Now the king of Syria was at war against Israel; and he took counsel with his servants, saying, “My camp will be in such and such a place.”
The man of God sent to the king of Israel, saying, “Beware that you not pass this place; for the Syrians are coming down there.” The king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God told him and warned him of; and he saved himself there, not once or twice. The king of Syria’s heart was very troubled about this. He called his servants, and said to them, “Won’t you show me which of us is for the king of Israel?”
One of his servants said, “No, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom.”
He said, “Go and see where he is, that I may send and get him.” He was told, “Behold, he is in Dothan.”
Therefore he sent horses, chariots, and a great army there. They came by night, and surrounded the city. When the servant of the man of God had risen early, and gone out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was around the city. His servant said to him, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?”
He answered, “Don’t be afraid; for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Elisha prayed, and said, “Yahweh, please open his eyes, that he may see.” Yahweh opened the young man’s eyes; and he saw: and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire around Elisha. When they came down to him, Elisha prayed to Yahweh, and said, “Please strike this people with blindness.” He struck them with blindness according to Elishah’s word.
Elisha said to them, “This is not the way, neither is this the city. Follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom you seek.” He led them to Samaria. When they had come into Samaria, Elisha said, “Yahweh, open these men’s eyes, that they may see.” Yahweh opened their eyes, and they saw; and behold, they were in the middle of Samaria.
The king of Israel said to Elisha, when he saw them, “My father, shall I strike them? Shall I strike them?”
He answered, “You shall not strike them. Would you strike those whom you have taken captive with your sword and with your bow? Set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their master.”
He prepared a great feast for them. When they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master. So the bands of Syria stopped raiding the land of Israel.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23 Meaning, that he would lie in ambush, and take…
Meaning, that he would lie in ambush, and take the Israelites at unawares.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv8–23 2Ki 6:8 Then the king of Syria warred against…
2Ki 6:8 Then the king of Syria warred against Israel, and took counsel with his servants, saying, In such and such a place [shall be] my camp.
Ver. 8. Then the king of Syria warred.] He delighted in it, as Pyrrhus, king of the Epirotes, is said to have done. Naaman, who should have dissuaded him from so doing, was now, belike, either dead, or else out of favour, because he had changed his religion into that of the Israelites.
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Shall be my camp.] Or, The place where I will lay an ambush, viz., to surprise the king of Israel, as he rode a-hunting, saith Josephus.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv8, 10, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23 Thither I will send my forces, to surprise some…
Thither I will send my forces, to surprise some place; or to lie in ambush where the king or his people were to pass, 2Ki 6:9.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv8, 13 Here we have Elisha, with his spirit of prophecy,…
Here we have Elisha, with his spirit of prophecy, serving the king, as before helping the sons of the prophets; for that, as other gifts, is given to every man to profit withal; and, whatever abilities any man has of doing good, he is by them made a debtor both to the wise and unwise. Observe here,
I. How the king of Israel was informed by Elisha of all the designs and motions of his enemy, the king of Syria, more effectually than he could have been by the most vigilant and faithful spies. If the king of Syria, in a secret council of war, determined in which place to make an inroad upon the coasts of Israel, where he thought it would be the greatest surprise and they would be least able to make resistance, before his forces could receive his orders the king of Israel had notice of them from Elisha, and so had opportunity of preventing the mischief; and many a time, Kg2 6:8-10. See here, 1. That the enemies of God's Israel are politic in their devices, and restless in their attempts, against him. They shall not know, nor see, till we come in the midst among them, and slay them, Neh 4:11. 2. All those devices are known to God, even those that are deepest laid. He knows not only what men do, but what they design, and has many ways of countermining them. 3. It is a great advantage to us to be warned of our danger, that we may stand upon our guard against it. The work of God's prophets is to give us warning; if, being warned, we do not save ourselves, it is our own fault, and our blood will be upon our own head. The king of Israel would regard the warnings Elisha gave him of his danger by the Syrians, but not the warnings he gave him of his danger by his sins. Such warnings are little heeded by the most; they will save themselves from death, but not from hell.
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II. How the king of Syria resented this. He suspected treachery among his senators, and that his counsels were betrayed, Kg2 6:11. But one of his servants, that had heard, by Naaman and others, of Elisha's wondrous works, concludes it must needs be he that gave this intelligence to the king of Israel, Kg2 6:12. What could not he discover who could tell Gehazi his thoughts? Here a confession of the boundless knowledge, as before of the boundless power, of Israel's God, is extorted from Syrians. Nothing done, said, thought, by any person, in any place, at any time, is out of the reach of God's cognizance.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv8–23 And the man of God sent unto the king…
And the man of God sent unto the king of Israel,.... That is, Elisha sent to him: saying:
beware that thou pass not such a place: not go to it, but avoid it, and pass another way:
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for thither the Syrians are come down: are hidden, as the Targum; lie covered at the bottom of the hill, so as not to be seen.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv10, 16, 17, 22, 23 Sent - Soldiers to secure the place and passage…
Sent - Soldiers to secure the place and passage designed.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 Verse 8. The king of Syria warred against Israel]…
Verse 8. The king of Syria warred against Israel] This was probably the same Ben-hadad who is mentioned 2Kg 6:24. What was the real or pretended cause of this war we cannot tell; but we may say, in numberless war cases, as Calmet says in this: "An ambitious and restless prince always finds a sufficiency of reasons to colour his enterprises."
In such and such a place] The Syrian king had observed, from the disposition of the Israelitish army, in what direction it was about to make its movements; and therefore laid ambuscades where he might surprise it to the greatest advantage.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23 2Ki 6:8. The king of Syria warred against Israel…
2Ki 6:8. The king of Syria warred against Israel — This probably happened many years after Naaman was cured, and when he was either dead, or had lost his place through his refusing to worship Rimmon: for it is not to be supposed that he would lead an army against the Israelites. In such and such a place — Hebrew, In the place of such a man. Shall be my camp — Or, my encamping: Houbigant, I will lie in wait. Thither I will send my forces to surprise some place; or to lie in ambush where the king or his people were to pass.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23 The king of Syria - Probably the great Benhadad…
The king of Syria - Probably the great Benhadad (see 2Ki 6:24).
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23 And such, which the king would mention. (Menochius) ---…
And such, which the king would mention. (Menochius) --- The causes of this war are not known; but an ambitious prince always finds pretexts to cover his injustice. (Calmet)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v8 C.—Elisha’s conduct during the Syrian invasion and the siege…
C.—Elisha’s conduct during the Syrian invasion and the siege of Samaria
2Ki_6:8 to 2Ki_7:20
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8Then the king of Syria warred against [was at war with1] Israel, and took counsel with his servants, saying, In such and such a place shall be my camp. 9And the man of God sent unto the king of Israel, saying, Beware that thou pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are come down.2 10And the king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God [had] told him and warned him of, and saved [protected3] himself there, not once nor twice [i.e., a great manytimes]. 11Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye not show me which of us4 is for the king of Israel? 12And one of his servants said, None, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.
13And he said, Go and spy where he is, that I may send and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan. 14Therefore sent he thither horses, and chariots, and a great host: and they came by night, and compassed the city about. 15And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, a host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master, how shall we do? 16And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. 17And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. 18And when they came down to him, [i.e., the Syrian, for, the Syrian army—Bähr] Elisha prayed unto the Lord, and said, Smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness. And he smote them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.
19And Elisha said unto them, This is not the way, neither is this the city: follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom ye seek. But [And] he led them to Samaria. 20And it came to pass, when they were come into Samaria, that Elisha said, Lord, open the eyes of these men, that they may see. And the Lord opened their eyes, and they saw; and behold, they were in the midst of Samaria. 21And the king of Israel said unto Elisha, when he saw them, My father, shall I smite them? shall I smite them? 22And he answered, Thou shalt not smite them: wouldst thou smite [if thou shouldst do that, wouldst thou be smiting] those whom thou hast taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow? set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their master. 23And he prepared great provision for them: and when they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master. So the [marauding] bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel.
24And it came to pass after this, that Ben-hadad king of Syria gathered all his host, and went up, and besieged Samaria. 25And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass’s head was sold for [worth] fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove’s dung 26[was worth—omit for] for five pieces of silver. And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, my lord, O king. 27And he said, If the Lord do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? out of the barnfloor, or out of the winepress? 28And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. 29So we boiled my son and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son.
30And it came to pass, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he rent his clothes; and he passed by upon the wall, and the people looked, and, behold, he had sackcloth within upon his flesh. 31Then he said, God do so and more also to me, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat shall stand on him this day. (32But Elisha sat [was sitting] in his house, and the elders sat [were sitting] with him; [.]) And the king sent a man from before him: but ere the messenger came to him, he [Elisha] said to the elders, See ye how this son of a murderer hath sent to take away mine head? look, when the messenger cometh, shut the door, and hold him fast at [hold him back by means of] the door: is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him? 33And 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 [what hope shall I still place in the Lord]?
Chap. 7. 1Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the Lord; Thus saith the Lord, To-morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for [be worth] a shekel, and two measures of barley for [be worth] a shekel, in the gate of Samaria. 2Then a lord [an officer, or adjutant] on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven might this thing be? [Verily! Jehovah is going to make windows in heaven! even then could this come to pass?] And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.
3And there were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die? 4If 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 fall [away] unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die. 5And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the camp of the Syrians: and when they were come to the uttermost part [outskirts, viz., those nearest the city] of the camp of Syria, behold, there was no man there. 6For the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us. 7Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their life. 8And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp, they went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver, and gold, and raiment, and went and hid it; and came again, and entered into another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid it. 9Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief [penalty] will come [fall] upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king’s household. 10So they came and called unto the porter [guard] of the city: and they told them, saying, We came to the camp of the Syrians, and, behold, there was no man there, neither voice [sound] of man [a human being], but horses tied, and asses tied, 11and the tents as they were. And he [one] called the porters [guards]; and they told it to the king’s house within [reported it inside of the king’s house].
12And the king arose in the night, and said unto his servants, I will now shew you what the Syrians have done to us. They know that we be hungry; therefore are they gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the field,5 saying, When they come out of the city, we shall catch them alive, and get into the city. 13And one of his servants answered and said, Let some take, I pray thee, five of the horses that remain, which are left in the city, (behold, they are as all the multitude of Israel that are left in it: behold, I say, they are even as all the multitude of the Israelites that are consumed [dead6];) and let us send and see. 14They took therefore two chariot horses [two chariot-equipages]; and the king sent after the host of the Syrians [towards the Syrian camp], saying, Go and see. 15And they went after them unto Jordan: and, lo, all the way was full of garments and vessels [utensils], which the Syrians had cast away in their haste 16[hasty flight7]. And the messengers returned, and told the king. And the people went out, and spoiled the tents of the Syrians. So a measure of fine flour was sold for [became worth] a shekel, and two measures of barley for [omit for] a shekel, according to the word of the Lord.
17And the king appointed the lord on whose hand he leaned to have the charge of the gate: and the people trode upon him in the gate, and he died, as the man of God had said, who spake [as he said] when the king came down to him. 18And it came to pass as the man of God had spoken to the king, saying, Two measures of barley for a shekel, and a measure of fine flour for a shekel, shall be to-morrow about this time in the gate of Samaria: 19And that lord answered the man of God, and said, Now, behold, if the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof. 20And so it fell out unto him: for the people trode upon him in the gate, and he died.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
2Ki_6:8. Then the king of Syria, &c. According to Ewald, the story (2Ki_6:8-23) belongs to the time of Jehoahaz (chap 13:1–9). However, the passage immediately following begins, 2Ki_6:24, with the words, “And it came to pass after this,” so that it also would fall in a later time; but, by the words in 2Ki_6:26, “king of Israel,” and by Elisha’s epithet “son of a murderer,” 2Ki_6:32, as Ewald himself admits, we must understand Jehoram, and not either Jehoahaz or any other king of the house of Jehu.—אֶל is used as in 2Ch_20:21 : He brought to them the deliberation [i.e., made them parties to it]. פְּלֹנִי as in Rth_4:1; 1Sa_21:3. “My encamping,” i.e., the encampment of my army. The word תַּחֲנוֹת, occurs only here. It is a derivative from חָנַה, to sit down, to encamp (Gen_26:17; Exo_13:20; Exo_17:1). Ewald proposes to read תַּנְחֹתוּ, and to translate: “shall ye form an ambuscade,” because 2Ki_6:9 says: “for there the Syrians are נְחִתִּים; but נָחַת nowhere has the meaning “to lay an ambuscade,” or “to lie in wait,” but: “to go down” or “sink down” (see Gesen. s. v.), so that it coincides very well with the meaning of חָנַה. The conjecture is therefore unnecessary. The proposal of Thenius to change תַּחֲנוֹתִי into תֵּחָֽבְאוּ, and to translate: “Ye shall conceal yourselves at such and such a place,” is still less admissible. The Vulgate has in 2Ki_6:8 : ponamus insidias, and in 2Ki_6:9, quia ibi Syri in insidiis sunt. The Sept. have in 2Ki_6:8 : παρεμβαλῶ; 2Ki_6:9 : ὅτι ἐκεῖ Συρία ἐνεδρεύουσι. This is correct, however, rather according to the sense than the words, inasmuch as the army, which had encamped behind the mountains, might certainly be said to be lying in ambush. In 2Ki_6:9, Clericus, De Wette, and Keil translate the words of Elisha: “Beware lest thou neglect this place,” i.e., leave it unoccupied, “for there it is the wish of the Syrians to make an incursion;” but עָבַר, which means to pass over, never has the meaning to neglect; certainly not that of: to leave unoccupied. Moreover, this signification does not fit well with הִזְהִירוֹ 2Ki_6:10, to which Keil incorrectly denies the meaning: to warn (cf. Eze_33:3; Eze_4:5; Ecc_4:13). At a time when the Syrians were intending to encamp at a particular spot, and to attack the Israelites when they should pass by, the prophet gave warning to the king: the latter anticipated them, stationed troops in the threatened position, and so frustrated their plan.
