And verse 33, of course, says that this is exactly what happened. While he was still speaking with them, the messenger came down and said, this trouble is from the Lord. Why should

I wait for the Lord any longer? Some translations, I think the NIV and the New Revised Standard Version kind of tweak this a little bit. They basically understand that instead of the messenger coming down and saying this. It's the king coming down and saying this. Now, the Hebrew has messenger, but the two words for messenger and king are very similar. So, a messenger is a malak, and a king is a melek. There's only one consonant that's different in those two words. So, some of these translations think it should read, while he was still speaking with them, the king came down and said, but the Hebrew just has messenger. So, the messenger comes. it really doesn't matter because the messenger is the messenger of the king so what he says

is what the king says this trouble is from the lord why should i wait for the lord any any longer so now he's blaming god he blamed elisha now he's blaming god uh everybody's to blame except uh perhaps the idolatry of the king yeah caused all this yeah well you you have this uh this is god's fault. And so, uh, what am I going to do? Uh, it seems like the, I'm going to take off your head, Elisha is, uh, I'm angry with God. And at this point, uh, I'm going to do something that I don't think he's going to like, and just to show, I'm going to show God how upset I am with all of this. And the way I'm going to do that is, uh, I'm going to kill you. Yeah. Yeah. And you can't get much more kind of a basic human sinful tendency than that. Yeah. Um, I think that,

I'm sure we've talked about this before but back in Genesis 4 with the whole Cain and Abel situation I think that's precisely what happened who was really who was Cain mad at yeah there was I mean he maybe he was upset with his brother but he was really mad at God but he couldn't get his hands on God so

instead he took it out on his brother he killed his brother instead this happens over and over throughout not just Israel's history but still today people are they're mad at God but they can't get their hands around God's throat, so who do they take it out on? They take it out on maybe it's a preacher or maybe it's a pastor or a priest

or anybody, could be anybody, who kind of stands in the place of God for them. Yeah, this is you deciding, I'm upset with this person, and so I'm going to try to hurt this person by taking away something they like. Yeah, so that's what the plan is here. We're going to take out the Lord's prophet in order to get back at God. Kind of a strange chapter division here. We've also seen that plenty of times, too, where the people that put the chapter divisions in here didn't make the best of choices. There's no break, really, between the end of chapter 6 and the beginning of chapter 7,

but there is, at least in our Bibles, a printed break with the chapter being located there. So right after he says this, the trouble is in the Lord. Why should we wait for the Lord? We read in chapter 7, verse 1, Elisha's response. Elisha said, hear the word of the Lord. So you're talking about the Lord. Well, let me tell you exactly what the Lord has to say. Thus says the Lord, tomorrow about this time, a seah of fine flour will be sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria. Now, if you listened to the last episode, you understand what is being contrasted here. So, back in chapter 6, verse 25, we hear about this great famine in Samaria and how it was

besieged by the Syrians until the food level had been reduced to such an extent that a donkey's head was sold for 80 pieces of silver, 80 pieces of silver. And then the fourth part of a cob, so like a fourth of a liter, a fourth of a quart, something like that, of dove's dung. It's a bird crap for five pieces of silver. That's how bad things were. And so having heard that, you can hear the contrast now in what Elisha says by the word of the Lord, that tomorrow, here's what's going to happen. You're going to have all this fine flour. It's sold for just a mere shekel. You have all this barley. It's going to be sold for a shekel right

here at the gate of Samaria. Yeah, and a seah is about seven quarts, right? Yeah. Yeah, so a significant amount. A decent amount of flour for not very much money. Yeah. So the words

must have seemed beyond incredible to everyone who heard them. In fact, we're going to see how one of the king's servants responds to this. Everybody Everybody knows what a donkey's head and a little bit of dove's tongue is selling for in the marketplace. Everybody probably knows that it wasn't just these two women who were resorting to cannibalism. I can't imagine that there were only two women in the city of Samaria who were engaged in this sort of inhumane consumption of human flesh.

