at he suspected that this departure of the king of Syria
was by way of ambush and treachery, and that, "out of despair of ruining
you by famine, when you imagine them to be fled away, you may come out
of the city to spoil their camp, and he may then fall upon you on a
sudden, and may both kill you, and take the city without fighting;
whence it is that I exhort you to guard the city carefully, and by no
means to go out of it, or proudly to despise your enemies, as though
they were really gone away." And when a certain person said that he
did very well and wisely to admit such a suspicion, but that he still
advised him to send a couple of horsemen to search all the country as
far as Jordan, that "if they were seized by an ambush of the enemy, they
might be a security to your army, that they may not go out as if they
suspected nothing, nor undergo the like misfortune; and," said he,
"those horsemen may be numbered among those that have died by the
famine, supposing they be caught and destroyed by the enemy." So the
king was pleased with this opinion, and sent such as might search out
the truth, who performed their journey over a road that was without any
enemies, but found it full of provisions, and of weapons, that they had
therefore thrown away, and left behind them, in order to their being
light and expeditious in their flight. When the king heard this, he sent
out the multitude to take the spoils of the camp; which gains of theirs
were not of things of small value, but they took a great quantity of
gold, and a great quantity of silver, and flocks of all kinds of cattle.
They also possessed themselves of [so many] ten thousand measures of
wheat and barley, as they never in the least dreamed of; and were not
only freed from their former miseries, but had such plenty, that two
seahs of barley were bought for a shekel, and a seah of fine flour for
a shekel, according to the prophecy of Elisha. Now a seah is equal to
an Italian modius and a half. The captain of the third band was the only
man that received no benefit by this plenty; for as he was appointed by
the king to oversee the gate, that lm might prevent the too great crowd
of the multitude, and they might not endanger one another to perish, by
treading on one another in the press, he suffered himself in that very
way, and died in that very manner, as Elisha had foretold such his
death, when he alone of them all disbelieved what he said concerning
that plenty of provisi