4 Kings 6:28
This woman said to me: Give thy son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.
Open 4 Kings 6:28 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Mulier ista dixit mihi : Da filium tuum, ut comedamus eum hodie, et filium meum comedemus cras.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῇ ὁ βασιλεύς Τί ἔστιν σοι; καὶ εἶπεν ἡ γυνή Αὕτη εἶπεν πρὸς μέ Δὸς τὸν υἱόν σου, καὶ φαγόμεθα αὐτὸν σήμερον· καὶ τὸν υἱόν μου, καὶ φαγόμεθα αὐτὸν αὔριον.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיֹּֽאמֶר לָ֥הּ הַמֶּ֖לֶךְ מַה לָּ֑ךְ וַתֹּ֗אמֶר הָאִשָּׁ֨ה הַזֹּ֜את אָמְרָ֣ה אֵלַ֗י תְּנִ֤י אֶת בְּנֵךְ֙ וְנֹאכְלֶ֣נּוּ הַיּ֔וֹם וְאֶת בְּנִ֖י נֹאכַ֥ל מָחָֽר
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17
Would you hear also of other things? what were their sufferings in Palestine, famines, pestilences, wars, captivities, under the Babylonians, and under the Assyrians, and their miseries from the Macedonians, and those under Hadrian and Vespasian? I have something that I wish, beloved, to relate to thee; nay, do not run away! Or rather I will tell thee another thing before it. There was once a famine, it says, and the king was walking upon the wall; then a woman came to him and uttered these words: “O king, this woman said to me, Let us roast thy son to-day, and eat him, to-morrow mine. And we roasted and ate, and now she does not give me hers.” (From 2 Kings vi. 28 .) What can be more dreadful than this calamity? Again, in another place the Prophet says, “The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children.” ( Lam. iv. …
St Ambrose On the Duties of the Clergy, Chapter XX. After the terrible siege of Samaria was ended in accordance with Elisha's prophecy, he relates what regard the four lepers showed for what was virtuous
118. There was a great famine in Samaria, for the army of the Syrians was besieging it. The king in his anxiety was making the round of the guards on the walls when a woman addressed him, saying: This woman persuaded me to give up my son, and I gave him up, and we boiled him and did eat him. And she promised that she would afterwards bring her son and that we should eat his flesh together, but now she hath hidden her son and will not bring him. The king was troubled because these women seemed to have fed not merely on human bodies, but on the bodies of their own children; and being moved by an example of such awful misery, threatened the prophet Elisha with death. For he believed it was in his power to break up the siege and to avert the famine; or else he was angry because the prophet had not allowed the king to smite the Syrians whom he had struck with blindness.