2Ki_6:11. Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled, &c. סָעַר means more than: to lose courage (Luther). It is used of the tossing, stormy sea (Jon_1:11). Clericus wants to read מַלְשֶׁנוּ (Cf. Pro_30:10) instead of מִשֶּׁלָּנוּ, because the Vulg. translates: quis proditor mei sit apud regem Israel, and the Sept.: προδίδωσί με. It may be, however, that both only translated according to the sense. At any rate it is not necessary to alter the text. From 2Ki_6:12 we see that Elisha’s reputation at that time extended even to Syria. The old expositors thought indeed that the servant who answered the king was Naaman, or one of his companions. The king learned the dwelling of Elisha by spies. Dothan (Gen_37:17) lay five or six hours’ journey north of Samaria, upon a hill (2Ki_6:17), at a narrow pass in the mountains (Jdg_4:5; Jdg_7:3; Jdg_8:3), in the district of the present Jinin (Van de Velde, Reise, i. s. 273).—The king of Syria wished to get Elisha into his power, not “that he might hold him,” and find out through him “what the king of Israel and other princes were plotting against him in their secret councils” (Cassel), but in order that, for the future, his military plans against Israel might not become known to the king of Israel through Elisha. The phrase חַיִל כָּבֵד, 2Ki_6:14, cannot here be translated: “a great army” (De Wette, and others), as is clear from 2Ki_6:22-23, but it is used exactly as in 1Ki_10:2. The horses and chariots were accompanied by a large body of infantry.
2Ki_6:15. The servant of the man of God, &c. Not Gehazi, who would be mentioned by name, as in all other places (2Ki_4:12; 2Ki_4:25; 2Ki_5:20; 2Ki_8:4); moreover, the expression מְשָׁרֵת is never used of him. Perhaps it was one of the prophet-disciples who had accompanied Elisha to Dothan. That which Elisha says in 2Ki_6:16 is essentially the same as is read Num_14:9; 2Ch_32:7; Psa_3:6; Psa_27:3. He saw already the divine, protecting power, and begged God to allow his attendant also to see it, that he might undertake the journey back to Samaria with him, through the hostile army, fearless and consoled. “The opening of the eyes signifies elevation into an ecstatic state in which the soul sees things which the bodily eye never can see” (Keil, ed. of 1845), Num_22:31; The horses and chariots which Elisha and the servant see (2Ki_6:17), stand over-against the horses and chariots of the Syrians (2Ki_6:15), and they are designated by אֵשׁ, the form of appearance of Jehovah (see above, p. 14), as from God, so that they are symbols of the might of Jehovah, which surpasses all human, earthly might, and is unconquerable. We have not to think of literal chariots and horses of fire here, any more than in 2Ki_2:11. Usually, Gen_32:2 is compared, but there express mention is made of angels, who are not to be identified directly with the horses and chariots of a vision.—The Syrians are usually understood as subject of וַיֵּרְדוּ אֵלָיו in 2Ki_6:18, but in that case we must suppose that they were on a hill from which they descended when they saw Elisha and his companion go out from the city. Keil adopts this supposition, for he says: “Dothan stands upon a hill, which stands by itself on the plain, but it is surrounded or shut in on the east side by a ridge which runs out into the plain (cf. Van de Velde, l. c., s. 273). The Syrians who had been sent out against Elisha had taken up a position on this ridge, and from there they marched down against the city of Dothan, which lay upon the hill, while Elisha, by going out of the city, escaped from them.” This idea is contradicted, however, by the assertion, in 2Ki_6:14, that the Syrians “surrounded the city” in the night. They enclosed it, therefore, and did not simply take up a position on the east side upon a hill, which was, besides, separated from it by the plain. Furthermore, according to 2Ki_6:17, it was not the ridge upon which the Syrians are said to have stood, but the hill upon which Dothan was, which was full of horses and chariots of fire, round about Elisha, under whose mighty protection he and his servant went out of the city and down the hill. The Syrian army surrounded the hill at its base, so that escape seemed impossible; the heavenly army, however, surrounded the city at the top of the hill, and so stood opposed to the Syrian. This is clearly the meaning of the passage. In the immediately following words (2Ki_6:18): “and they went down,” the reference can only be to Elisha and his companion, who are the subjects of the words immediately preceding. If the words are not taken as referring to them, then there is no statement that they left the city, and there is a gap in the narrative. Accordingly אֵלָיו must be taken as referring to the Syrian army. The Syriac version and Josephus take it so (’Ελισσαῖος … παρελθὼν εἰς μέσους τοὺς ἐχθρούς). There is no need of assuming that אֲלֵיהֶם stood in the text originally in the place of אֵלָיו, as Thenius does, for אֲרָם is often used in the singular for the Syrian army (2Ki_6:9; 1Ki_22:35), and is construed with the verb in the singular (1Sa_10:14-15; Isa_7:2).—And he smote them with blindness, i.e., they were put into a state in which, although they had their sight, yet they did not see him (Elisha), i.e., did not recognize him. Jarchi: They saw, but did not know (יודע) what they saw. Cf. Gen_19:11 (Luk_24:16; Isa_6:10).—On 2Ki_6:19 Keil says: “Elisha’s untrue declaration: ‘This is not the way,’ must be judged like every other military stratagem, by means of which the enemy are deceived;” but, as Thenius well replies: “There is no untruth in the words of Elisha; for his home was not in Dothan, where he was only residing temporarily, but in Samaria; and the words ‘to the man’ may well mean: to his house.” Josephus understood the passage correctly; he says: “Elisha asked them whom they had come to seek. When they answered: “The prophet Elisha,” παραδώσειν ὑπέσχετο, εἰ πρὸς τὴν πόλιν, ἐν ᾖ τυγχάνει ὢν (i.e., where he is to be found), ἀκολουθήσειαν αὐτῷ. He certainly used a form of speech which the Syrians might understand otherwise than as he meant it, but he did not pretend in the least to be anything else than what he was. That they did not know him was a divine dispensation, not the result of an untruth uttered by him. How could the “man of God,” after repeated prayers to Jehovah, straightway permit himself a falsehood, and try, by this means, to save himself from danger? If he saw, as his companion did, horses and chariots of fire round about him, and if he was thus assured of the divine protection, then he needed for his deliverance neither a falsehood nor a stratagem. The Syrians wanted to take him captive; instead of that he, by the help of God, captured them all; not, however, as is usually the case in such a ruse, to their harm or ruin, but, after he has shown them that they could not capture him, “the prophet in Israel” (2Ki_6:12), he takes them under his protection, repays evil with good (2Ki_6:22), and shows them by this very means the man whom they are seeking.
2Ki_6:21. And the king of Israel.… when he saw them, &c. The address: “My father,” does not presuppose any filial relationship, but is rather a mere title (Clericus: sic honoris causa dicitur). Even Benhadad is called “thy (Elisha’s) son,” by Hazael (2Ki_8:9). The prophet-disciples called their master “father,” and this because it was the ordinary title of the chief of the prophets, somewhat as the same word is occasionally used now-a-days. The repetition of אַכֶּה expresses the eager desire to smite them. Elisha’s words (2Ki_6:22): האשׁר &c., are taken by many expositors as a question [as in the E. V.], the idea being: if thou dost not even put to death those whom thou hast captured with bow and spear, how canst thou slay these? (Thenius, Keil). Such a question, however, would be very extraordinary; for if Jehoram was not accustomed to put to death even those who had been made captive in battle, why should he ask whether he should kill these, who had fallen into his hands without a combat? It seems more probable, on the contrary, that he was accustomed to put captives to death, in accordance with the prevalent war-usage of the time (Deu_20:13), and he raises the question, in the present extraordinary case, only out of consideration for the prophet, and because he does not trust his own judgment in the unprecedented circumstances. The Vulgate gives the sense correctly: non percuties; neque enim cepisti eos gladio et arcu tuo, ut percutias. The objection that ה, the article, could not have patach before א cannot be held to be decisive against this interpretation; the Massoretes themselves took ה as the article (Gesen. Lex. s. v. ה; De Wette). [I take ה to be the interrogative (Ewald, § 104, b), but agree with the above interpretation. “If thou shouldst put these to death, would it be a case of slaying prisoners of war?” i.e., couldst thou justify it by Deu_20:13?—W. G. S.] No one doubts that כָּרָה כֵּרָה, in 2Ki_6:23, signifies the preparation of a meal. The only disagreement is as to the connection of this signification with the fundamental meaning of the root. According to Thenius the root is כּוּר, which, with its derivatives, always refers to something round; hence, כֵּרָה the circle of guests. According to Keil, כָּרָה, to dig, gradually acquired the meaning: to prepare, make ready, so that it ought here to be rendered: paravit apparatum magnum. According to Dietrich (in Gesen. Lex. s. v.), the cognate dialects lead to the idea of bringing together or uniting, which, he thinks, is the fundamental idea in a banquet. Cf. cœna from κοινή.—The result of Elisha’s act was that, from this time on, the raids of the Syrians ceased, not indeed because the magnanimity of the Israelites shamed them, but because they had found out that they could not accomplish anything by these expeditions, but rather brought themselves into circumstances of great peril.
2Ki_6:24. And it came to pass after this, &c. Josephus correctly states the connection between the passage which begins with 2Ki_6:24, and what precedes, as follows: κρύφα μὲν οὐκέτι διέγνω τῷ τῶν ’Ισραηλιτῶν ἐπιχειρεῖν βασιλεῖ, τὸν ’Ελισαῖον δεδοικώς· φανερῶς δὲ πολεμεῖν ἕκρινε, τῷ πλήθει τῆς στρατιᾶς καὶ τῇ δυνάμει νομίζων περιέσεσθαι τῶν πολεμίων. Nevertheless, an interval of some years must be supposed to have elapsed between the two incidents. Ben-Hadad is not an appellative, like Pharaoh; it is the same king who is mentioned in 1Ki_20:1. In order to show the depth of the distress from the famine, the writer states the price of things which are not ordinarily articles of food. The worst part of an animal, which, at best, was unclean, the head of an ass, sold for 80 shekels, according to Bertheau and Keil, 35 thalers ($25.20), according to Thenius 53 thalers, 20 sgr. ($38.64). In like manner, in a famine among the Cadusians, Plutarch (Artaxerxes, 24.) tells that the head of an ass was scarcely to be bought for 60 drachmæ, whereas, ordinarily, the entire animal only cost 25 or 30 drachmæ). The price of a mouse rose to 200 denarii in Casalinum, when it was besieged by Hannibal (Pliny, Hist. Nat. viii. 57; Valer. Max., vii. 6).—There is no doubt that חרייונים, i.e., חָרֵי יוֹנִים, means “dove’s dung,” and not “dove’s food” (Berleb. and Calw. Bibel); the only question is, whether this is to be taken literally, or whether it is a designation of a very insignificant species of pease. Bochart maintains the latter (Hieroz. ii. 44), and he appeals to the fact that קַב is really a measure of grain: so also Clericus, Dathe, Michaelis, and others. The Arabs call the herba alcali “sparrow’s dung.” Celsius (Hierobot. ii. p. 30), on the contrary, maintains the literal meaning, which is supported by the keri דִּבְיוֹנִים, fluxus, profluvium columbarum (דִּיב from the Chald. דּוּב, to flow), a euphemism for the chetib. So also Ewald and Thenius; the latter says: “If snipe’s dung is eaten as a luxury, necessity may well make dove’s dung (2Ki_18:27; Joseph. Bella. Jud. v. 13, 7) acceptable.” Gesenius and Keil do not decide. We incline to the interpretation which makes it a kind of vegetable. Supposing even that dung was collected for food, as was the case, according to Josephus, at the destruction of Jerusalem, why should dove’s dung be especially used? There is, moreover, no instance of dove’s dung having been used as food, and sold at so high a price. The meanest form of vegetable seems to be here put in contrast with the meanest form of flesh. The vegetable probably took its name from the similarity of color (white) and form, as in the case of the German Teufelsdreck (assafœtida). Cab is the smallest Hebrew dry-measure; according to Bertheau, it is equivalent to 27.58 cubic inches (Paris), and, according to Bunsen, to 56.355. Five shekels are equal to 2 thlr. 2 sgr. ($1.49, Keil), or 3 thlr. 10 sgr. ($2.40, Thenius).
