Matthew Henry on 2 Kings 7:3-11
We are here told,
I. How the siege of Samaria was raised in the evening, at the edge of night (Kg2 7:6, Kg2 7:7), not by might or power, but by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts, striking terror upon the spirits of the besiegers. Here was not a sword drawn against them, not a drop of blood shed, it was not by thunder or hailstones that they were discomfited, nor were they slain, as Sennacherib's army before Jerusalem, by a destroying angel; but, 1. The Lord made them to hear a noise of chariots and horses. The Syrians that besieged Dothan had their sight imposed upon, Kg2 6:18. These had their hearing imposed upon. For God knows how to work upon every sense, pursuant to his own counsels as he…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on 2 Kings 7:5
they rose up in the twilight--that is, the evening twilight (Kg2 7:12).
the uttermost part of the camp of Syria--that is, the extremity nearest the city.
Adam Clarke on 2 Kings 7:5
The uttermost part of the camp - Where the Syrian advanced guards should have been.
John Gill on 2 Kings 7:5
And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the camp of the Syrians,...., The dusk of the evening, or the evening twilight, as appears from 2 Kings 7:9,
and when they were come to the uttermost part of the camp of Syria; not the further part of it, but the edge or border of it nearest to them:
behold, there was no man there; no sentinel or guard, which they expected, and to whom they would have surrendered themselves.
Keil & Delitzsch on 2 Kings 7:3-7
"Four men were before the gate as lepers," or at the gateway, separated from human society, according to the law in Lev 13:46; Num 5:3, probably in a building erected for the purpose (cf. Kg2 15:5), just as at the present day the lepers at Jerusalem have their huts by the side of the Zion gate (vid., Strauss, Sinai u. Golgatha, p. 205, and Tobler, Denkbltter aus Jerus. p. 411ff.). These men being on the point of starvation, resolved to invade the camp of the Syrians, and carried out this resolution בּנּשׁף, in the evening twilight, not the morning twilight (Seb. Schm., Cler., etc.), on account of Kg2 7:12, where the king is said to have received the news of the flight of the Syrians during t…