So everybody knows how bad it is. So for Elisha to say, hey, tomorrow, things are going to be astonishingly different would have stretched one's ability to believe it. And in fact, verse 2 tells us that the captain, on whose hand the king leaned, responded to Elisha this way. He says, if the Lord himself should make windows in heaven, could this thing be? In other words, even if God were to intervene and open up these heavenly windows and start like tossing out bread, pouring down food from heaven, there's no way that what you've just prophesied is going to come to pass. Now, the Hebrew word that is translated here as windows is something that we have encountered

all the way back in the flood narrative. So Genesis 7-11 and 8-2 talks about how God opened up the windows of heaven and poured out the floodwaters. So this is a common designation for, I guess, the sources of the good things that come down from heaven. God, as it were, is opening up his windows and he's throwing rain, he's throwing the good gifts down to the people. Well, it seems like kind of what's being said here is like, all right, even if God opens the windows of heaven, that is, so it's a famine, you have to assume that it's not been raining. That's why there's no food. And so it seems like what's being said here is even if it rained like crazy, starting right now, we're not going to have wheat and barley tomorrow. Yeah, this will have its mud.

Yeah, this is the argument. Like, how are you going to, even if you get the rain, it's not like you have crops grow overnight and then, like, just flower appear out of nowhere. What are we talking about here? Like, even if the famine ends because it rains, we still got a lot of suffering to do because it's going to be a while before we're able to grow stuff

and harvest stuff and all that, right? That's kind of the argument here, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. so he says he's more or less saying this is an impossibility and uh elijah elijah responds oh you're gonna see it you you will see it with your own eyes but you shall not eat of it that's some pretty ominous words there you're gonna see it happen trust me you will see this happen but you're not going to be a participant in this food that's going to be sold to the gate of Samaria. We'll see in a few more verses how that comes to be. By the way, this language,

the captain on whose hand the king leaned, that must be some sort of idiom for a really close official to the king. The reason I say that is back in the chapter that talked about Naaman, the general of the Syrian king. He said, you know, he wanted forgiveness for when he had to do his official duties and go into the temple of the Syrian god. And he says, when the king leans on my arm, then, you know, while he's worshiping there in the temple. So this must be some sort of pretty common designation for someone who is a very close confidant to the king. So when that happens uh uh or there's a prophecy that's going to happen he says i don't believe it and the prophet responds the way that he does so what finally is going to be the the resolution of this

well it kind of seems like also that when the king says all right uh someone's gonna have to die here because uh he does say may it be done to me if this doesn't happen this is not a good idea maybe maybe you have an intention of uh going and having a having it out with the profit or whatever but you you make a threat and then say if i if i don't carry this out then that's what's going to happen to me i'm just saying that's a bad idea yeah yeah don't don't ever under any circumstances use this kind of oath no let your yes be yes and your nobody know uh but this kind of oath especially is not one that should ever pass pass over your lips especially of course It's not only an oath, of course, but it's an oath basically to murder the Lord's prophet.

Also not a good idea. So verse 3 introduces us to the section that is my favorite part of this whole story. It's where we have people that you never would have expected who end up being the heroes. It's such a great narrative. So verse 3 introduces us to four guys. and these four guys are not inside the city they're kind of in the the in-between space so they're they're not in the city of samaria but they're also not with the the syrians so they're in this liminal space we might say between between the two you got the besieged city then you got the

syrian army and then you got these four guys and we're told that they were was translated probably in all english translations as lepers but as we've discussed multiple times uh in the old testimony, you have leprosy or lepers. The Hebrew behind that, as virtually all scholars agree today, it's not Hansen's disease. It's not leprosy per se, but it's some sort of skin disease that would have rendered a person unclean. Same thing or similar thing that Naaman had. But whatever it is, anyway, it puts you outside the camp. It makes you an outcast, makes you ritually impure, which is probably why these guys are where they are. It makes it to where you get left alone.

