Now there were four leprous men at the entrance of the gate. They said to one another, “Why do we sit here until we die?
Parallel translations
- KJV And there were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die?
- BSB Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate, and they said to one another, “Why just sit here until we die?
- NKJV Now there were four leprous men at the entrance of the gate; and they said to one another, “Why are we sitting here until we die?
- NASB Now there were four leprous men at the entrance of the gate; and they said to one another, “Why are we sitting here until we die?
- NLT Now there were four men with leprosy sitting at the entrance of the city gates. “Why should we sit here waiting to die?” they asked each other.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Four lepers at the gate reason that staying means certain death. Their desperation drives them toward an unlikely deliverance.
Overview
Excluded from the city by their disease, the lepers face starvation either way. Their plain reckoning, 'Why do we sit here until we die?', moves them to act. God will use these outcasts, the lowest in society, as the first to discover salvation. It shows the Lord working deliverance through the marginal and despised.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- Lev 13:45–46“The leper in whom the plague is shall wear torn clothes, and the hair of his head shall hang loose. He shall cover his upper lip, and shall cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’
- Num 5:2–4“Command the children of Israel that they put out of the camp every leper, and everyone who has an issue, and whoever is unclean by the dead.
- 2 Kgs 7:4If we say, ‘We will enter into the city,’ then the famine is in the city, and we will die there. If we sit still here, we also die. Now therefore come, and let us surrender to the army of the Syrians. If they save us alive, we will live; and if they kill us, we will only die.”
- Num 12:14Yahweh said to Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, shouldn’t she be ashamed seven days? Let her be shut up outside of the camp seven days, and after that she shall be brought in again.”
- 2 Kgs 5:1Now Naaman, captain of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honorable, because by him Yahweh had given victory to Syria: he was also a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.
- 2 Kgs 8:4Now the king was talking with Gehazi the servant of the man of God, saying, “Please tell me all the great things that Elisha has done.”
- Jer 8:14“Why do we sit still? Assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the fortified cities, and let us be silent there; for Yahweh our God has put us to silence, and given us water of gall to drink, because we have sinned against Yahweh.
- Jer 27:13Why will you die, you and your people, by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, as Yahweh has spoken concerning the nation that will not serve the king of Babylon?
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Christ at the center
Amid the long decline toward exile, the promise to David's house refuses to die; the flickering lamp kept burning anticipates the coming King who will not fail or be cut off.
How 2 Kings 7:3 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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