"Sharing with a Purpose"	March 7th, 2004

2 Kings 6:24-25, 7:3-11, 16

24. Some time later, Ben-Hadad king of Aram mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria.
25. There was a great famine in the city; the siege lasted so long that a donkey's head sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a quarter of a cab of seed pods for five shekels.

3. Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, "Why stay here until we die?
4. If we say, 'We'll go into the city'-the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let's go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die."
5. At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans. When they reached the edge of the camp, not a man was there,
6. for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said to one another, "Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us!"
7. So they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left the camp as it was and ran for their lives.
8. The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp and entered one of the tents. They ate and drank, and carried away silver, gold and clothes, and went off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also.
9. Then they said to each other, "We're not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let's go at once and report this to the royal palace."
10. So they went and called out to the city gatekeepers and told them, "We went into the Aramean camp and not a man was there-not a sound of anyone-only tethered horses and donkeys, and the tents left just as they were."
11. The gatekeepers shouted the news, and it was reported within the palace.

16. Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a seah of flour sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley sold for a shekel, as the LORD had said.

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