So they're not with the people of the city. They're not with the Syrians. It seems like everyone's just sort of not interested in being around these guys. Yeah, yeah, they're by themselves. They have each other, but that's all. so we'll uh we'll we'll keep you know speaking of them as lepers even though do bear in mind that these are guys just with some sort of skin skin disease so these four guys these four lepers they're they're at the entrance of the gate and they have this conversation oh they say to each

other what are we doing why why are we just sitting here until we die if we say let's enter the city well the famine's in the city so we're going to die there but if we sit here we're also going to die we're going to have starvation so let's go with our last option why don't we go over to the camp of the syrians if they spare our lives they don't kill us well then of course we'll be alive and if they kill us well then we'll just die but we're going to die anyway these guys are last resort right we got one option here if we go in the city we're going to starve to death if we sit here we're going to starve to death if we go to the camp of the syrians they might kill us but hey we also might live we also actually might get uh might get some food so even it seems

like even will probably kill us but so what yeah we're gonna die so all of our other options uh end in death. So this is the only option that we even have a chance of making it. So why don't we do that? What time of day is it? It's night. Verse 5 introduces us to their next actions. So they get up. It's at twilight, and they're going to go to the camp of the Syrians. But when they came to the edge of the camp of the syrians behold there was no body there that had to be such an eerie sensation yeah i mean you're it's dark for one and you know anytime you're you know especially if you're like you're out in the woods uh or uh or even you know if you're in a city if you're walking it's dark it's always a little bit eerie a little bit a little bit creepy uh well just imagine what this

to be like you're four guys and you're walking into an enemy camp thinking the whole time you know what this could be it you know they're gonna have sentries posted of course as all army camps would have had so the likelihood of you even getting into the camp is pretty low there's a good chance that these uh these guards are just going to take you down as soon as you get to the camp so you get a little bit closer a little bit closer it's dark uh and you're not hearing anything you walk to the edge of the camp there's no posted sentries you go into the camp and it's a ghost town yeah that must have been so strange and the camp is still there is the thing you're going it's not like oh the army packed up and left it's just the army is gone but the stuff

is there but these people all the stuff is still there like these people left in a hurry yeah a big hurry so what happened well we were told in verse 6 what happened there was no one there because the lord had made the army of the syrians hear the sound of chariots and horses the sound of a great army so they said to each other when they heard this sound behold the king of israel has hired against us the kings of the hittites and the kings of egypt to come against us so they fled away in the twilight and just completely abandoned their tents their horses and their donkeys leaving the camp as it was and they fled for their lives these guys are in a hurry yeah they must the sound they heard must have been

sounded like the largest army any of them had ever thought of right yeah that two armies coming against us. We've got the Hittite army. We've got the Egyptian army. They're hired mercenaries. Somehow, the king of Israel was able to muster enough money and messengers to get them sent out. These two armies came together, and now they're going to attack us under cover of darkness. So these guys were scared to death. Now, I wonder, did God just simply make them hear this sound, as it were from the horses and chariots of fire, this invisible army of celestial soldiers? Or did God somehow transform the sound of these four lepers walking up

to make these four lepers sound like an army that was coming against them? I kind of like the second option. I can't prove it either way, but I kind of like this idea of God making the sound of four outcast men to sound in the ears of the enemy like two armies that are coming against them. But whichever it was, it was so frightening that they left everything behind. They fled with nothing, whatever they had on them at the moment, leaving behind tents and horses and donkeys.

Everything was left behind, and they fled for their lives. What are these lepers going to do? Verse 8 says, when these lepers came to the edge of the camp, what do you think they're going to do they go into a tent and they start eating and drinking they've been starving just like everybody else has so they go into the first tent that they find they they get some food they uh they get some water or wine or beer or whatever they had and they start having a party imagine uh first of all the shock of the empty camp and then the uh the just the exuberation of of uh of finding that which was the last thing that they thought they

would find they thought they were probably going to die and now not only do you find everybody gone who might kill them but all this good stuff left behind so they go into a tent they eat they drink and then they carry off silver and gold and clothing and they go and hide them so they they they switch very quickly from taking care of their starvation needs and thinking, Oh, you know what? We can actually, we can actually get rich off this deal. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're carrying off some, some gold, some clothes, hiding them.

