2 Kings 6-8

The Facts (Chapter number: Verse)

6:26-31 - The king of Israel walked on the city walls and a woman called to him help. The king said he could not help, and to let the Lord help her. Then the king asked her what was wrong. The woman told him how a second woman told her that they should eat her son and then eat the second woman's son tomorrow. So they ate the first woman's son and then the next day the second woman had hidden her son so he could not be eaten. When the king heard this he tore his clothes and said, "So may God help me, and more, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat stays on his shoulders today."

2 Kings 7 - No mention of any women.

8:1-6 - Elisha told the woman, whose son he had restored to life, to leave and go wherever she could because there was to be a famine for seven years. So the woman left and settled in the land of the Philistines for seven years. After the seven years she came back and set up an appeal with the king to get her land back. Now the king was asking Gehazi about all that Elisha had done And Gehazi was telling the king about Elisha restoring the boy to life when the woman came in. Gehazi told the king that that was the mother of the boy and the king questioned her. Afterward he appointed an official to her and restored all of her land along with the revenue of the fields from the day she left until now.
8:12 - Elisha tells Hazael that he knows the evil he will do to the people of Israel, "You will set their fortresses on fire, you will kill young men with the sword, dash in pieces their little ones, and rip up their pregnant women."
8:18 - Jehoram walked in the way ofthe kings if Israel, as the house of Ahab had done, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife, and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

My Comments

Okay, wtf is up with the story about the women who are eating their children? And why is it just the women involved? Did the women not share this wonderful meal with their husbands or their other children? And if they didn't share then how did they manage to do this without the knowledge of the husband/father of the sons? I mean, they ate SONS, after all. That wouldn't be done lightly since sons are the end all be all of children. And they obviously had husbands since the Bible called them "women" and not "widows." The Bible LOVES to make sure we know the marital status of a woman, whether a prostitute ( not married but a whore), a widow (woman with a deceased husband), a virgin (woman who has never been married), or a woman (married). So where were the husbands in this story? Do they not get to share a piece of the inhumanity pie?

Also, this small story is horribly reminiscent of the prostitutes that went to King Solomon with their fight over the baby boy. You have two women who have a fight over their sons without (seemingly) any provocation. One woman loses a son while the other gains/keeps a son. This problem must be brought to a male in high authority in order to solve it (a king preferably). And both women come off as being irresponsible and immature about the whole situation.

These stories seem to almost say, "See? This is what happens when a woman doesn't have a man or doesn't look for the opinion of a man." Plus, you get the added bonus of this being more proof why women cannot be trusted with decisions about their children. When you trust women to make the decisions the children end up dead or cannibalized. It's really no wonder the Bible is a wonderful tool for people who are anti-choice. The Bible constantly reaffirming that women cannot be trusted to make even the simplest decisions for her children, and the only good decision is to go to a man of authority to solve the problem. When the women put their trust in men only then are they good mothers, much like the woman whose son died in her arms, but she went to Elisha who raised him from the dead.

What gets me the most about the cannibal story is that that is about all there is to it. The women never come up again. What happened to the other woman's son? What happened to the women themselves, since they essentially killed their own children and ate them? Were they punished? Did no one care? What did God think of it? You'd think this would be a good time to show that cannibalism is wrong and you shouldn't eat human flesh. Or at least a good time for a lecture or maybe some new rules or commandments. But nope, God is oddly absent from this horrible scene. In fact, from what it seems God is the cause of the famine which led the women to becoming so hungry they ate one of their children. How horrible is that? Why does God think it's okay to put people in these horrible situations? Does he gets some sort of twisted joy out of watching people starve until they get to the point where they begin eating each other? Aren't these his people?

Seriously, it just makes me sick.

Wednesday: 2 Kings 9-11