2Ki_6:26. And as the King of Israel was passing by, &c. The wall of the city was very thick; the garrison of the city stood upon it; the king went thither in order to visit the posts, or to observe the movements of the enemy.—If the Lord do not help thee, whence, &c. אַל is taken here, by many, in its ordinary signification, ne: May the Lord not help thee! i.e., perdat te Jehovah (Clericus). If this is correct, the king invokes a curse upon her (Josephus: ὀργισθεὶς ἐπηράσατο αὺτῇ τὸν θεόν). The following words, however, “Whence,” &c., do not coincide with this interpretation. The same is the case if we translate, with Maurer, vereor, ut Deus te servet. Keil’s translation: No! let Jehovah help thee! (i.e., do not ask me, let, &c.) is still more inadmissible, for אַל must not be separated from יוֹשִׁעֵךְ, with which it is connected by a makkeph. It evidently stands here for אִם לֹא (Ew. § 355, b), and the meaning is: “On the general supposition that there is no help for her: ‘If God does not help thee, how can I?’ ” (Thenius). Cassel’s interpretation of the words as a “rebellious invocation of God,” is entirely mistaken: “Let God help thee: why does not the Eternal, whom ye have in Israel, and who has always revealed himself here, help thee? Where is He, then, that he may help us?” They are rather words of despair.—Out of the barn-floor or out of the wine-press? as much as to say: with corn or with wine? (Gen_27:28; Gen_27:37); not, corn and oil, for יֶקֶב is wine-press (Pro_3:10). [The distress has reached a point where God’s interposition alone can provide food. If He does not interpose, how can I satisfy thy hunger? from the threshing-floor or the wine-press—the only human resources in case of hunger? Thou knowest that these are exhausted, and that the limits of my power of relief have been passed. Address thyself, therefore, to God. If He does not help thee, much less can I. The difficulty of the passage is one that is common enough. There is an unexpressed promise, viz., the circumstances of the case, which are vividly present to the mind of both hearer and speaker, and an unexpressed conclusion, viz., the proper inference to be drawn, or the proper conduct to be pursued, in the promises. The first speaker has drawn a false inference from the facts, and the question aims to lead him to a correct judgment. Hence אַל is used, very nearly in the sense of אם לֹא.—W. G. S.] When the woman had, probably, replied to the king that she did not demand food of him, but appealed to him as judge, he asked her: What aileth thee? Thereupon she relates the horrible incident, in which the existing misery had attained its height. The other woman had hidden her child, not in order to consume it alone, but in order to save it. Her act reminds us of 1Ki_3:26.
2Ki_6:30. He rent his clothes, &c., as a sign of horror and of grief. As he stood upon the wall, and therefore could be seen by all, the people observed that he had sackcloth next his body, like Ahab, 1Ki_21:27, under the royal garment, which he tore open. Sackcloth was usually worn next the skin (Isa_20:2-3), only the prophets and preachers of repentance appear to have worn it over the under-garment, because in their case it was an official dress, and so needed to be seen (Winer, R.-W.-B. ii. s. 352). The sentence: He passed by upon the wall, is not, according to Thenius, to be connected with what follows, but, as the athnach shows, with what goes before. Jehoram did not wear sackcloth in order to make a show before the people, for they could not see it before he tore the cloak which was above it; neither did he wear it out of genuine penitent feeling, for, in that case, he could not have sworn, with sackcloth upon his body, to put to death the prophet, whom he had called “Father,” and to whom he was under such deep obligations. He wished, by means of this external action, to turn aside the wrath of God; “He thought that he had done enough, by this external self-chastisement, to satisfy God, and he wished now, in a genuine heathen disposition, to be revenged upon Elisha, since he learned from this story that the famine had not ceased” (Von Gerlach). It is not necessary to understand that Elisha had distinctly demanded that he should put on the garment of penitence (Ewald); perhaps the prophet had only exhorted generally to penitence, and the king, in order to put an end to the distress, had put on sackcloth. He become enraged at the prophet, partly because he believed himself deceived by him, if he, as we may suppose, had given the advice not to surrender the city [“If it had not been for him (Elisha), he (the king) would long before have surrendered the city on conditions,” Ewald], but to rely upon the help of Jehovah, and partly because he thought that the prophet might have put an end to the distress if he had chosen, and thereby might have prevented the horrible crime of the women. The oath reminds one of that of Jezebel against Elijah (1Ki_19:2).
2Ki_6:32. But Elisha sat in his house, &c. The narrative in 2Ki_6:30-33 seems to be somewhat condensed, and to require to be supplemented. This, however, can be done with tolerable certainty from the context. The sentence: Elisha sat in his house, and the elders sat with him, is a parenthesis; the following, and he, namely, the king (not Elisha, as Köster and Cassel suppose), sent, &c., joins directly on to 2Ki_6:31. הַזְּקֵנִים can only refer to the magistrates of the city, not to the prophets or prophet-disciples (Josephus). They had not been sent in order to report to Elisha how far matters had come in the city (Cassel), but had betaken themselves to the prophet, since no one any longer could give counsel, in the great distress, in order to take his advice, and to beg for his assistance. While they were thus assembled the king sent a man, מִלְּפָנָיו, not, before him (Luther and others), but, from his presence, i.e., one of those men who stood before him, and, as servants, waited for his commands (1Ki_10:8; Dan_1:4-5), just as we see in Gen_41:46. This man was to behead Elisha, in fulfilment of the oath which the king had sworn in his excitement. Perceiving in spirit what was being done (as in 2Ki_5:26), the prophet says to the elders: See ye, i.e., do ye know, &c. He applies to Jehoram the significant epithet: son of a murderer; as by descent, so also in disposition, is he a son of Ahab, the murderer of the prophets, and of the innocent Naboth, (1Ki_21:19); filius patrizat. With the words: Is not the sound, &c, Elisha straightway announces that the king will follow upon the heels of the messenger (cf. 1Ki_14:6), and he calls upon the elders not to let in the messenger until the king himself comes.
2Ki_6:33. And while he yet talked with them, &c. The first question is, what is the subject of וַיֹּאמֶר? If we take הַמַּלְאָךְ to be the subject, then we must suppose, as Thenius, Cassel, and others do, that the messenger speaks the words: “This evil is of the Lord,” &c, as the mouthpiece of the king, since they certainly are the words of the latter. This, however, is, in the first place, very forced, because he must have expressed it by saying: The king commands me to say to you, &c, but it is imperatively excluded by the consideration that the king, according to 2Ki_7:17, was present, and so the messenger could not speak in his name, in his presence. Ewald, taking account of 7:17, wishes to read הַמֶּלֶךְ for הַמַּלְאָךְ, but then the affirmation that the messenger, whom the elders were to restrain until the arrival of the king, really came, would be wanting from the text. The simplest course seems to be to supply הַמֶּלֶךְ as the subject of וַיֹּאמֶר (there is an athnach after אֵלָיו) and to supplement the text here by what is stated in 7:17. The sense would then be: And the king, who had followed close upon his messenger, said, &c. Why did the king follow his servant? Certainly not “in order to see what was the result of his command” (Ewald); nor, “in order to be assured that his commands had been executed” (Eisenlohr); but, on the contrary, “in order to restrain the execution of a command which he had giver, in an excess of rage” (Keil). Even Josephus says: “Jehoram repented of the wrath against the prophet, which had overcome him, and, as he feared lest the messenger might have already executed his commands, he hastened to prevent it, if possible.”—Behold, this evil is of the Lord, &c, i.e., Jehovah has brought it to this pass that mothers slay and eat their own children; what further shall I then hope for or expect from Him? By these words, “he means to show the prophet that he no longer refuses to recognize the chastising hand of God in the prevailing distress, and then he desires to learn from him whether the divine wrath will not be turned aside, and whether the distressed city may not hope for aid” (Krummacher). To these verba hominis pene desperantis (Vatablus), Elisha replies in 2Ki_7:1, with a promise of immediate and extraordinary deliverance. The interpretation: The distress is so great that no help can any longer be hoped for, so that nothing remains but to surrender the city; thou, however, who hast prophesied falsely, and hast vainly promised help, and therefore art to blame for the calamity, thou shouldst justly suffer death (Seb. Smith, and similarly Thenius), is entirely mistaken. If this were the sense, Elisha’s solemn promise would seem to have been forced from him by the threat of death, whereas it rather serves to shame the king, who had doubted of Jehovah, and is, therefore, an answer fully worthy of the prophet. Jehoram had already given up his plan of murder when he followed his messenger. [His despair is, to a certain extent, intended as an excuse for his murderous project. It is as if he had said: God sends me only calamity upon calamity. Is it strange that my faith deserts me, and that I can no longer hope or believe that God will ultimately help? This despair produced the blind and senseless rage against thee. I have recovered from that madness, but how can I hope longer? This hope seems only to delay the catastrophe, and to make it worse the longer it is deferred. The prophet answers the despair by a new, definite, and confident prediction.—W. G. S.]
Chap. 7. 2Ki_7:1. Hear ye the word of the Lord, &c. The solemnity and distinctness with which the prophet addresses the king, the elders, and the others who are present, must not be overlooked.—On סְאָה see note on 1Ki_18:32.—In the gate of Samaria, i.e., the place where the market was usually held (Winer, R.-W.-B. ii. s. 616). On הַשָּׁלִישׁ and the following form of speech see note on 1Ki_9:22, and 2Ki_5:18. Instead of לַמֶּלֶךְ, all the versions read הַמֶּלֶךְ, which, according to 2Ki_7:17 and 2Ki_5:18, is the correct reading; the dative gives no sense.—The words of the “lord” in 2Ki_7:2 are the scoff and jest of unbelief; Jehovah will indeed open windows in heaven, and cause it to rain barley and meal! will that come to pass? Thenius connects the two sentences thus: “Supposing even that the Lord should make windows in heaven, will this (viz., the promised cheapness and plenty) even then come to pass?” This interpretation finds in the words only doubt, and not bitter scorn, but, from the threat with which Elisha answers, it seems that the latter must be included. “Windows in heaven” may be an allusion to Gen_7:11.
2Ki_7:3. Four leprous men, cf. Lev_13:46; Num_5:2 sq. No one any longer brought them food from the city, and they were not permitted to enter it. In order to escape death from hunger, they proposed to go over to the camp of the enemy at dusk, when they would not be seen from the city. That בַנֶּשֶׁף (2Ki_7:5) does not mean “early in the morning” (Luther), is clear from 2Ki_7:9; 2Ki_7:12.—קוֹל, in 2Ki_7:6, can only be understood of a continuous and increasing rushing and roaring in the air, by which the Syrians were deceived. There are instances, even now-a-days, that people in certain mountainous regions regard a rushing and roaring sound, such as is sometimes heard there, as a sign of a coming war.—On the kings of the Hittites, see note on 1Ki_10:29. The slight remains of the nations of the Hittites having been subjugated by Solomon (1Ki_9:20), we have to understand that reference is made here not, as Thenius thinks, to “an independent remnant of this people, living near their ancient home (Gen_15:20; Num_13:29), towards the river of Egypt,” but, to an independent Canaanitish tribe, which had withdrawn into the northern part of Palestine. “ ‘The kings of the Egyptians’ must not be understood too literally; they are only involuntarily mentioned for the sake of the balance of the phrases” (Thenius). Both expressions are only meant to convey, in general terms, the idea that people from the north and from the south are on the march to the assistance of the Israelites, so that danger threatens the Syrians upon all sides. [It is worth while to notice also the graphic force which is given to the story by quoting what purport to be the exact speeches of all the parties. We are told just what Elisha said, and what the officer said, and what the lepers said, and finally what the Syrians said, as if the speeches had been recorded at the time they were uttered. But how could any one tell what the Syrians said in their encampment at night? Evidently the writer puts himself in the place of the Syrians, and imagines what their interpretation of any sudden alarm would be. Instead of stating this in the flat and colorless form in which a modern historian would state it: The Syrians thought that some one was coming to help the Israelites—he gives the speech in what purport to be the exact words. The mention of the king of the Hittites is very strange. No such nation as the Hittites any longer existed, and the kings of Egypt did not interfere in Asiatic affairs throughout this entire period. Yet we should expect that the Hebrew writer would ascribe to the Syrians such fears as they would be likely to have under the circumstances.—W. G. S.] On אֶל־נַפְשָׁם see note on 1Ki_19:3.
