7:3 Now four men with a skin disease 1 were sitting at the entrance of the city gate. They said to one another, “Why are we just sitting here waiting to die? 2 7:4 If we go into the city, we’ll die of starvation, 3 and if we stay here we’ll die! So come on, let’s defect 4 to the Syrian camp! If they spare us, 5 we’ll live; if they kill us – well, we were going to die anyway.” 6 7:5 So they started toward 7 the Syrian camp at dusk. When they reached the edge of the Syrian camp, there was no one there.
1 sn See the note at 2 Kgs 5:1.
2 tn Heb “until we die.”
3 tn Heb “If we say, ‘We will enter the city,’ the famine is in the city and we will die there.”
4 tn Heb “fall.”
5 tn Heb “keep us alive.”
6 tn Heb “we will die.” The paraphrastic translation attempts to bring out the logical force of their reasoning.
7 tn Heb “they arose to go to.”