A Besieged Mother Boils and Eats Her Own Son

The Aramean army has besieged Samaria until the famine inside is catastrophic — a donkey's head sells for eighty pieces of silver. A woman calls out to King Joram as he passes on the wall: 'This woman said to me: give your son that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow. So we boiled my son and ate him. And I said to her on the next day: give your son that we may eat him. But she has hidden her son.' The king tears his clothes. Beneath them he is wearing sackcloth against his skin.