2Ki_7:9. Then they said one to another, &c. After they had satisfied their hunger and loaded themselves with booty, it occurred to them that officium civium est, ea indicare, quae ad salutem publicam pertinent (Grotius). They were justly anxious lest they might be punished if they should longer conceal the joyful intelligence from the king and the city.—In 2Ki_7:10, Thenius wishes to read, with all the oriental versions, שֹׁעֲרֵי, watchmen, instead of שֹׁעֵר, because לָחֶם follows. Maurer and Keil take the singular collectively for the body of persons who were charged with the guard of the city.—The subject of וַיִּקְרָא, 2Ki_7:11, is not the speaker among the lepers, but the soldier on guard. He could not leave his post, so he called to the other soldiers who were within the gate, and they then gave news of the occurrence to the guards in the palace. The attendants of the mistrustful king (2Ki_7:12) give him very sensible advice, the sum of which is, “However it may turn out, nothing worse can happen to the troops we send out than has already happened to many others, or than will yet happen to the rest” (Berleb. Bibel). “Five” is here as it is in Isa_30:17; 1Co_14:19; Lev_26:8, a general designation of a small number. The origin of this use of language is probably that five, as the half of ten, is opposed to this number, which expresses perfection and completeness, to denote the imperfect and incomplete: so that it means a few horses. According to 2Ki_7:14 (two chariots) there were not five, but four. Two chariots, or equipages, were sent, in order, we may suppose, that if one were captured, the other might quickly bring the news.
2Ki_7:16 sq. And the people went out, &c. We may well imagine with what eagerness. The king had given to his adjutant (2Ki_7:2) command to maintain order, but the people trod him down in the gate. He was not “crushed in the crowd,” as Ewald states, but trodden under foot (רָמַם Isa_41:25). This can hardly have taken place unintentionally, for why should it have happened just to him? Probably the eager and famished people would not listen to his commands, and bore down his attempts to control them. The repetition of the prophet’s prediction (2Ki_7:1-2) in 2Ki_7:18-19, shows what weight the narrative lays upon its fulfilment. It is meant to be, as it were, “a finger of warning to unbelief” (Calwer Bibel), and designates this fulfilment as the object and the main point of the entire narrative.
HISTORICAL AND ETHICAL
1. With the story of these two incidents now, we pass, in this résumé of the prophetical acts of Elisha (see above, Historical on chap. 4), to those which bear upon the political circumstances and fortunes of the nation and of its king. First come those which are connected with its foreign affairs. The especial danger from without was from the Syrians. Benhadad was the chief and bitterest enemy, who was evidently determined to subjugate Israel. He did not succeed in this; he only served as a rod of chastisement to bring back the king and the people from their apostasy to their God. Jehovah rescued them again and again from his hand; not by the hand of the king, nor by mighty armies, nor by great generals, but by the “man of God,” the prophet, in order that all might perceive that salvation from the might of the sworn foe was not a work of human strength or wisdom, but was due to Him alone, the God of Israel, to testify of whom was Elisha’s calling. The two incidents belong together, for one of them shows how his secret plans and cunning plots, and the other, how his open assaults, with the employment of the entire force at his disposal, were brought to naught by the intervention of the prophet. If anything could have done it, these extraordinary proofs of the might, the faithfulness, and the long-suffering of Jehovah, ought to have brought Jehoram to a recognition of his fault, and to reformation (2Ki_3:3). This is the point of view from which both narratives must be considered.
2. In the first incident, Elisha appears in the distinct character of a seer, רֹאֶה, which was the older name for a נָבִיא (1Sa_9:9). He “sees” the place where the Syrians have determined to encamp, not once, only, but as often as they formed a plan, and, when they came to take him captive, he saw the heavenly protecting powers, and, at his prayer, the eyes of his attendant were opened, so that he, too, saw them, whereas the enemy were struck with blindness. This gift of secret sight, while one is in clear possession of all the faculties of consciousness, is similar to that of prophecy. Both are effects of the spirit of Jehovah, which non semper tangit corda prophetarum, nee de omnibus (Syra), nec datur illis per modum habitus, sic ut est in artifice (Sanctius). The prophet only sees what others do not see when Jehovah grants it to him, and his sight does not apply to all things whatsoever, nor to all events, as its legitimate objects, but only to those things which pertain directly or indirectly to the relation to Jehovah and to the guidance of the people of Israel as a nation, or as individuals. [Moreover, it is not in the power of the prophet, by any physical and ever-available means, to bring about this state of the soul at will]. This sight is therefore something entirely different from so-called clairvoyance, which has nothing in common with divine revelation. It may be asked why Elisha, who saw the places where the Syrians would encamp, and would attack Israel, did not also foresee their coming to Dothan, and the danger which threatened him of being captured by them. Cassel (Elisa, s. 116) is of the opinion that “he must have known it; yet he remained at Dothan and awaited the hostile emissaries: he knew that there were more with him than all the enemies together could muster.” This opinion, however, has no foundation in the text. On the contrary, it is clearly declared that the arrival of the Syrians was not observed until the morning, and that it was totally unexpected. If Elisha had known beforehand, by a divine revelation, that they were coming, he would have regarded it as a direction to escape from the threatening danger, and not to remain any longer in Dothan, as Elijah once fled from Jezreel (1Ki_19:3), and Joseph from Bethlehem (Mat_2:14). The great danger which suddenly came upon him, without his knowledge or fault, was a trial of faith for him and for his attendant. While the latter fell into anxiety and terror on account of it, Elisha showed himself a true “man of God” in that he trusted firmly in his Lord and God, and spoke courageously to his companion: “Fear not.” In this firm faith he experienced the truth of what is written in Psa_34:1; Psa_91:11.
3. The conduct of Elisha towards the band of Syrians, which had been sent out against him, is not, as might at first appear, a mere pendant to the similar incident in Elijah’s history (2Ki_1:9-16). It cannot even be compared with it, for the persons and the circumstances are of an entirely different character. The emissaries, who were sent to take Elijah captive, were sent out by a king of Israel, who despised the God of Israel, and sought succor from the Fly-god of the Philistines. They were also themselves Israelites who, being of a like disposition with their king, mocked the prophet of Jehovah. Under these circumstances an act of kindness and forgiveness on the part of the prophet, whose high calling it was to pronounce, by word and deed, the judgment of God upon all apostasy, would have been a renunciation of his calling (see above, p. 6). Benhadad, on the other hand, was a heathen, who did not know the living God of Israel. His troops were blind instruments of his will, who did not know what they were doing, and did not scoff at the God of Israel, or at his prophet. Besides, Elisha’s act was not merely a piece of good-nature and magnanimity, it was rather a prophetical act, in the strict sense of the words, which had no other aim than to glorify the God of Israel. Not for his own sake did Elisha pray Jehovah to smite the Syrians with blindness, but in order that he might lead them to Samaria. The thanks for their surrender into the hands of the king were due, not to him, but to Jehovah. Jehoram was to learn once more to recognize the faithfulness and might of Jehovah, and to be convinced that there was a prophet in Israel (2Ki_5:8), from the fact that these dangerous enemies were delivered into his hands without a blow. On the other hand, Benhadad and the Syrians were to learn that they could not accomplish anything, with all their cunning plots, against the “prophet that is in Israel” (2Ki_6:12), and much less, against Him whose servant and witness this prophet was. From this time on, therefore, they ceased their raids, as is expressly stated in 2Ki_6:23. The release, entertainment, and dismissal of the troops was a deep mortification to them. The slaughter of the captives, on the contrary, would have frustrated the purpose of the prophet’s act.
4. The miraculous features of this story some have attempted to explain, that is, to do away with, in various ways. Knobel (Der Proph. der Hebr., ii. ss. 93, 98 sq.) remarks upon the incident as follows: “Inasmuch as Elisha had extended his journeys as far as Syria (2Ki_8:7), he had gained information of the plans of the Syrians against Israel. This information, as a good patriot, he did not fail to make known to his king. He led the Syrians, who do not appear to have known either him or the locality, to Samaria. The inability to recognize the person as Elisha, or the place as Dothan, was, inasmuch as the safety of a man of God was at stake, caused by God; all the more, seeing that it appeared to be extraordinary and miraculous that they should not see that which was directly before their eyes. The cessation of this inability was then an opening of their eyes by God. Sudden insight into things which have long been before the eyes and yet have not been perceived, the Hebrews regarded as being directly given by God.… The horses and chariots of fire in the narrative are a purely mythical feature.” This explanation is almost more difficult to explain than the narrative itself. Nothing is said anywhere about frequent journeys of Elisha to Syria. Only one such journey is mentioned, and that later (2Ki_8:7). He could only have gained knowledge of Benhadad’s plans from his immediate and most familiar circle of attendants. These attendants, however, reject any hypothesis of treachery, and cannot explain Elisha’s knowledge in any way except on the ground that he is a “prophet,” i.e., himself sees the things which are plotted in the king’s bed-chamber. So far from conspiring with Elisha, these servants of Benhadad find out his place of abode, and so bring about the attempt to capture him. Then, when a company is sent to Dothan, and really arrives there, they must have known where the place was, and that they were there and not elsewhere. Furthermore, how could, not a single individual, but a whole company, allow themselves to be deceived by a man who was unknown to them, and to be led away five hours’ journey without getting “insight into that which was directly before their eyes?” The fiery horses and chariots, finally, are a symbolic but not a mythical feature (see above, p. 14). Ewald’s explanation is much more probable than this rationalistic interpretation. According to him, Elisha proved himself “the most faithful counsellor, and the most reliable defence of the king and people, by pursuing the plans of the Arameans with the sharpest eye, and by frustrating them often single-handed, by means of his sure foresight and tireless watchfulness. The memory of this activity is preserved in 2Ki_6:8 sq., where we have a vigorous sketch of it, as it had taken form in the popular imagination.” If, however, the prophet’s second-sight, which is the central point of the entire story, is a product only of the popular imagination which, at a later time, wrought upon the story, then we no longer have history before us, and the “man of God,” who is especially presented to us as seer and prophet, sinks down into a wise and prudent statesman. It would then be an enigma how he could have “sure forebodings” of the presence of the enemy at this or that place, and could give them out as certain facts. According to Köster, the gift of sight, which was imparted to the companion of Elisha, at the prayer of the latter, is only a “beautiful representation of the idea that the eye of faith sees the sure protection of God where, to the vulgar eye, all is dark.” In like manner Thenius says: “It is a glorious thought, that the veil of earthly nature is here lifted for a moment, for a child of earth, that he may cast a look upon the workings of the divine Providence.” But here we have not an idea, be it ever so beautiful, clothed in history, but an historical fact. The prayer of Elisha does not mean: Give him faith in the sovereignty of divine Providence; or: Strengthen this faith in him; but: Give him power to see that which, in the ordinary course of things, it is not permitted to a man to see. His companion then sees, not the thought-image of his own brain, but that which Jehovah allows him to see in symbolic form. In like manner it was a dispensation of Providence that the Syrians did not see, in spite of their open eyes. [The author vindicates the literal historical accuracy of the record, but his opponents bring out its practical importance. Let us suppose that, as a matter of historical fact, on a certain day, a certain man, under certain, circumstances, looked up and saw in the air “chariots and horses of fire,” or something else, for which “chariots and horses of fire” is a symbolic expression. The practical religious importance of the incident lies in the fact that he was thereby convinced that God protects His own. The prophet’s object in his prayer could be none other than that he might be thus confirmed in the faith, and the edification of the story depends upon these two deductions: God protects His servants; and, to the eye of faith, this protection is evident, when earthly eyes see it not.—W. G. S.]