Then they come back and they enter another tent and they carry off the things from it and they go and hide it. So this is working their way. They're like, okay, this tent is completely emptied. Now we got all the stuff we need. Let's go to this tent. And, you know, presumably they could have kept doing this. They could have kept plundering this empty camp all night if they wanted to, drinking themselves drunk

and gorging themselves on all this food and hiding all of these valuables for retrieval later. They could have kept doing that. But it's like they kind of come to their senses in verse 9. And this is what they say to each other.

So this is the second conversation. The first conversation was, what are are options well there's really only one option let's go over to the enemy camp second conversation is in verse nine they say to each other we are not doing right this thing we're doing it's not the right thing to do which is why because these are lepers who probably don't have ways of making money they've been like outcast like nobody has anything to do with them they're like this isn't the right thing to do i mean that's it's quite the revelation i mean it's much easier to just be like man finally our lucky day i'm gonna tell you what man it has been rough finally just a

little bit of a good fortune for us yeah if there's any group of people where you could you could understand why they would say you know forget about everybody else they've forgotten about us they're not taking care of us you know we're outcast who we are not beholden to anybody else you know our our life has been terrible and here's our golden opportunity this is our golden ticket, and let's take full advantage of it and forget about everybody else. But that's not what they say. To their credit, they realize, you know what, this isn't right. And then they say this, this day is a day of good news, which is just such a fantastic tie-in with the ultimate good news with with the gospel yeah in fact uh in uh yeah i looked at the septuagint translation of

this and it's uh you on galia which is the uh that's that's the that's a word from which we get gospel yeah it's good news this is this is a day so we can say we're not doing this right this is a day of gospel this is a day of gospel that's right this is this day is a day of of gospel. And I love that the Septuagint shows that particular Greek word. I mean, the Hebrew behind it is basara, which is the Hebrew equivalent of news or good news. And this is the eucatastrophe. This is this sudden turn of events, which is precisely what the gospel is. I mean, the resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate eucatastrophe. So what seems to be the greatest This catastrophe, the death of the Son of God, ends up resulting in a eucatastrophe,

in this good catastrophe, this sudden turn of events in which life emerges out of death, victory emerges out of what seemed to be defeat. And in 2 Kings chapter 7, we have the same kind of thing going on, where there was likely going to be nothing but death and destruction and starvation. All of a sudden, now you have life and you have victory and you have good news in the form of food. Good news in the form of the enemy has fled. So gospel does come often in the form of food, right? That's what the Lord's Supper is.

That's right. So this is a good news. It's edible on the part of these lepers. So what do they say? Well, they say, if we're silent and wait until the morning light, punishment will overtake us. the the israelites are going to find out what happens so uh let's make sure that we do the right thing here so now therefore come let's go and let's tell the king's household what uh what happened so they're going to be evangelists they're going to they got some good news and

they're going to pass on this good news to the people inside the city so still night keep in mind uh they gotta go so then they go back they came and they called to the gatekeepers of the city and told them here's what happened we came to the camp of the syrians and behold there was no one to be seen or heard there nothing but the horses tied and the donkeys tied in the tents as they were so the gatekeepers of course they're nothing but middlemen here the gatekeepers they call out and they say hey go let the king's household know what happens so the message goes from the the lepers, to the gatekeepers, to the king's household, to the king himself. So verse 12, the king gets up middle of the night and he says to his servants, he thinks this is all a trap. He said, this is

nothing but a ruse. He says, I tell you what this series have done to us. They know that we're hungry. So what they've done is they've gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the open country, thinking, when they come out of the city, we shall take them alive and get into the city. Now, I don't blame the king for thinking this, because this was a pretty common way to take a city. You try and lure out the soldiers of the city by some kind of trick, some kind of trap. And then what do you do? Well, then you have another force that comes behind them, and now they're caught. They got enemy in front of them, they got enemy behind them, and then you have your troops that try and take the city

while the other soldiers are out of the city. This would have been a fairly common tactic. And so he thinks it's all the ruses, it's all the trap. Well, it's the only thing that makes sense, too. I mean, you can't blame him for not thinking, you know what, I bet it happened. I bet you they thought four lepers were two armies and they ran. That seems like a ridiculous option.

