The Sin of Remaining Silent. (2 Kings 6:23-7:19)

The Bible Project Daily Podcast is an in-depth, daily study of the entire Bible, chapter by chapter, verse by verse. 

Episode Notes:  The Sin of Remaining Silent. (2 Kings 6:23-7:19)

As believers, we are usually very aware of the sins we commit when we do something wrong. We know when we’ve spoken harshly, acted selfishly, crossed a line, or broken a command. Those are what some theologians call sins of commission. 

But we are often far less aware of the sins we commit by not doing something, the things we leave undone, the good we withhold, the truth we never speak, the help we never offer. Those are sometimes called sins of omission, and believe me, Scripture has a great deal to say about them.

 As we continue our journey through 2 Kings, we come to a passage where both kinds of sin appear side by side. Some people in this story commit sins by what they do, and they do some terrible things. But tucked right in the middle is a group of people who sin by what they fail to do.  

So, let’s walk through this passage together and see what it teaches us, not only about what we shouldn’t do, but about what we must do….

Transcript

The Sin of Remaining Silent. (2 Kings 6:23-7:19)

 As believers, we are usually very aware of the sins we commit when we do something wrong. We know when we’ve spoken harshly, acted selfishly, crossed a line, or broken a command. Those are what some theologians call sins of commission.

But we are often far less aware of the sins we commit by not doing something, the things we leave undone, the good we withhold, the truth we never speak, the help we never offer. Those are sometimes called sins of omission, and believe me, Scripture has a great deal to say about them.

As we continue our journey through 2 Kings, we come to a passage where both kinds of sin appear side by side. Some people in this story commit sins by what they do, and they do some terrible things. But tucked right in the middle is a group of people who sin by what they fail to do. And that moment becomes the key to the whole narrative.

So, let’s walk through this passage together and see what it teaches us, not only about what we shouldn’t do, but about what we must do….

Turn with me to 2 Kings chapter 6, beginning at verse 23.

Last time, we stopped at verse 22. Verse 23 begins a brand‑new story — one that spills over into chapter 7.

Verse 24:

Sometime later, Ben-Hadad, the king of Aram, mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria. 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.

(2 Kings 6: 24-25)

After the earlier skirmishes, those small raids we looked at in the last episode, the Syrian king now escalates the situation. He brings his entire army and surrounds the capital city of the northern kingdom, Samaria….And the result is devastating.

There was a great famine in Samaria. 

This is not just hardship, this is not just scarcity, this is catastrophic famine.

With the city surrounded, no food can come in. No crops can be harvested. No trade can take place. And when supply collapses, prices explode.

This is inflation at its most brutal.

A donkey’s head — hardly a delicacy- was selling for 80 shekels of silver. By one modern estimate I read, that’s roughly £500,00. Imagine paying nearly five hundred pounds for something you wouldn’t normally feed your pet.

The point is simple: They were starving. And when people starve, society collapses.

26 As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, “Help me, my lord, the king!” 27 The king replied, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?” 28 Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ 29 So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day, I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.” 30 When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore his robes. As he went along the wall, the people looked, and they saw that, under his robes, he had sackcloth on his body. 31 He said, “May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today!”

(2 Kings 6: 26-31)

This is one of the most disturbing scenes in all of Scripture.

It is horrific, it is almost unbearable to read, but it is not unique in history.

Sieges have always brought out the worst of human desperation.

And Scripture records this only to show just how far the nation had fallen, morally, spiritually, and socially.

This is definitely the Northern Kingdom at its lowest point.

Idolatry has hollowed them out. Disobedience has brought judgment, and now famine has reduced them to unthinkable acts. When the king heard about this, he tears his clothes… and underneath he had sackcloth on his body.”

Sackcloth was a sign of mourning — and sometimes of repentance.

But in this case, it was superficial because instead of confessing the nation’s sin, the king does what many people do when life collapses:

He blames someone else….

32 Now Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. The king sent a messenger ahead, but before he arrived, Elisha said to the elders, “Don’t you see how this murderer is sending someone to cut off my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold it shut against him. Is not the sound of his master’s footsteps behind him?” 33 While he was still talking to them, the messenger came down to him. The king said, “This disaster is from the Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?”

(2 Kings 32-33)

Elisha, remember he is the prophet who had been warning them, calling them back to God, speaking truth they refused to hear, now becomes the scapegoat.

The king wears sackcloth, but he does not repent.

He acknowledges the suffering, but not the sin.

He sees the consequences, but not the real cause.

Before we move deeper into the story, let me pause and say this reminds me of something I’ve seen again and again in Scripture — and in life.

When people don’t like the message, they attack the messenger.

The king of Israel doesn’t like the message Elisha has been preaching because it is a message of judgment, a message calling the nation back to God, a message confronting their idolatry. So, what does he do?

He says, in effect: “I’ll kill this man who brought the message.”

