So they started toward ¹  the Syrian camp at dusk. When they reached the edge of the Syrian camp, there was no one there.

In the spring ¹  Ben Hadad mustered the Syrian army ²  and marched to Aphek to fight Israel. ³ 

So they picked two horsemen and the king sent them out to track the Syrian army. ¹  He ordered them, “Go and find out what’s going on.” ² 

And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, ¹  yet ²  none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” ³ 

The armies were deployed opposite each other for seven days. On the seventh day the battle began, and the Israelites killed 100,000 Syrian foot soldiers in one day.

Gehazi, the prophet Elisha’s servant, thought, ¹  “Look, my master did not accept what this Syrian Naaman offered him. ²  As certainly as the Lord lives, I will run after him and accept something from him.”

So he threw a big banquet ¹  for them and they ate and drank. Then he sent them back ²  to their master. After that no Syrian raiding parties again invaded the land of Israel.

Then the people went out and looted the Syrian camp. A seah ¹  of finely milled flour sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, just as the Lord had said they would. ² 

The Lord sent against him Babylonian, Syrian, Moabite, and Ammonite raiding bands; he sent them to destroy Judah, as he had warned he would do through his servants the prophets. ¹ 

At the beginning ¹  of the year the Syrian army attacked ²  Joash ³  and invaded Judah and Jerusalem. They wiped out all the leaders of the people and sent all the plunder they gathered to the king of Damascus.

If we go into the city, we’ll die of starvation, ¹  and if we stay here we’ll die! So come on, let’s defect ²  to the Syrian camp! If they spare us, ³  we’ll live; if they kill us – well, we were going to die anyway.” ⁴ 

The Lord had caused the Syrian camp to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a large army. Then they said to one another, “Look, the king of Israel has paid the kings of the Hittites and Egypt to attack us!”

So they went and called out to the gatekeepers ¹  of the city. They told them, “We entered the Syrian camp and there was no one there. We didn’t even hear a man’s voice. ²  But the horses and donkeys are still tied up, and the tents remain up.” ³ 

Even though the invading Syrian army was relatively weak, the Lord handed over to them Judah’s very large army, ¹  for the people of Judah ²  had abandoned the Lord God of their ancestors. The Syrians ³  gave Joash what he deserved. ⁴