the Arameans had cast away in their haste, and the messengers returned and told the king. So the people went out and looted Arameans' camp, so that the market price of; a measure (seah) of fine flour (about six dry qt., six lb. or three kg.) and two seahs of barley meal; each dropped to one shekel in price, as God's prophet had said it would. And the king appointed the captain on whom he leaned to take charge of the gate, and the people trampled him and killed him before he could taste of the flour, just as the man of God Elisha had said. Connection to the parashah Both the parashah and the haftarah deal with people stricken with skin disease. Both the parashah and the haftarah employ the term for the person affected by skin disease (, metzora). Just before parashah Metzora, in the sister parashah Tazria, provides that the person with skin disease "shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his dwelling be," thus explaining why the four leprous men in the haftarah lived outside the gate. Rabbi Johanan taught that the four leprous men at the gate in were none other than Elisha's former servant Gehazi (whom the Midrash, above, cited as having been stricken with leprosy for profanation of the Divine Name) and his three sons. In the parashah, when there "seems" to be a plague in the house, the priest must not jump to conclusions, but must examine the facts. Just before the opening of the haftarah, in the captain on whom the king leaned jumps to the conclusion that Elisha's prophecy could not come true, and the captain meets his punishment in and 19. The haftarah in classical rabbinic interpretation Reading "Now there were four leprous men at the entrance of the gate; and they said one to another: 'Why do we sit here until we die? If we say: "We will enter into the city," then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us go to the host of the Arameans; if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die,’" and "And there was a famine in the land; and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there," the Rabbis deduced that when there is