Let some take. — Literally, And (i.e., then) let them take. (Comp. 2 Kings 2:9; 2 Kings 4:41.)
Five. — Used as an indefinite small number, like our “half a dozen.” (Comp. Leviticus 26:8; Isaiah 30:17.) The actual number taken was two pairs (2 Kings 7:14).
The horses that remain, which are left in the city. — Literally, the remaining horses that remain in it. The repetition dwells pathetically on the fewness of those that survive. Instead of “in it,” the LXX. and Arabic read “here,” which may be right, as the two Hebrew terms closely resemble each other.
Behold, they are as all... consumed. — The king’s adviser supposes two contingencies: the horses (and their drivers) may return safe, in which case they share the fortune of “all the multitude of Israel that are left” (i.e., have survived the famine, but are likely to die of it); or they may be taken and slain by the enemy, in which case they will be “even as all the multitude that are consumed” (i.e., by the famine and fighting). The sense is thus the same as in 2 Kings 7:4. The servant is not much more sanguine than the king: he says, “They have to perish in any case; whether here by famine, or there by the sword, makes little difference.” “However it may turn out, nothing worse can happen to the men we send out than has already happened to many others, or than will yet happen to the rest.” But perhaps Reuss is right in seeing here simply a reference to the wretched condition of the horses. “Qu’attendre de chevaux qui sont exténues de faim?” A natural doubt whether the starving animals are adequate to the service required of them. “Consumed,” then, means spent, exhausted.
The multitude of Israel. — The article with the first word in the Hebrew is the error of a transcriber, who, as often occurs, wrote the same letter twice.
The Israelites. — Israel. Syriac: “Let them bring five of the horsemen who are left: if they are taken, they are accounted of as all the people of Israel who have perished; and let us send and see.”