2 Kings 6:25 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

There was a great famine in Samaria Probably the dearth, which had of late been in the land, was the cause of their stores being so empty; or the siege was so sudden, that they had no time to lay in provisions. An ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver Supposed to be shekels, and the common shekel being valued at fifteen pence of English money, they amount to five pounds: a vast price, especially for that which had on it so little meat, and was unwholesome, and unclean according to the law, Leviticus 11:26. In times of famine, however, and extreme necessity, the Jews themselves were absolved from observing the law with regard to meats. There are not wanting instances, in history, where other people, upon the same occasion, have been reduced to the like distress, and been glad to purchase an ass's head at an enormous price. See Plutarch's Life of Artaxerxes. The fourth part of a cab A measure which, according to the Jews, contained as much as the shells of twenty-four eggs. Of dove's dung Bochart has shown that there is among the Arabians a kind of vetches or pulse called by this name, which is undoubtedly here meant, for we can scarcely suppose that they used the excrements of doves for food. These vetches were a very coarse food, and yet much in use among the poorer Israelites, and therefore fit to be joined here with the ass's heads: and a cab was the usual measure of all kinds of grain, and fruits of that sort. In confirmation of the above it may be observed, some travellers tell us, that at Grand Cairo and Damascus there are magazines where they constantly fry this kind of grain, which those who go on pilgrimage buy, and take with them, as part of the provision for their journey. The Arabs, it appears, to this day call this kind of pulse or vetches by the name of dove's dung. See Bochart Hieroz., p. 2, 50:1, c. 7.