Halakhah sobre II Reyes 7:21

I also found explicit with regard to the first of the holidays (Passover), which God gave to Israel prior to instructing them about the Sabbath, “on the fourteenth day of the month at evening you should eat unleavened bread, until the twenty first day of the month at evening” (Exodus 12:18), a total of “seven days” (ibid. 12:19). Thus the evening of the fifteenth is the first day. It is also written “[neither shall any of the flesh] from which you offered in the evening of the first day [be left over] until the morning” (Deuteronomy 16:4). Also, it is known that the firstborn were smitten at midnight (Exodus 12:29), yet it is written “on the day that I smote all firstborn” (Numbers 3:13, 8:17).⁴ The verse informs us that God sanctified all Jewish first born on the day that the Egyptian first born were slain. It seems likely that this took place on the first day of Passover. Also in Scripture “this day is a day of tidings…if we wait until the morning light” (2 Kings 7:9).

When the possibility of curtailing even the brief span of life (ḥayyei sha'ah) which a terminal patient may anticipate is weighed against the possibility of cure accompanied by normal life expectancy, Jewish teaching accepts the principle that reasonable risks may be incurred in the hope of effecting a recovery. Thus, hazardous procedures are sanctioned in life-threatening situations even if the proposed therapy is such that the drug or procedure may prove to be not simply ineffective but deleterious in nature and the patient's life shortened thereby. This principle may be derived from the talmudic discussion in Avodah Zarah 27b concerning the incident of the four leprous men described in II Kings 7:3-4. The Syrian army had besieged Samaria. In addition, the region was suffering from a great famine. The lepers recognized that if they took no action they would die of hunger in a relatively short period of time. Were they, however, to cross into the Syrian lines one of two things would happen: either they would immediately be put to death as enemies or, if pitied because of their infirmity, they would be provided with food and their lives saved. Despite the danger, they reasoned, "Now therefore come, and let us fall into the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us we shall but die." The Gemara views this narrative not simply as a record of a historical event but as a paradigm providing scriptural sanction for assuming the risk of precipitating death in an attempt to restore conditions necessary for normal life-expectancy.