5. The narrative of the second incident gives us information of the great famine in Samaria during the siege by the Syrians. It is impossible not to perceive the intention of showing, in the description of this siege, how the threats in Lev_26:26-29, and Deu_28:51-53, against transgressions of the covenant, were here fulfilled; for the separate incidents, which are here referred to, correspond literally to those threats. The famine, such as had hardly ever before been experienced, and especially the abominable crimes which it occasioned, referred back to those threats, so that they forced the people to observe the violation of the covenant, and the great guilt of king and people, and, in so far, were the strongest possible warning to return to the God whom they had abandoned. As for the abomination wrought by the two women, nothing like it occurs anywhere but in the history of Israel; at least, no one has yet been able to cite any incident of the kind from profane history. According to Lam_2:20; Lam_4:10 (cf. Jer_19:9; Ezech. 5:10), something similar seems to have occurred during the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25; Jeremiah 39); and Josephus (Bell. Jud., vi. 34) relates that, at the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, a noble lady slew her child and ate a part of it, an action which filled even the Romans with horror, and caused Titus to declare that he would not permit “that the sun should shine upon a city on earth in which mothers nourished themselves with such food.” That such abominations were perpetrated precisely among that people which had been thought worthy to be the bearer of the revelation and knowledge of the one living God, only proves that if such a people once falls away from its God, it sinks deeper than another which does not know Him, but adores dumb idols.
6. The deliverance of Samaria, like that of the three kings in the war with the Moabites, did not take place by a miracle, in the accurate sense of the word, but it belongs, nevertheless, as that does, in the rank of the events which bear witness to the special divine governance of Israel (see above, p. 36). Josephus’ opinion that God raised a great tumult in the ears of the Syrians (ἤρχετο ὁ θεὸς κτύπον ἁρμάτων καὶ ὅπλων ταῖς ἀκοαῖς αὐτῶν ἐνηχεῖν) does not agree with the text, which distinctly mentions a real and strong roaring. Still less is קוֹל to be rendered by “rumor” (Knobel: “The Syrians raised the siege suddenly, because they heard a rumor that the Egyptians and Hittites were on the march against them”). The threefold repetition of the word, which, moreover, never means rumor, is against this interpretation. As for the prediction of deliverance, by Elisha, that can never be explained on naturalistic grounds. Knobel leaves it undecided “whether Elisha, who probably had intrigues with the Syrians, succeeded in starting such a report among them, or whether, in reality, an hostile army was advancing upon the Syrians, of which fact Elisha had information.” The first hypothesis falls to the ground when we consider that it was no “rumor” at all, but a rushing and roaring noise, which the Syrians heard. The alternative is just as unfounded, for all the external communications of the city were cut off, and the approaching army, of which, however, history makes no mention, must have been so near already that the noise of its march would be heard, not only in the Syrian camp, but also in Samaria; or, can we conceive that Elisha might have ordered up an Egyptian and Hittite army, over night, and that this might have marched at once? Ewald’s notion that the prophet’s promise of deliverance only shows the “lofty confidence” with which he met “the despairing complaints” of the king, is equally unsatisfactory. It would have been more than foolhardy in the prophet to proclaim, as the word of Jehovah, before the king, his attendants, and the elders, something which he, after all, only guessed, and which was contrary to all probability. If his guess had not been realized, what would have become of him, and how would he have been disgraced in his character of prophet? What is more, he not only promised deliverance, but also foretold to him who scoffed at his promise: “Thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof,” and the threat was fulfilled. The promise and the threat of the prophet form together the central point of the story; they are not mere incidental details, as is clear from the express repetition at the close. The truth of the occurrence, which no one doubts, stands or falls with both together. The object of the story is, to show that there is a prophet in Israel (2Ki_5:8), so that it appears, to say the least, very insipid to hold, with Köster, that “the moral of the story is: God can save by the most unexpected means, but the unbeliever has no share in such salvation.” [2Ki_5:8 cannot, with any justice, be cited as bearing upon the significance of this story. Its lesson is one much more nearly touching the “historical development of the plan of redemption” than chap. 5. It was important that all should know that there were prophets of God in Israel, only to the end that they might believe what follows from this fact, viz., that God has a plan for the redemption of the world in which the Israelitish nation plays a prominent part: that He, therefore, is especially present among them by His prophets, and that their history and fortunes, their calamities and chastisements, their mercies and deliverances, are interpositions of God for the furtherance of His plan. The point of the incident before us is, that God would interpose to arrest a national calamity at the very crisis of its fulfilment, for the instruction, warning, and conversion of His people.—W. G. S.]
7. King Jehoram presents himself, in both narratives, just as he was described above (p. 34). He does not persecute the prophet; he rather listens to his counsel, and addresses him as “father” (2Ki_6:9; 2Ki_6:21); but he never places himself decidedly on his side. “He stands an example of those who often permit themselves to be led, in their worldly affairs, by holy men, who admire them from a distance, who suspect the presence of a higher strength in them, but still hold them aloof and persist in their own ways” (Von Gerlach). When the prophet leads the enemy into his hands without a blow, he becomes violent, and is eager to slaughter them all; then, however, he allows himself to be soothed, gives them entertainment, and permits them to depart in safety. At the siege of Samaria, the great distress of the city touches his heart. He puts on garments which are significant of grief and repentance, but then allows himself to be so overpowered by anger that, instead of seeking the cause of the prevailing misery in his own apostasy and that of the nation, he swears to put to death, without delay, the man [who had endeavored to fix his attention upon the true cause of the calamity, and] whom he had once addressed as “father.” Yet this anger is also of short duration. He repents of his oath, and hastens to prevent the murder, and asks Elisha, trembling and despairing, if there is no further hope. He does not hear the promise of deliverance with scorn, as his officer does, but with hope and confidence. Then again, when the promised deliverance is announced as actually present, he once more becomes doubtful and mistrustful, and his servants have to encourage him, and push him on to a decision. Thus, at one moment elated, at another depressed, now good-natured and now hard and cruel, now angry and again despairing, now trustful and again distrustful, he never rises above a character of indecision, changeableness, and contrasted dispositions. He was indeed better than his father Ahab, but he was still a true son of this father (see 1 Kings 18, Hist. § 6). In one thing only he was firm: “He cleaved unto the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin; he departed not therefrom” (2Ki_3:3). Since, not to mention so many other proofs of the divine power, patience, and faithfulness, even the deliverance of Samaria from the greatest peril did not avail to bring him into other courses, judgment now came upon him and his dynasty, and the threat of the Law was fulfilled: “I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation” (Exo_20:5). He was the fourth member of the dynasty of Omri, or, as it is commonly called, from the principal sovereign of the family, the house of Ahab. With him, that dynasty ended (2Ki_9:10).
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
2Ki_6:8-23. The Lord is Hiding-place and Shield (Psa_119:114). (a) He brings to nought the plots of the crafty, so that they cannot accomplish them (Job_5:12), 2Ki_6:8-14. (b) “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them” (Psa_34:7), 2Ki_6:15-19. (c) “The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken” (Psa_9:15; Psa_35:7), 2Ki_6:20-23.
2Ki_6:8-17. Krummacher: Hints of the Course of Things in Zion. (a) The revealed plot; (b) the military expedition against one man; (c) the peaceful abode; (d) the cry of alarm; (e) the unveiled protection from above.
2Ki_6:8. Cramer: The heart of man plots its courses, but the Lord alone permits them to prosper. “A man’s heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps” (Pro_16:9). “There is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord” (Pro_21:30).—Let them undertake the enterprise as cunningly as they can, God leads to another end than that they seek (Isa_8:10).—“In such and such a place shall be my camp” (Pro_27:1; Jam_4:13-16).
2Ki_6:9. Osiander: It is no treason to bring crafty and malicious plots to the light. It is a sacred duty (Act_23:16). Beware of going into places where thou wilt be in jeopardy of soul and body. Be on thy guard when the enemy advances, and “put on the whole armor of God” (Ephes. 6:13 sq.).
2Ki_6:10. No one has ever regretted that he followed the advice of a man of God; on the contrary, many have thus been saved from ruin.
2Ki_6:11. Starke: When God brings to naught the plots of the crafty, they become enraged, and, instead of recognizing the hand of God and humbling themselves, they lay the blame upon other men, and become more malicious and obstinate.—He who does not understand the ways of God, thinks that he sees human treason in what is really God’s dispensation. Woe to the ruler who cannot trust his nearest attendants (Psa_101:6-7).
2Ki_6:12. A heathen, in a foreign land, confesses, in regard to Elisha, something which no one in Israel had yet admitted to be true. The same thing also happened when the greatest of all prophets appeared (Mat_8:10; Mat_13:57).—Krummacher: Tremble with fear, ye obstinate sinners, because all is bare and discovered before His eyes, and shudder at the thought that the veil, behind which ye carry on your works, does not exist for Him! All which ye plot in your secret corners to-day, ye will find to-morrow inscribed upon His book, and however secretly and cunningly ye spin your web, not a single thread of it shall escape His eye!
2Ki_6:13. How mad it is to fight against, or to attempt to crush, a cause in which the agency of a higher power is visible (Isa_14:27; Act_5:38-39).
2Ki_6:14. Benhadad sends out an entire army against one, out finds but the truth of the words in Psa_33:18 sq.
2Ki_6:14-23. Elisha during Distress and Danger, (a) (Although enclosed by an entire army, he does not fear or tremble, like his companion, but speaks to him words of encouragement and confidence. This is the effect of a firm faith, which is the substance, &c., Heb_11:1. Faith takes away all fear, and gives true and joyful courage, Psa_23:4; Psa_91:1-4; 2Co_4:8. David speaks with this faith, Psa_3:5-6; Psa_27:1-3; and Hezekiah, 2Ch_32:7; and Luther: Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär, und wollt, &c.) (b) His prayer, 2Ki_6:17-18. (“Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes!” So should every true servant of God pray for every soul that is entrusted to him. We all need to use this prayer daily: Lord, open my eyes! for it is the greatest misfortune if one cannot see the fight, even by day (Eph_1:18). Elisha, however, also prays: “Lord, smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness,” for his own protection, and for their salvation, for they were to learn that He is a God who can save marvellously from the greatest distress, and that no craft or skill avails against Him. It is not permitted us to pray for harm to our enemies; but we may pray that God will make them powerless, and show them His might.) (c) His victory, 2Ki_6:19-23. (Those who wish to capture him, he captures; but his victory is no victory of revenge. He causes the captives to be entertained kindly, and allowed to depart in safety, that they may learn that the God, whose prophet Elisha is, is not only a mighty, but also a merciful and gracious God. God is not so much glorified by anything else as by returning good for evil. “For so is the will of God,” &c, Peter 2:15; cf. Rom_12:20. He won the highest victory who said upon the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”)
2Ki_6:15. Our fortune also may change over night; then, how shall we bear it?—Starke: Our feeble flesh cannot do otherwise than despair, when distress comes suddenly upon us, especially if we are young and inexperienced; for experience brings hope (Rom_5:4).
2Ki_6:16-17. Cramer: If we had spiritual eyes, so that we could see the protecting forces of loving, holy angels, it would be impossible for us to fear devils or wicked men (Psa_104:4; Heb_1:14).
2Ki_6:17-18. Berleb. Bibel: In the kingdom of Jesus Christ, which is hidden from the world, blind men every day receive their sight, and men who see are smitten with blindness.
2Ki_6:18. The Lord smites with blindness those who light against Him, not in order that they may remain blind, but in order that they may truly see, after they shall have observed how far they have strayed, and shall have recognized the error of their way (Act_9:8 sq.; Joh_9:39).
2Ki_6:19. It is not a sin to withhold the truth from any one until the proper time for making it known, but, in many cases, it is even the duty of wisdom and love (Joh_13:7; Mat_10:16). “Follow me!” is the call of the only one who can lead us where we shall find that which we are, consciously or unconsciously, seeking, for He is the light of the world, &c. (Joh_8:12).
2Ki_6:20. A time will come for all who are spiritually blind, when their eyes will be opened, and they will learn that they have been walking in the paths of error.—Krummacher: Ye dream of some unknown kind of an Elysium, and ye shall awake at last among those of whom it shall be said: “Bind them hand and foot, and cast them into outer darkness.”
2Ki_6:21-23. “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” (Jam_1:20). God does not give our enemies into our hands in order that we may revenge ourselves upon them, but in order that we may show ourselves to be children of Him who dealeth not with us according to our sins, neither rewardeth us according to our iniquities. He who receives forgiveness from God, must also show forgiveness to others; that is the gratitude which God requires of us, and which we owe to Him.
2Ki_6:23. Starke: True love to one’s enemies is never fruitless (1Sa_24:7; 1Sa_24:17-18).
2Ki_6:24-31. Samaria during the Siege, (a) The great scarcity; (b) the two women; (c) the king.
