And while he yet talked with them, behold, the messenger came down unto him: and he said, Behold, this evil is of the LORD; what should I wait for the LORD any longer?
While he yet talked with them, behold, the messenger. [The Septuagint has: angelos (G32), as if they understood a second messenger had come, bearing the utterance with which the chapter ends.] That utterance is apparently a response to an exhortation of the prophet to wait the Lord's way and time of deliverance; and the import of the king's answer is, that while he could not but acknowledge this evil, so heavily scourging the land, was from the Lord, he thought the condition of the kingdom was beyond remedy desperate, since mothers were appeasing the pangs of hunger with the flesh of their own children.