Yeah, yeah. Not going to be in the list. of possibilities. So they're going to, they're going to check things out more or less. So he says to his servants, verse 13, here's what we need to do. Get some men and take five of the remaining horses. So I'm thinking that probably all the other horses have been consumed at this point. I mean, that, that would make sense. If you're in starvation mode, then you're going to be eating horses too. So we've got five horses left. Seeing that those who are left here will fair like the whole multitude of Israel who have already perished. So let us send and see.

So in other words, we're going to check things out. I mean, it's worth the risk, right? If we stay here in the city, we're all going to die by starvation. There is a chance that these lepers are telling the truth, whatever happens. So let's go check it out. So they took two horsemen, that could also be translated two chariots with their horses. The Hebrew is a little bit ambiguous there, but either way, some horsemen leave, either two chariots with the horses, which would be four horses, or two mounted men, which would be, of course, two horses. So some guys leave on horses, and the king sent them after the army. The Syrians say, go and see.

So check out this story that was told you by the lepers, and we'll find out if there's any credence to it. So they do. They go after them as far as the Jordan. They go from their camp all the way to the Jordan River, and behold all the way was littered with garments and equipment that the syrians had thrown away in their haste and then the messengers returned and had told the king must have been quite the scene i mean the camp itself was full of all this stuff and then it wouldn't have been very hard to

figure out which way these guys had gone because it got the whole way that just littered with all the stuff that they're like they're throwing away yeah now if you're trying to get away from somebody you don't want to be you don't want your hands full you don't want this heavy pack on your back you want to be as light as possible so that you can make haste and and get away so there's like throwing things left and right as they're as they're trying to get away from them yeah yeah you're you're uh they've come across the the evidence that these guys have left in a real big hurry and are trying to do it as light as possible yeah so the story checks out right Everything the lepers said was exactly as they found it.

So they go back. That would be a super elaborate draw-you-out plan, too. Like, let's just leave all our weapons and stuff everywhere. You probably don't do that, right? I mean, things are looking real weird now. Yeah, looking real weird. And it just occurred to me, too, that nobody really knows why they fled. No.

We do. Yeah, we're told, but I mean, it wasn't like God appeared to the leopards and told them, hey, here's what happened. No, they don't know what happened. These messengers don't know what happened. Elisha, I'm sure, does. He knows everything. But we know. We've been informed by the narrative, but nobody else has any clue as to why these guys took off the way they did.

so verse 16 says that the people went out and plundered the camp of the syrians just imagine what that would look like yeah you got a city full of of people that have been reduced to to such dire straits that they're resorting to cannibalism things are just as bad as it could possibly be. And all of a sudden, word gets back to the city that the Syrian camp is just sitting there empty. It's like, you know, you've been in this time of starvation and you hear, you know what?

Nobody's at the grocery store and it's full of food and the doors are unlocked. Yeah. What's going to happen? Well, you're going to have a horde of people who are rushing to get what's there. and then we read this so a say a fine flour was sold for a shuckle and to say as a barley for a shuckle according to the word of the Lord so just like Elisha had said tomorrow you know the donkey's

head being sold for this and the the the the pigeon dung being sold for that now that's going to stop instead you're going to be able to get as much food as you need for just pennies basically So that's what happens. Now, verse 17 also tells us that another prophecy was fulfilled. Now, the king had appointed the captain on whose hand he leaned to have charged the gate. So this is that guy that did not believe the prophet beforehand, said, you know, even if God were to open the windows of heaven, none of this stuff could take place.

So he's there, he's in charge of the gate. And that's not the place that you want to be when you have a whole bunch of hungry, starving people rushing out to the camp of the Syrians. And what happened to him is that the people trampled him in the gate so that he died as the man of God had said when the king came down to him. So Elisha had said, you know what? Your eyes are going to see it, but your mouth is not going to partake of it.