2Ki_6:24. Evil men wax worse and worse (2Ti_3:13). As Benhadad accomplished nothing by his raids, he made an attack with his entire force. A perverse and stubborn man cannot endure to be frustrated, and when he is, instead of leading him to submissiveness as it ought, it only hurts his pride, and makes him more irritated.
2Ki_6:25. General public calamities are not mere natural events, but visitations of God on account of public guilt. Cf. Jer_2:19; Jer_3:12-13.—Krummacher: Of all the judgments of God in this world, none is more terrible than famine. It is a scourge which draws blood.… It often happens that God takes this scourge in hand when, in spite of manifold warnings, His name is forgotten in the land, and apostasy, rebellion, and unbelief are prevalent.
2Ki_6:26-29. Necessity leads to prayer, wherever there is a spark of the fear of God remaining; but where that fear is wanting, “necessity knows no law” becomes the watchword. The crime of the two women is a proof that, where men fall away from God, they may sink down among the ravenous beasts. Separate sores, which form upon the body, are signs that the body is diseased, and the blood poisoned. Shocking crimes of individuals are proofs that the community is morally rotten.
2Ki_6:26. Starke: Earthly might can help and protect us against the injustice of men, but not against the judgments of God.
2Ki_6:27. How many a one speaks thus who might help if he only earnestly tried. When the prayer: Help me! is addressed to thee, do not refer the suppliant to God for consolation while any means of help, which are in thine own hands, remain untried (1Jn_3:17; Jam_2:15-16).
2Ki_6:30-31. Calw. Bibel: See here a faithful picture of the wrongheadedness of man in misfortune. In the first place, we halfway make up our minds to repent, in the hope of deliverance; but if this is not obtained at once, and in the wished-for way, we burst out in rage either against our fellow men, or against God himself. Observe, moreover, the great ingratitude of men. Jehoram had already, several times, experienced the marvellous interference of God; once it fails, however, and he is enraged. The garment of penitence upon the body is of no avail, if an impenitent heart beats beneath it. Anger and rage and plots of murder cannot spring from the heart which is truly penitent. It is the most dangerous superstition to imagine that we can make satisfaction for our sins, can become reconciled to God, and turn aside His wrath, by external performances, the wearing of sackcloth, fasting, self-chastisement, the repetition of prayers, &c. (Psa_51:16-17). The world is horrified, indeed, at the results of sin; but not at sin itself. Instead of confessing: “We have sinned” (Dan_9:5), Jehoram swears that the man of God shall die (2Co_7:10).—Starke: Whenever God’s judgments fall upon a people, the teachers and preachers must bear the blame (1Ki_18:17; Amo_7:10).
2Ki_6:32 to 2Ki_7:2. Elisha’s Declarations in his own House. (a) To the assembled elders; (b) to the despairing king; (c) to the scoffing officer.
2Ki_6:32. The Lord preserves the souls of His saints; he will save them from the hands of the godless (Psa_97:10). He sends friends at the right moment, who serve us as a defence against wickedness and unrighteous persecution.—Krummacher: It is pleasant to be with brethren in a time of calamity. One feels in union a power against all calamities which threaten him.…. Moreover, especial promises attach to such a union. Where two or three are gathered together in the name of the Lord, there is He in the midst of them.—Cramer: Although the saints of God are unterrified at the possibility of martyrdom, yet they are not permitted to cast themselves into the flames, but may properly make use of all ordinary and just means to preserve themselves for the good of the church of God (Php_1:22).
2Ki_6:33, cf. Pro_21:1. The wrath of the king changes to timidity and hesitation. The heart of the natural man is a rebellious, but, at the same time, wavering thing. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord (Jer_17:7; Jer_17:9; Psa_37:17).—2Ki_7:1. We must still answer “Hear the word of the Lord” to those who, in littleness of faith and in despair, cry out, what more shall I wait for from the Lord? A bruised reed shall he not break, &c. (Mat_12:20). “To-morrow, at this time.” When the need is greatest, God is nearest. If God often unexpectedly helps even apostates out of great need, how much more will He do this for His own, who call to Him day and night. He has roads for every journey; He does not lack for means.
2Ki_7:2. The Sin of Unbelief and its Punishment. The children of this world consider their unbelief to be wisdom and enlightenment, and they seek to put that which is a consolation and an object of reverence to others, in a ridiculous light. The Lord will not leave such wickedness unpunished. It is only too often the case that high-born, and apparently well-bred men, at court, take pleasure in mockeries of the word of God and of its declarations, without reflecting that they thereby bear testimony to their own inner rudeness, vulgarity, and want of breeding. It is a bad sign of the character of a prince, where scoffers form the most intimate circle of his retinue (Psa_1:1-4). Unbelief is folly, because it robs itself of the blessing which is the portion of faith.
2Ki_7:3-16. The Miraculous Deliverance of Samaria. It declares loudly (a) what is written in Dan_2:20 : “Wisdom and might are His.” (He knows how, without chariots or horses, without arms or army, merely by His terror, to put an enemy to flight, Exo_23:27; to feed the hungry, and set the captives at liberty, Psa_147:7, in order that all may confess: “Who is so great a God,” &c., Psa_77:13-14; and: “Let not the wise man glory,” &c., Jer_9:23-24); (b) cf. Psa_103:8 : If ever a deliverance was undeserved, then this was, that all might admit: “It is of the Lord’s mercies,” &c. (Lam_3:22; Rom_2:4-5).
2Ki_7:3-10. The Lepers outside the City. (a) Their conversation (2Ki_7:3-4); (b) their visit to the Syrian camp (2Ki_7:5; 2Ki_7:8); (c) their message to the king (2Ki_7:9-10).
2Ki_7:3-4. Krummacher: How often the same disposition meets us in the dwellings of the poor; instead of a joyful and believing looking up to heaven, a faithless looking for help from human hands; instead of submission to God, a dull discontent—a despair which quarrels with the eternal.… Thence comes the frequent neglect of the household, and decay of the family. And then what language is this: “If they kill us, we shall only die,” as if the grave was the end of men, and the great Beyond were only a dream; or as if it were a matter of course that the pain of death atones for the sins of a wasted life, and must rightfully purchase their pardon, and a reception into heavenly blessedness. Our life lies in the hand of God, who sets its limit, which we may not anticipate. Circumstances may, indeed, arise in which a man wishes for death; it makes a great difference, however, whether this wish comes from weariness of life, or whether we say, with St. Paul: “I long to depart and be with Christ.” Only when Christ has become our life, is death a gain.
2Ki_7:5-7. Starke: The Almighty laughs at the planning of the proud, and brings their schemes to a disgraceful end (Psa_2:1 sq.; Dan_4:33-34).—Würtemb. Summ.: It is only necessary that in the darkness a wind should blow, or that water should splash in free course, or that an echo should resound from the mountains, or that the wind should rustle the dry leaves, to terrify the godless, so that they flee as if pursued by a sword, and fall, though no one pursues them (Lev_26:36). Therefore, we should cling fast to God in the persecution of our enemies, should trust Him, and earnestly cry to Him for help; He has a thousand ways to help us.
2Ki_7:6. Krummacher: It happens to the unconverted man, as it did here to the Syrians. God causes him to hear the rumbling of His anger, the roaring of the death-floods, the thunder of His law, and the trumpet-sounds of the judgmentday. Then he flees from the doomed camp, in which he has dwelt hitherto, and hurls away the dead-weight of his own wisdom, justice, and strength.
2Ki_7:8-9. Würt. Summ.: Many a one gets chances to acquire property dishonestly, to enjoy luxury and debauchery, to gratify fleshly lusts, and to commit other sins, and, if he is secure from human eye, he does not trouble himself about the all-seeing eye of God; but his crime is discovered at last in his own conscience, and, by God’s judgment, it is revealed and punished. Conscience can, indeed, be benumbed for a time; but it will not rest forever; it awakes at last, and stings all the more the longer it has been still. He who conceals what he has found, is not better than a thief.—Pfaffsche Bibel: It is a good action to warn others of wickedness, and to hold them back from sin, still more to encourage them to virtue (Heb_10:24).
2Ki_7:10. Lepers, i.e., outcast and despised men, were destined, according to God’s Providence, to announce to the threatened city, in the crisis of its danger, the great and wonderful act of God. God is wont to use slight and contemptible instruments for his great works, that He may, by the foolish things of the world, confound the wise (1Co_1:27). Fishermen and publicans brought to a lost world the best Good News, the gospel, which is a power to make all blessed who believe in it.
2Ki_7:12-15. Doubt and distrust of God’s promises are deeply inrooted in the human heart. Where it is most necessary to be prudent, there the heart of man is sure and free from care (Psa_53:5), and where there is nothing to fear, there it is anxious. Instead of confessing with joy: Lord, I am unworthy of the least of all thy mercies, when the promised help is offered, it does not trust even yet, until it can see with the eyes and grasp with the hands.
2Ki_7:16. Calw. Bibel: Learn from this that He can lead us, as in a dream, through the gates of death, and, in an instant, set us free.—Würt. Summ.: It is easy for our Lord and God to bring days of plenty close upon days of famine and want. Therefore, we should not despair, but trust in God, and await His blessing in hope and patience, until He “open the windows of heaven” (Mal_3:10).—Starke: God’s word fails not; not a word of His ever fell upon the earth in vain; every one is fulfilled to the uttermost, both promise and threat.
2Ki_7:17-20. The judgment upon the king’s officer proclaims aloud: “Be not deceived: God is not mocked” (Gal_6:7; Pro_13:13).—Krummacher: His corpse became a bloody seal upon the words of Jehovah, and of His prophet.—Berleb. Bibel: In the last days also, when the abundance of the divine grace shall be poured out, like a stream, in the midst of the greatest misery, many despisers of the glorious promises of God will see the beginning thereof, but will not attain to the enjoyment of it; they will be thrust aside by marvellous judgments.
Footnotes:
[2]2Ki_6:9.—[On נְחִתִּים Ges. Thes. s. v. says: “Whoever gave this word its punctuation seems to have derived it from the root חתת (cf. Job_21:13), but the force of descent, going down, is necessary and indubitable.” Sept. κέκρυπται; Vulg. in insidiis sunt. The H.- W.-B. makes it an adj. from נחת, but Ew. casts doubt upon the form, and says it could as well be a part. niphal from חַת, § 187, 6.
[3]2Ki_6:10.—[“He protected himself,” i.e., he occupied the threatened point, and so frustrated the attack. Every time that the Syrians came they found that the Israelites had anticipated them at the point where they proposed to attack.
[4]Ver 11.—[Ewald, Lehrb. § 181, b, and note 2, rejects the form מִשֶּׁלָּנוּ as an incorrect reading. He takes מִכֻּלָּנוּ (as in 2Ki_9:5) to be the true reading. It is clear, however, that in 9:5 Jehu includes himself among those, one of whom the answer is to designate, while the king of Syria asks, “Who of those who belong to us?” naturally enough excluding himself from the number of those who fall under suspicion of treachery. The meaning of the two forms is quite distinct, and each belongs to the place in which it is used. Ewald’s theory of the use of the abbreviated form of אשר must bend to this instance; the instance cannot be thus done away with, in the interest of the theory.
[5]2Ki_7:12.—[The ה in the chetib is that of the article, which, in the later books, is sometimes found even after a preposition. Ew. § 244, a.
[6]2Ki_7:13.—[That is to say: They go to the fate which has already befallen all the people who are gone, and which sooner or later, awaits all who remain.—W. G. S.] We agree with Thenius that the keri המון is to be preferred, because the word occurs immediately afterward without the article.—Bähr. [Ew. explains the article in the chetib as retained in the later or less accurate usage, especially where the article has emphatic force. § 290, d.—W. G. S.]
[7]2Ki_7:15.—Keil: The chetib בְּהֵחָפְזָם is the only possible correct form, for חפז has the meaning, to flee with haste, only in the niphal. Cf. 1Sa_23:26; Psa_48:5.—Bähr.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv8, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19 DISCLOSES THE KING OF SYRIA'S COUNSEL. (Kg2 6:8-17)
DISCLOSES THE KING OF SYRIA'S COUNSEL. (Kg2 6:8-17)
the king of Syria warred against Israel--This seems to have been a sort of guerrilla warfare, carried on by predatory inroads on different parts of the country. Elisha apprised King Jehoram of the secret purpose of the enemy; so, by adopting precautionary measures, he was always enabled to anticipate and defeat their attacks. The frequency of his disappointments having led the Syrian king to suspect some of his servants of carrying on a treacherous correspondence with the enemy, he was informed about Elisha, whose apprehension he forthwith determined to effect. This resolution was, of course, grounded on the belief that however great the knowledge of Elisha might be, if seized and kept a prisoner, he could no longer give information to the king of Israel.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 THE SYRIANS SMITTEN WITH BLINDNESS, 2Ki_6:8-23.
