II Kings 7:3

"Four men were before the gate as lepers," or at the gateway, separated from human society, according to the law in Lev 13:46; Num 5:3, probably in a building erected for the purpose (cf. Kg2 15:5), just as at the present day the lepers at Jerusalem have their huts by the side of the Zion gate (vid., Strauss, Sinai u. Golgatha, p. 205, and Tobler, Denkbltter aus Jerus. p. 411ff.). These men being on the point of starvation, resolved to invade the camp of the Syrians, and carried out this resolution בּנּשׁף, in the evening twilight, not the morning twilight (Seb. Schm., Cler., etc.), on account of Kg2 7:12, where the king is said to have received the news of the flight of the Syrians during the night. Coming to "the end of the Syrian camp," i.e., to the outskirts of it on the city side, they found no one there. For (Kg2 7:6, Kg2 7:7) "the Lord had caused the army of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots and horses, a noise of a great army," so that, believing the king of Israel to have hired the kings of the Hittites and Egyptians to fall upon them, they fled from the camp in the twilight אל־נפשׁם, with regard to their life, i.e., to save their life only, leaving behind them their tents, horses, and asses, and the camp as it was. - The miracle, by which God delivered Samaria from the famine or from surrendering to the foe, consisted in an oral delusion, namely, in the fact that the besiegers thought they heard the march of hostile armies from the north and south, and were seized with such panic terror that they fled in the greatest haste, leaving behind them their baggage, and their beasts of draught and burden. It is impossible to decide whether the noise which they heard had any objective reality, say a miraculous buzzing in the air, or whether it was merely a decept…

We are here told, I. How the siege of Samaria was raised in the evening, at the edge of night (Kg2 7:6, Kg2 7:7), not by might or power, but by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts, striking terror upon the spirits of the besiegers. Here was not a sword drawn against them, not a drop of blood shed, it was not by thunder or hailstones that they were discomfited, nor were they slain, as Sennacherib's army before Jerusalem, by a destroying angel; but, 1. The Lord made them to hear a noise of chariots and horses. The Syrians that besieged Dothan had their sight imposed upon, Kg2 6:18. These had their hearing imposed upon. For God knows how to work upon every sense, pursuant to his own counsels as he makes the hearing ear and the seeing eye, so he makes the deaf and the blind, Exo 4:11. Whether the noise was really made in the air by the ministry of angels, or whether it was only a sound in their ears, is not certain; which soever it was, it was from God, who both brings the wind out of his treasures, and forms the spirit of man within him. The sight of horses and chariots had encouraged the prophet's servant, Kg2 6:17. The noise of horses and chariots terrified the hosts of Syria. For notices from the invisible world are either very comfortable or very dreadful, according as men are at peace with God or at war with him. 2. Hearing this noise, they concluded the king of Israel had certainly procured assistance from some foreign power: He has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians. There was, for aught we know but one king of Egypt, and what kings there were of the Hittites nobody can imagine; but, as they were imposed upon by that dreadful sound in their ears, so they imposed upon themselves by the interpretation they made of it. Had they suppos…

7:3 These four men were outcasts because of their condition and remained outside the city gates (Lev 13:45-46; see Luke 17:11-13).