And so it was fulfilled. uh ended up being trampled by the very people who were rushing out to to the enemy camp yeah and that tells you like what kind of a crazy scene this was oh yeah but absolute mayhem i mean i've never i don't know if you've ever been in a situation like i've never been in a place where you kind of have a uh just a mob mentality you know where people are just swept up into this large group and probably do things that they would never do

when they're by themselves. That's what happens in these situations. Only on Black Friday, if you're waiting for the doors at Target to open or whatever, and then people get psychotic and go rushing through there. It's like that,

but way, way worse. None of those people are starving to death. They're just trying to get a really good deal on a set of Legos. That's a different thing but still people act crazy like can you even imagine if if you've been starving and there's food in there yeah no actually i this has probably been been several years ago but on a black friday there was a walmart employee who was trampled to death at the at the doors i mean it's just and that yeah that's not because people are rushing in to get food they're rushing in to just

get stuff so imagine the uh just the crazy mob irrational behavior that that took place and people are on the verge of starvation so they they rush out he was in charge of the gate not the place you want to be ends up getting trampled just as the prophet had had said and then we read on verse 18 there's a lot of kind of language of fulfillment here verse 18 says for when the man of God had said to the king to say as a barley will be sold for a shekel

and to say a fine flour for a shekel about this time tomorrow in the gate of Samaria when he had said that the captain had answered the man of God if the Lord himself

should make windows in heaven could such a thing be and he had said you shall see it with your own eyes but you shall not eat of it so what happened to him for the people

trampled him in the gate and he died kind of a really spelling it out really spelling it out for you Yeah, in case you missed it, it's pretty unusual, actually. The narrator really makes a point about this. I mean, to spend that amount of ink kind of elaborating the whole fulfillment of a prophecy is relatively odd in the Bible.

So I wanted to make sure that you did not miss that this was a fulfillment of exactly what had happened. Yeah, it's funny the things that the Bible will decide that it really, really wants. Can we connect these dots for you? And you're like, I think I could have connected those dots. And then there's other things where you're like, I wish you would have an explanation for this one. I don't know how to connect these dots. Yeah, that is one of the challenges of reading the Scripture sometimes. is you know the things that a lot of times the things that are pretty blatantly obvious you know

are like spelled out and even more obvious sorts of ways and there's other times you'll read the scriptures you're like man i have no idea what that verse means i'm sure there's a connection between these two events but i can't quite put my finger on it or you know or there there there is a connection maybe it's illusion or echo whatever but it's not really spelled out yeah You know, for instance, when Jesus feeds the 5,000 in the wilderness with the bread and a little bit of fish. I mean, it's obviously a miracle that's patterned after Moses and the manna and the quail in the wilderness. I mean, but I don't think any of the evangelists say, just as Jesus did this, just as Moses fed the people in the wilderness. I mean, the closest you get is in John 6.

Yeah, not even Matthew does that. And he's all about that kind of stuff. Oh, yeah, he's all about the Moses typology. But for whatever reason here in 2 Kings 7, he wants to make sure that you do make this connection. And this story is another one of those that sort of feels like it has this kind of whole New Testament feel to it because it is such a reversal.

Everything is turned upside down. There is this eucatastrophe. There's a sudden good news that is discovered, thank God, by the outcast, which is another just great element of this, because you have people that they're not Syrians, yeah. Maybe they're Israelites, but they really don't belong anywhere. They don't belong to the Syrian army. They don't belong to the Israelites.

They are people outside the camp. just like Jesus died outside, outside the city. They're, they're, they're the outcast and they're the ones who discover the good news. And, uh, they're the ones who say, you know what? We aren't doing right. This day is a day of gospel. This day is a day of good news. And so let's go share it. And, uh, as a result of that sharing, you have where you thought there was going to be starvation. Now you have feasting where you thought there was death. Now you have life, where you thought there was defeat, you have victory. And so the narrative is really, it's a resurrection narrative. It's an Old Testament way of talking about when you have

God restoring life where formerly there was death. That's right. And that is it, man. We are out of time. So we have wrapped up that chapter, and next week we will get into some different stories. So sort of leave that one right there. We're going to go into Chapter 7 next week. Looking forward to that, and I will see you then. All right. See you then.