THE SYRIANS SMITTEN WITH BLINDNESS, 2Ki_6:8-23.
We come now to another class of wonders with which the ministry of Elisha was associated; not so much miracles, wrought by his agency, as marvellous answers to his prayers. In this section and the following, Elisha appears not as a worker of miracles, but as a seer, gifted with supernatural vision, and a prophet of great wisdom and prudence. His agency in these Syrian wars is substantially what it was in the war with Mesha, king of Moab. 2Ki_3:4-27. It passes from the realm of the private and personal to that of the more public and national.
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8. The king of Syria — Ben-hadad. Compare 2Ki_6:24.
Warred against Israel — The causes and the date of this war are unknown. From 2Ki_6:23 we learn that the war consisted of incursions by marauding bands, and not a regular military campaign, like the one mentioned in 2Ki_6:24. The king of Syria, however, was himself engaged in this dishonourable kind of warfare.
In such and such a place shall be my camp — That is, the Syrian king and his officers laid plans for such a disposition and movement of their forces as would deceive and circumvent the Israelites. He probably formed his camp into ambuscades, expecting to surprise and ensnare the forces which the king of Israel might send against him.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv8–23 8–23. Elisha makes known the King of Syria’s plans.…
8–23. Elisha makes known the King of Syria’s plans. The soldiers sent against Elisha are smitten with blindness, and he leads them into Samaria (Not in Chronicles)
8. Then [R.V. Now] the king of Syria warred against Israel] Whether this was before the cure of Naaman or after we have no indication. It is clear however that Syria was a most formidable adversary to Israel at this period. The inroads described first in this chapter appear to have been made by bands of plunderers, of course with the knowledge and under the direction of the king. But when Benhadad (see verse 24), who probably was the king here alluded to, gathered all his host and came and besieged Samaria the warfare was of a different kind. Josephus calls the Syrian king ‘Adad’.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv8–23 (8) Then the king of Syria warred.—Rather, Now the…
(8) Then the king of Syria warred.—Rather, Now the king of Syria (Aram) was warring, i.e., continually. The time intended cannot be the reign of Jehoahaz, for here the Syrians achieve nothing of importance. (Comp. 2Ki_6:32.)
Took counsel with.—Comp. 2Ch_20:21.
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Such and such.—The compound Hebrew expression (pìlônî ’almônî) means “a certain one, I will not mention which;” the Greek, ὁ δεῖνα.
My camp.—Heb., tahãnôthî; a difficult expression, found only here. Its form is anomalous, and probably corrupt. The Targum renders “house of my camp:” but the Syriac, “Set ye an ambush, and lurk;” the Vulg., “ponamus insidias:” and similarly the Arabic. This has suggested that the true reading is “hide ye,” i.e., lie in ambush (tçhâbû, i.e., tçhâbĕ᾽û: Thenius). It is, however, a more obvious change to read, “ye shall go down” (tinhâthû: Psa_38:3). This agrees better with the construction, “Unto (’el) such and such a place shall ye go down,” i.e., on a plundering incursion.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv8–23 2Ki_7:20. PUBLIC MIRACLES or ELISHA (resumed)
2Ki_7:20. PUBLIC MIRACLES or ELISHA (resumed)
Then the King of Syria warred against Israel. It may seem strange that, so soon after sending an embassy to the court of Samaria, and asking a favor, (2Ki_5:5, 2Ki_5:6) Benhadad should resume hostilities, especially as the favor had been obtained; (2Ki_5:14) but the normal relations between the two countries were those of enmity, (2Ki_5:2) and a few years would suffice to dim the memory of what had happened. The gratitude of kings is proverbially short-lived. And took counsel with his servantsi.e. , his chief officerssaying, In such and such a place. (comp. 1Sa_21:2) shall be my camp; or, my encampment. jnOj appears to be "a noun in the form of the infinitive.
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It does not occur elsewhere.
Vers. 8-23. Wicked men vainly attempt to outwit God.
Benhadad, after the miracle wrought upon his favorite Naaman, had abundant reason to know that Israel was the people of God, and enjoyed special Divine protection and superintendence. Had he been truly wise, he would have laid aside his hostile designs against the nation, and have made it his endeavor to cultivate friendly relations with them, and, if possible, secure their alliance. But true wisdom is a plant of rare growth, while its counterfeit, cunning, is a weed that grows rankly at all times and everywhere. Benhadad resolved to have recourse to craft against the Israelites, and thought perhaps that, while the protection of their God would not fail them in a pitched battle, he might be able in petty engagements, by means of ambushes and surprises, to snatch an occasional victory. But his plan failed egregiously. God enabled his prophet to foresee where each ambush would be placed; and each time he warned Jehoram of the snare, which was thereupon easily avoided. Craft and cunning were of no avail against the wisdom which is from on high the Divine foreknowledge, of which the prophet was made in some measure partaker. Benhadad then bethought him of a new device. He would capture the prophet, and thenceforward his plans would be undetected, and the success which he had expected from them would follow. How simple and easy it must have seemed! The prophet moved about from city to city, teaching the faithful, and was now in one place, now in another. What could be easier than to make inquiry, and learn where he was residing at any particular time, and then to make a sudden inroad, surround the place, occupy it, and obtain possession of his person? Such seizures of individuals have been planned many hundreds of times, and have generally been successful. Had Benhadad had only human enemies to deal with, there can be little doubt that his plans would have prospered. He would have outwitted the prophet, and would have got him into his power; but it was necessary that he should also outwit God. Here was a difficulty which had not presented itself to his mind, and which yet surely ought to have done so. What had frustrated his efforts previously? Not human strength; not human wisdom or sagacity; but Divine omniscience. God had enabled Elisha to show the King of Israel the words which he spake in the secrecy of his bedchamber. Why should he not grant him a foreknowledge of the new design? Or why should he not enable the prophet in some other way to frustrate it? There are ten thousand ways in which God can bring the counsels of men to no effect, whenever he pleases. Benhadad ought to have known that it was God, not merely the prophet, against whom he was contending, and that it would be impossible to outwit the Source of wisdom, the Giver of all knowledge and understanding. But men in all ages have thought (and vainly thought) to hoodwink and outwit God.
1. The first dwellers upon the earth after the Flood were divinely commanded to spread themselves over its face and "replenish" it. (Gen_9:1) They disliked the idea, and thought to frustrate God"s design by building themselves a city and a tower as a focus of union. (Gen_9:4) But God came down," and confounded their language; and so "scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth". (Gen_9:8)
2. Isaac sought to outwit God, and frustrate his preference of Jacob over, (Gen_25:23) by giving his special blessing to his firstborn; but God blinded him, and caused him to be himself outwitted by Rebekah and Jacob, so that he gave the blessing where he had not intended to give it. (Gen_27:27-29)
1. Pharaoh King of Egypt at the time of the Exodus, thought to frustrate God"s designs respecting his people by a long series of delays and impediments, and finally by shutting them up into a corner of the land, whence apparently they had no escape unless by an absolute surrender; but God gave them a way of escape across the Red Sea, which removed them wholly from his control.
2. Jonah thought to outwit God, when commanded to warn the Ninevites, by flying from Asia to the remotest corner of Europe, and there hiding himself; but God counteracted his schemes and made them of no avail.
3. Herod the Great thought to outwit God, to preserve his kingdom, and to make the advent of Christ upon earth unavailing, by a general massacre of all the young children to be found in Bethlehem; (Mat_2:16) but the warning given by God to Joseph and Mary confounded his counsels, and made the massacre futile.
4. Men have, in all periods of the world"s history, endeavored to hoodwink God by professing to serve him, while they offered him a formal, outward, and ceremonial observance, instead of giving him the true worship of the heart. But God has not been deceived; he "is not mocked;" he readily discerns the counterfeit from the genuine, and rejects with abhorrence all feigned and hypocritical religiousness. Every attempt of man to cheat his Maker recoils on his own head. "The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men". (1Co_1:25) We cannot deceive him. "All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do". (Heb_4:13)
Vers. 8-16. God"s presence with his people.
There has been a sudden change in the horizon of Elisha"s life. From the quiet work of cutting down trees and budding a college, he is suddenly called upon to stand a siege from a Syrian army. These changes do come in the lives of most of us. Health suddenly changes into sickness. Friendship suddenly changes into hostility. Wealth suddenly changes into poverty. Such changes will come in the life of the believer and in the history of the Church of God. At one time all seems bright; the next moment the prospect seems dark and discouraging. It is well to be prepared for such changes when they come. The true servant of God will heed them very little. He lives not under, but above, the things of earth.
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway cleaves the storm, Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head.
So it was with Elisha. Wherever you find him, he always seems the same. On the present occasion the circumstances were such as to strike terror to the stoutest heart. Elisha"s servant trembled at the sight that met him when he rose that morning and looked forth from the city walls. A mighty host, with horses and chariots, encompassed the city round about. It was an unexpected attack. No forces were within the city to defend it against such a mighty host. Elisha was the only one whom the besieging army wanted. In the desire for self-preservation, it was not unlikely that the inhabitants of Dothan might give him up to the enemy, and thus turn away the invader from their gates. From a human point of view it was no wonder that Elisha"s servant said, "Alas, my master! how shall we do?" There was no terror in Elisha"s face, no panic in his heart, at this startling news. What calmness, what courage, what sublime confidence there is in that answer of his, "Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them!" And what was the secret of his confidence? The one reason of Elisha"s confidence and calm was that God"s presence was with him. What a beautiful fulfillment of that promise, "Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man; thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues!" We learn from this story
I GOD"S PRESENCE WITH HIS PEOPLE IS NOT GENERALLY REALIZED BY THEIR ENEMIES. It was so on the occasion before us. The King of Syria commenced another war against Israel. He held, as we should say, a council of war, and consulted with his generals concerning the arrangements for the campaign. He thought, by skilful strategy, to take the King of Israel unawares. But all his plans and maneuvers were thwarted in some mysterious way. The King of Israel seemed to know all his movements with more certainty than a clever player at a game of skill might anticipate the moves of his opponent. Several times in this way the King of Israel saved himself. At last the King of Syria began to be suspicious. There must be a traitor in the comp. Some of those enjoying the king"s confidence must be revealing his plans to the enemy. And so he asks, "Will ye not show me which of us is for the King of Israel?" The King of Syria was an able general; but like another great general of modern times, Napoleon the Great, there were some forces that he did not take sufficient account of. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. There are other things than military skill and big battalions to be thought of in going forth to battle. When Edward, the English king, came forth to view the Scottish troops before the battle of Bannockburn, he was astonished at the small force waiting on foot to receive the attack of his mighty army. But they were putting their trust in the God of battles, and presently he saw the unusual sight of the whole Scottish army, as their custom was, kneeling down and offering a short prayer to God. "Believe me," said the general who rode by his side, "you men will win or die." Of that unseen Power, in whose hands are the issues of battle, the Syrian king took no account. He did not realize that Gods presence was with his people. Is not this the mistake which the enemies of God"s people have made in all ages? It was the mistake of the persecutors and oppressors of Israel. It was the mistake of those who persecuted the Reformers of England, Scotland, France, and Switzerland. It was the mistake which Pharaoh made when he refused to let the children of Israel go. It was the mistake, which Herod made when he thought to crush the new kingdom that was yet to arise, by slaughtering the helpless babes in Bethlehem and its neighborhood. It was the mistake, which Nero made in his persecutions of the Christians at Rome. It was the mistake which Louis XIV of France made when he revoked the famous Edict of Nantes. It is the mistake, which the Roman Curia has made in all ages, in thinking to crush out civil and religious liberty by the tortures of the Inquisition, by the martyrdoms of the scaffold and the stake, by the massacres in the Waldensian valley, by the autos-da-fe of Spain. The same thing may be said of the unbeliever and the skeptic . They have not realized that the presence of the living God is with his Church and in the midst of her, and that he, in his own way and in his own time, can vindicate his own truth. How often, during these eighteen hundred years, has the unbeliever exulted in what he has called the overthrow of Christianity! and yet how vain and foolish the boast has proved to be! Voltaire boasted that with one hand he would overthrow the Christianity which it had required twelve apostles to build up. "At this day, the press which he employed at Ferney to print his blasphemies is actually employed at Geneva in printing the Holy Scriptures." May we not still say, as we think of the enemies of the truth, the enemies of virtue, the enemies of religion, and as we listen to their audacious boasts, "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision?
