C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch on 2 Kings 6:25

2Ki 6:25

The famine became great - till an ass’s head was worth eighty shekels of silver, and a quarter of a cab of dove’s dung was worth five shekels. היה בּ, to become for = to be worth. The ass was an unclean animal, so that it was not lawful to eat its flesh. Moreover the head of an ass is the most inedible part of the animal. Eighty shekels were about seventy thalers (£10, 10s. - Tr.), or if the Mosaic bekas were called shekels in ordinary life, thirty-five thalers (£5, 5s.; see Bertheau, Zur Gesch. der Isr. p. 49). According to Thenius, a quarter of a cab is a sixth of a small Dresden measure (Mässchen), not quite ten Parisian cubic inches. Five shekels: more than four thalers (twelve shillings), or more than two thalers (six shillings). The Chetbib חרייונים is to be read יונים, excrementa columbarum, for which the Keri substitues the euphemistic יונים, fluxus, profluvium columbarum. The expression may be taken literally, since dung has been known to be collected for eating in times of terrible famine (vid., Joseph. Bell. Jud. v. 13, 7); but it may also be figuratively employed to signify a very miserable kind of food, as the Arabs call the herba Alcali Arab. s̆nân, i.e., sparrow’s dung, and the Germans call Asa foetida Teufelsdreck. But there is no ground for thinking of wasted chick-pease, as Bochart (Hieroz. ii. p. 582, ed. Ros.) supposes (see, on the other hand, Celsii Hierobot. ii. p. 30ff.).Clericus gives as a substantial parallel the following passage from Plutarch (Artax. c. 24): “he only killed the beasts of burden, so that the head of an ass was hardly to be bought for sixty drachmae;” and Grotius quote the statement in Plin. h. n. viii. 57, that when Casalinum was besieged by Hannibal a mouse was sold for 200 denaria.