It’s the Stephen principle, we see in the book of Acts. If you don’t like the message, blame the messenger. Stephen brought the message of the gospel, being sin and repentance in the New Testament, and those who heard it stoned him to death.

And that principle is as old as Eden.

God confronts Adam, and Adam says: “The woman You gave me…”  Blame shifting, the oldest trick in the depraved human heart.

Rather than take responsibility, we look for someone else to blame…. 

And if that someone happens to be a prophet, well, we’ll stone him too.

But Elisha knows what’s coming. In fact, Elisha is sitting calmly with the elders, the spiritual leaders of the community, when God reveals what’s about to happen.

Elisha says:

“Do you see how this king and son of a murderer, has sent someone to take my head? When the messenger comes, shut the door. His master’s footsteps are right behind him.”

Indeed, the king’s father had been a murderer, and now the son is following in his father’s footsteps.

There it is. This is the king who wears sackcloth, but he does not repent. 

He acknowledges the suffering, but not the sin.

He blames God, and he blames Elisha.

He refuses to take responsibility for the nation’s idolatry, the very thing that brought this famine upon them.

And that’s where chapter 6 ends.

But the story doesn’t end there — and neither should we.

Remember, chapter divisions were added centuries later. Sometimes they fall neatly at the end of a story. Sometimes they don’t.

This is one of those times when they don’t.

So, we now step straight into chapter 7.

“Elisha replied, “Hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says: About this time tomorrow, a seah of the finest flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.” The officer on whose arm the king was leaning said to the man of God, “Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?” “You will see it with your own eyes,” answered Elisha, “but you will not eat any of it!”

(2 Kings 7: 1-2)

In other words:

Tomorrow the famine ends.

Tomorrow the shelves will be full.

Tomorrow, the prices will collapse.

It’s an astonishing prophecy.

And the king’s officer, the man he leans on, literally responds with utter unbelief. Saying “That’s impossible, there is no way. Not even God could fix this.

And Elisha replies: “You shall see it with your eyes, but you shall not eat of it.”

A chilling prophecy.

He will see God’s provision, but he will not taste it himself.

How will that happen?

Keep reading.

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, no one 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.

(2 Kings 7: 3-7)

So, these four men with leprosy are outside the city, where the law required them to stay.

They have no food, no future, and no hope.

And they say: “Why are we sitting here until we die?”

If they go into the city, they’ll die.

If they stay where they are, they’ll die.

If they surrender to the Syrians, they might live.

So, they choose the only option that offers even a sliver of hope.

They get up at twilight and go to the Syrians. And when they came to the outskirts of the camp, to their surprise, no one was there.”

The camp is empty, the army is gone, and the siege is over.

And these guys, the outcasts, the forgotten, the unclean, are the first to discover it.

What happens next is the heart of this story, and the moment where the sin of remaining silent emerges.

God intervened. He caused the Syrians to hear something that wasn’t there, the sound of a massive army approaching. And they panicked. They assumed Israel had hired foreign mercenaries, the Hittites from the north, perhaps, or the Egyptians from the south — and they run for their lives.

They’ve left everything behind.

Now, remember what we saw last time. In chapter 6, Elisha prayed that God would open the eyes of his servant, and the young man saw a mountain full of horses and chariots of fire surrounding Elisha.

An angelic army.

The text doesn’t explicitly say it here, but many scholars, and I agree, believe that the same angelic army is involved again. God didn’t need to send soldiers. He simply needed to let the Syrians hear what they feared most…. And they fled.

This is again God protecting His people. This is God confirming His prophet, and this is God demonstrating, once again, that He wants to be their God. To provide, to protect, and to prosper them.

And He does it through a miracle.

The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp, entered one of the tents, and ate and drank. Then they took silver, gold, and clothes, and went off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent, took some things from it, and hid them also.

(2 Kings 7:8)

They’ve just hit the jackpot. So they gorge themselves on food, and they gather silver, gold, clothing, all valuable in the ancient world.

They plunder tent after tent, and they hide their treasure.

They’ve gone from starving outcasts to wealthy survivors in a single evening.

But then comes the turning point of the entire story.

Then they said to each other, “What we’re doing is not 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.”

(2 Kings 7:9)

There it is.

The sin of silence.

Not a sin of what they did — but a sin of what they failed to do.

They had good news. Life‑saving news, nation‑saving news, and they decide to keep it to themselves.

Now, they understood that if they stayed silent, they were guilty. They acknowledged they were not doing right.”

And this is the heart of the passage, this is the moment everything turns.

And this is where it is relevant to us also. Because we, too, have good news, the best news, and far too often, we remain silent.

So, they speak up.

So, they went and called out to the city gatekeepers and told them, “We went into the Aramean camp, and no one was there, not a sound of anyone, only tethered horses and donkeys, and the tents left just as they were.” The gatekeepers shouted the news, and it was reported within the palace. 

(2 Kings 7:10-11)

They tell the gatekeepers what they’ve seen, and no one was there. Not a sound. Only horses and donkeys were tied, and tents intact.”

