2 Kings 6:27

27 And he said, “If the Lord will not help you, how shall I help you? From the threshing floor, or from the winepress? ”

2 Kings 6:27 Meaning and Commentary

2 Kings 6:27

And he said, if the Lord do not help thee, whence shall I help
thee?
&c.] Mistaking her meaning, as if she prayed him to relieve her hunger; the margin of our Bible is, "let not the Lord save thee"; and so some understand it as a wish that she might perish; and so Josephus {o}, that being wroth, he cursed her in the name of God:

out of the barn floor, or out of the winepress?
when neither of them afforded anything; no corn was to be had from the one, nor wine from the other, no, not for his own use, and therefore how could he help her out of either?

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FOOTNOTES:

F15 Ut supra. (Antiqu. l. 9. c. 4. sect. 4.)

2 Kings 6:27 In-Context

25 And there was a great famine in Samaria, as they besieged it, until a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver.

26 Now as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, “Help, my lord, O king! ”

27 And he said, “If the Lord will not help you, how shall I help you? From the threshing floor, or from the winepress? ”

28 And the king asked her, “What is your trouble? ” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow. ’

29 So we boiled my son and ate him. And on the next day I said to her, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him. ’ But she has hidden her son. ”