Is it okay to be angry at God? (2 Kings 6.31)

So may God do to me, and more, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat stays on his shoulders today.

Have you ever given up on God? Or blamed Him for trouble? You are not alone—even the King of Israel (and others) did so.

Background

This prayer passage stands in stark contrast to the humor and light-heartedness of the previous. It contains a warning that there is a constructive and a destructive way to pray when we are frustrated.

King Ben-Hadad of Aram lay siege to Samaria, the northern part of Israel. Considering the previous story, where Elisha spared the army of Aram, this might seem strange. If the stories are in chronological order, Elisha’s actions might have led to the attack. Even though the prophet did not destroy the army, he humiliated them. Aram may have decided that they needed revenge. After all, even before the last story, they had tried many times to attack, and Elisha had outsmarted them each time.

During the siege, the people began to starve. To compound the situation, there may have been a famine at the same time. The writer provides examples of how bad it was. First, he tells us the exorbitant price of a donkey’s head. We might wonder why someone would want this item, but history gives us plenty of examples of what people will eat to avoid starvation. He also tells us that a pint of bird dung was ridiculously expensive. (Were they eating this? Let’s hope it was just for fuel for fires to keep warm or cook food.)

The third example concerns the King of Israel. As he walks through the suffering town, a woman cries out, “Help me!” But the King is helpless, too, and replies, “let the Lord help you.” But he is the king, so he asks her what she wants. She tells him a terrible tale. Her neighbor convinced her that they should cook and eat her baby to survive; then, when that source of food was gone, they would cook and eat her baby. (It is likely the deal was about their dead babies—the vulnerable young often die of starvation and suffering before the more mature). She agreed, but later the woman refused to do the same with her baby’s corpse. (If this was a case of killing the children, the woman would probably not have been so eager to tell the story.) The woman’s tale demonstrates the human toll of the siege! In times of extreme suffering, humans sometimes commit terrible acts they would never dream of in normal circumstances.¹

This grieving and wronged mother’s story is the last straw for the frustrated king. He tears his clothes in anguish. In frustration, he prays the vow above: the prophet Elisha must die.