The gatekeepers then relay the message to the king’s household.

Verse 12:

“The king got up in the night and said to his officers, “I will tell you what the Arameans have done to us. They know we are starving, so they have left the camp to hide in the countryside, thinking, ‘They will surely come out, and then we will take them alive and get into the city.’”

The king, the same king who wanted to kill Elisha, immediately assumes it’s a trap.

He doesn’t believe the guys with leprosy. He doesn’t believe the gatekeepers. He doesn’t believe the evidence, and he is suspicious, cynical, hardened.

But one of his servants speaks up, again, a servant offering common‑sense advice, as we’ve seen repeatedly in these stories.

13 One of his officers answered, “Have some men take five of the horses that are left in the city. Their plight will be like that of all the Israelites left here—yes, they will only be like all these Israelites who are doomed. So let us send them to find out what happened.” 14 So they selected two chariots with their horses, and the king sent them after the Aramean army. He commanded the drivers, “Go and find out what has happened.”

(2 Kings 7: 13-14)

In other words: “What have we got to lose? We’re dying anyway. Let’s at least check.”

So, they sent two chariots to investigate.

Verse 15:

They followed them as far as the Jordan, and they found the whole road strewn with the clothing and equipment the Arameans had thrown away in their headlong flight. So, the messengers returned and reported to the king.

The evidence is overwhelming; the Syrians fled in panic, and the siege is over. The messengers then return and tell the king.

And then 

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

(2 Kings 7: 16)

Just as Elisha prophesied:

“…a measure of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel…”

Exactly as God said. Exactly as Elisha promised.

Exactly as the unbelieving officer said was impossible.

And then comes the tragic fulfilment of Elisha’s warning.

Verse 17:

Now the king had put the officer on whose arm he leaned in charge of the gate, and the people trampled him in the gateway, and he died, just as the man of God had foretold when the king came down to his house.

He saw the miracle.

He saw the food.

He saw the abundance….

But he never tasted it himself.

Just as Elishia said.

Again, in the context of 2 Kings, part of what God is doing in this story, and in the stories surrounding it, is demonstrating, again and again, “There is a prophet in Israel.” That matters because the prophet carries God’s message, and God wants His people to hear it, trust it, and obey it.

So, the text emphasises that everything happened exactly as the prophet said. The prophecy was fulfilled to the letter. And that is one of the great pieces of evidence that the Bible is not merely a human book; it is filled with fulfilled prophecy, some already completed, some still to come. But the fulfilled ones are part of what proves the divine origin of the message.

So, the food arrived exactly as Elisha said, and the prices dropped exactly as Elisha said. And the sceptical officer saw it, but never tasted it, exactly as Elisha said.

Why?

Because he refused to believe the word of the Lord. And in the stampede of hungry people rushing through the gate, he was trampled to death. He saw the blessing, but he never enjoyed it.

That’s the tragedy of the consequences of unbelief seen here.

Conclusion:

This story is full of sins — some committed by action, some committed by inaction.

The king sinned by blaming and threatening God’s messenger.

The officer sinned by refusing to believe God’s promise.

And the men with leprosy sinned by remaining silent when they had good news.

Two sinned by what they did.

One group sinned by what they did not do.

And strikingly, the only ones who admitted their sin were the guys with leprosy.

“When we are not doing what is right, when it is a day of good news, and we remain silent.”  (2 Kings 7:9) That was the sin.

That is the verse to underline.

That is the verse to carry home.

That is the verse that speaks directly to us.

Because we too live in a day of good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ. And yet, far too often, we remain silent.

Let me illustrate.

Several years ago, a friend told me of a Christian woman in Manchester who went to his church, who was well known for speaking to absolutely anyone about Christ. She was warm, sincere, and fearless, but as she got older, her sight failed. One afternoon, a friend saw her in the Arndale Centre, and as she went through the entrance to a department store, she called out encouragingly, 'God Bless You’, to what appeared to be a well‑dressed gentleman.

Except it wasn’t a gentleman.

It was a mannequin. Her friend later teased her: “Surely, you have to admit you’re taking this witnessing business a bit too far. You were preaching to a mannequin!”

Without missing a beat, she replied: 

“Perhaps I was. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be.

But talking to a mannequin about Christ is not half as bad as being a Christian who never speaks at all…. Ouch.

And she was right…. Better to speak to a mannequin than to be a silent believer.

The Call of the Passage

This story presses one great truth upon us:

Silence is a sin when we have good news.

If we know Christ…

If we know forgiveness…

If we know the hope of eternal life…

If we know the Bread of Life… then we must not keep it to ourselves.

You don’t need to preach a sermon.

You don’t need to be eloquent.

You don’t even need to win an argument…. But you can pray for someone.

You can ask God for an open door. You can invite someone to church. You can share your story, and you can speak a simple word of hope.

One hungry soul telling another hungry soul telling another where to find bread.

That’s all.