2 Kings 6:24-30

Living Bible

²⁴ Later on, however, King Ben-hadad of Syria mustered his entire army and besieged Samaria. ²⁵ As a result there was a great famine in the city, and after a long while even a donkey’s head sold for fifty dollars and a pint of dove’s dung brought three dollars!

^26-30 One day as the king of Israel was walking along the wall of the city, a woman called to him, “Help, my lord the king!”

“If the Lord doesn’t help you, what can I do?” he retorted. “I have neither food nor wine to give you. However, what’s the matter?”

She replied, “This woman proposed that we eat my son one day and her son the next. So we boiled my son and ate him, but the next day when I said, ‘Kill your son so we can eat him,’ she hid him.”

When the king heard this he tore his clothes. (The people watching noticed through the rip he tore in them that he was wearing an inner robe made of sackcloth next to his flesh.)