Creditors: Often Exacted Debts by Selling the Debtor's Family

Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, “Your servant, my husband, is dead, and you know that your servant feared the LORD. And now his creditor is coming to take my two children as his slaves!”

The fatherless infant is snatched from the breast; the nursing child of the poor is seized for a debt.

Since the man was unable to pay, the master ordered that he be sold to pay his debt, along with his wife and children and everything he owned.