4 Kings 6:29
So we boiled my son, and ate him. And I said to her on the next day: Give thy son that we may eat him. And she hath hid her son.
Open 4 Kings 6:29 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Coximus ergo filium meum, et comedimus. Dixique ei die altera : Da filium tuum, ut comedamus eum. Quæ abscondit filium suum.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ ἡψήσαμεν τὸν υἱόν μου καὶ ἐφάγομεν αὐτόν, καὶ εἶπον πρός αὐτὴν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ δευτέρᾳ Δὸς τὸν υἱόν σου καὶ φάγωμεν αὐτόν· καὶ ἔκρυψεν τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῆς.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַנְּבַשֵּׁ֥ל אֶת בְּנִ֖י וַנֹּֽאכְלֵ֑הוּ וָאֹמַ֨ר אֵלֶ֜יהָ בַּיּ֣וֹם הָאַחֵ֗ר תְּנִ֤י אֶת בְּנֵךְ֙ וְנֹ֣אכְלֶ֔נּוּ וַתַּחְבִּ֖א אֶת בְּנָֽהּ
Haydock's commentary
Eat him. Strange cruelty! foretold [in] Deuteronomy xxviii. 53, and again verified at Jerusalem, Ezechiel v. 10.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
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.