II GOD"S PRESENCE WITH HIS PEOPLE IS NOT REALIZED BY MANY AMONGST THEMSELVES. Elisha"s servant, no doubt, believed in God. If any one had denied God"s presence with his people, he would doubtless have firmly asserted it as his belief. Yet when the time came to put his belief to a practical test, we see how slight a hold it had taken of him. When he went forth in the morning and saw the horses and chariots and the mighty host encompassing the city round about, he said to Elisha, "Alas, my master I how shall we do?" Do you never feel a sensation like Elisha"s servant? You believe you are a child of God, you believe that God takes care of his people, yet perhaps there are times when you are unduly anxious about your business, and allow yourself to be weighed down by foolish and causeless fears. How many are alarmed by the thought of sickness in themselves or in their families, and nervously ask, "What shall we do?" Oh that we would learn to realize God"s presence with us! "My times are in thy hand." In the same way, how many professing Christians are there who do not sufficiently realize Gods presence in his Church! How much more active we should be, how much more earnest in Christian work, if we realized that God is working with us! With what power a minister ought to preach if he could only remember to say with John the Baptist, "There cometh One mightier than I after me"! Then how many are easily discouraged by difficulties. Some are always saying when they see a difficulty in the way, "What shall we do?" "Who will roll us away the stone?" Some are always imagining difficulties and foreseeing them at the very beginning of a work. This spirit of timidity, of fear, is a great hindrance in Christian work. Half-belief is almost as bad as no belief, in this respect. Half-hearted-ness in religious work is one of the greatest hindrances to its success. In this, as in everything else, the maxim holds good, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." The boll-hearted ten out of the twelve spies sent to view the promised land frightened the Israelites from going up, and nearly caused God, in his righteous anger at their unbelief, to disinherit them altogether. The halfhearted inhabitants of Galilee prevented the blessing of the Savior of men resting upon them, for we read that "he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief." The half-hearted followers of Christopher Columbus nearly prevented him from discovering America. There is no room for half-heartedness in religion. There is a loud call for decision and firmness both in belief and in conduct.
III GOD"S PRESENCE WITH HIS PEOPLE IS ALWAYS REALIZED BY HIS TRUE SERVANTS. The King of Syria did not realize that God"s presence was with his people, and he was at his wits" end to know how to circumvent them. Elisha"s servant did not realize that God"s presence was with himself and his master; and how panic-stricken he was at the danger that seemed to threaten them! But there was one man for whom the armies of the King of Syria had no terror, to whom difficulties brought no dismay, and that was the man who lived near to God, and realized that God was near to him. Hence it is that we find Elisha saying, "Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them." So it has been with God"s true servants in all ages. They have realized that God"s presence was with them, and in the strength of that one idea they have surmounted the greatest difficulties, braved the most terrible dangers, met fearlessly the most overwhelming opposition, and accomplished tasks that to the worldly eye seemed almost incredible. Look at Abraham. He went forth from his native land, "not knowing whither he went." And why? Because he knew that God was with him. Look at Nehemiah . An exile from his native land, he undertook the wonderful enterprise of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. He had plenty of opposition. But he went on with his work in spite of the ridicule and attacks of Sanballat and his companions. And what was the secret of his determination and perseverance? You have it in his answer to Sanballat, "The God of heaven, he will prosper us; therefore we his servants will arise and build." This year (1888) is the anniversary of two great events in British history two great deliverances which illustrate in a marvelous way God"s presence with his people. It is the three hundredth anniversary of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, which took place in 1588. Yet it was not English ships or English power that really turned away that invasion from our shores; but the winds and waves of him who holdeth the sea in the hollow of his hand. It is also the two hundredth anniversary of the revolution of 1688. And while we should never use such anniversaries as the occasion of displaying a vindictive or unchristian spirit towards those who differ from us, yet in the interests of truth, in the interests of true Anglicanism, in the interests of civil and religious liberty, it is most desirable that these two great events should be rightly and piously commemorated. One thing they illustrate very clearly, and that is, that however dark the prospects of God"s people seem to be, and however overwhelming seem the forces arrayed against them, he is able to banish every cloud and to give them the victory over all their enemies.
God is our Refuge and our Strength, In straits a present Aid; Therefore, although the earth remove, We will not be afraid.
One or two practical applications.
1. It is well to be on Gods side. In a time of danger or of trouble, a great many people expect God to be on their side, who have never taken any pains to show themselves on his side. If you want to have the unspeakable advantage of God"s presence with you in your time of difficulty or danger, the most important question you could now ask yourself is, "Am I on God"s side?
2. A word to those who are God"s people. Undertake great things for God. Remember that you have unlimited resources at your command. We should be ashamed of how little we are attempting to do for God, when we have the inexhaustible treasury of Divine grace to help us.
3. Never suffer yourself to be daunted or depressed by difficulties. The greater the difficulties, the greater should be the determination of the Christian. "Let courage rise with danger." Luther sang his most stirring songs of praise and hope and courage in the darkest moments of his life. Those who have God with them can afford to sing amid the darkness. C.H.I.
Vers. 8-23. The King of Syria and Elisha.
the King of Syria warred against Israel," etc. In these sixteen verses we have four subjects worth looking into wickedness thwarted, timidity dispelled, supernatural power manifested, and revenge overcome.
I WICKEDNESS THWARTED. The King of Syria had determined on an enterprise of bloodshed and wickedness. He had made all arrangements, fixed on the place for his comp. "In such and such a place shall be my comp." Bat Elisha thwarted the bloody purpose of the Syrian king by informing the Israelitish monarch, Jehoram, of the very place where the Syrians had determined to encomp. His words are, "Beware that thou pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are come down." The king attended to the prophet"s directions, "and saved himself there, not once nor twice." Terrible was the disappointment of the Syrian monarch. "The heart of the King of Syria was sore troubled for this thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye not show me which of us is for the King of Israel? And one of his servants said, None my lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the King of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber." Observe:
1. That wicked men are most secretive in their purposes. It would seem that the plans of the King of Syria"s bloody enterprise were known only to his most confidential officers, and that they were revealed to them in his bedchamber. There, and perhaps there only, did he detain them, and perhaps with closed doors and soft whisperings. Wicked men, in order to get on in the world, are bound to be secretive. And the more wicked they are, the more necessary for them is this secretiveness. Were dishonest doctors, lawyers, tradesmen, merchants, statesmen, to be open and candid, revealing all that is nefarious in their aims, they would fall into poverty and universal contempt. The good alone can afford to be open and candid; the wicked are bound to be hypocrites if they would live.
2. That none of their purposes are so secret as to escape the notice of Almighty God. How came Elisha to know them? He was far away from the monarch"s bedchamber away in Israel. It was Elisha"s God who made the communication to him. Solemn thought. There is One who knoweth what is in man in every man. He reads all secrets; he "understandeth our thoughts afar off.
3. The revelations of a wicked man"s secrets will frustrate his designs. It did so in the case of this king.
II TIMIDITY DISPELLED. When the Syrian monarch learnt that Elisha was in Israel, he dispatched a spy to find him out; and when he discovered that he was in Dothan, "he sent thither horses, and chariots, and a great host: and they came by night, and compassed the city about." All this struck a panic into the heart of Elisha"s servant, and he cried out, "Alas, my master! how shall we do?" How did Elisha relieve his servant of this terrible fear? By assuring him that there were more on their side than on the side of their enemies. "Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them." This assurance he gave not merely with words, hut by ocular demonstration. "And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha." It is generally supposed that the reference is here to angels "that excel in strength;" they are in truth the body-guard of the good. They are more in their number than our foes, superior in their power, in their invincible determination, in their authority too. But to see them we must have our spiritual eyes open as the prophet"s eyes were now. Faith in the wonderful resources which Heaven has provided for the good will dispel all fear.
III SUPERNATURAL POWER MANIFESTED. Supernatural power is here manifested:
1. In opening the eyes of the prophet"s servant.
2. In bringing under his notice the mountain which was full of horses and chariots of fire.
3. In smiting with blindness the army of Syria. "And when they came down to him that is, the Syrian army, Elisha prayed unto the Lord, and said, Smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness. And he smote them with blindness according to the word of Elisha." These armed legions, whose eyes were glaring with vengeance before, were now in midnight darkness. In this state Elisha becomes their guide and conducts them to Samaria, and when they had come there another supernatural act was performed in the restoration of their sight, and then they beheld their terrible position. "Behold, they were in the midst of Samaria," in the hands of the King of Israel.
IV REVENGE OVERCOME. The King of Syria, hearing that Elisha had revealed his murderous plan to the monarch of Israel, and had thus thwarted the purpose and the plan of his campaign, was fired with indignation, and sent to Dothan "horses, and chariots and a great host: and they came by night, and compassed the city about." How furiously we may suppose revenge flamed in every member of the army as well as in the soul of their royal master, as they "compassed the city about!" And this feeling would no doubt be intensified when they found that Elisha had betrayed them into the hands of their enemies. They were in the midst of Samaria, within the very grasp of the King of Israel, and at his mercy. How would Elisha advise the King of Israel to treat these revengeful legions now? "And the King of Israel said unto Elisha, when he saw them, My father, shall I smite them? shall I smite them?" What was the prophet"s advice? Did he say, "Destroy them?" No . He answered, "Thou shalt not smite them." Did he say, "Spare their lives, but make them slaves, take them into captivity and make them beasts of burden?" Did he say, "Deprive them of all food, and starve them to death?" No; he said, "Set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their master. And he prepared great provision for them: and when they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master." What was the result of this generous treatment? Did they go away with the old passion of vengeance burning in them? Away to reorganize themselves in greater numbers and with greater force to make another attack? No. Here is the result: "So the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel." The magnanimous kindness extinguished the flames and paralyzed the arms of revenge, so that they came no more into the land of Israel. This is the Divine way, nay, the only way, of conquering our enemies. Evil can only be overcome by good. The most glorious victory over an enemy is to turn him into a friend. D.T.
Vers. 8-23. A bootless invasion.
The chronic hostility which subsisted between the Israelitish and the Syrian kingdoms soon broke out again in war. In this, as in other instances, Syria was the aggressor. The invaded kingdom was delivered, not through "the sword and the bow" (ver. 22) of its king, but once more through the interposition of Elisha.
I FRUSTRATED PLANS.
1. Royal strategy. The war which the King of Syria commenced was intended to be carried on, not by battle in the open field, but by a series of surprises, caused by the planting of ambuscades at convenient spots. It was cunning more than strength that the king relied on. He "took counsel with his servants" as to the best method of carrying out his plans. Men are apt to overvalue cunning. It plays a large part in the conduct of worldly, especially of political and military, affairs.
2. The failure of plans. If the plotters were "profound to make slaughter", (Hos_5:2) God was deeper than the plotters, "a rebutter of them all ". (Hos_5:2) This was the element Benhadad left out of his calculations. Everything that passed in the king"s council-chamber was revealed by God to Elisha, who told it to the King of Israel. What was spoken "in the ear" in Damascus was proclaimed "upon the housetops" in Samaria. (Luk_12:3) Thus the King of Israel saved himself "not once or twice." The wicked greatly err when they say, "How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?". (Psa_73:11) Not one of their plans but is "naked and opened" (Heb_4:13) to him. With a knowledge and skill infinitely beyond theirs, he can easily bring the cunningest of their schemes to naught. This is the comfort and safety of those who trust God, and are under his special care.
3. The secret discovered. The King of Syria"s chagrin at the continual frustration of his schemes was great. He could account for it in no other way than that some of his own servants habitually betrayed his counsels. They who have God to fight with must lay their account for many disappointments and troubles. At last the real state of the case was made known to him by one who had learned the facts about Elisha. It was a startling discovery to make, that the things which he spoke in his bedchamber were accurately told by Elisha to his enemy, the King of Israel. None of us would like to be thus supervised in our secret doings by our fellow-men. How little we reflect that, in sober fact, we are being thus morally supervised by the living God! Elisha"s name would be well known in Syria since the healing of the famous captain.
II INVISIBLE DEFENSE. If Elisha was the medium of discovering his plans, the only practicable course for the King of Syria to pursue was to secure the person of the prophet, and so stop further communications with the King of Israel. Benhadad might have reflected that, if all his plans were known to Elisha, this plan would be known too, and Elisha could easily escape. But wicked men do not, as a rule, reflect on the folly of their opposition to God. The king, having ascertained that Elisha was at Dothan, sent an expedition to arrest him.
1. The encompassing host. The force dispatched against Elisha was "a great host" far exceeding the captains of fifties with their fifties who were sent to arrest Elijah. (2Ki 1) Benhadad put trust in chariots and horses. (Psa_20:7) Yet why so great a company to take one prisoner, if no supernatural arm was there to fight for him? And if God was Protector, what would even this great host avail? Another proof of the inward uncertainty with which this enterprise was entered upon is seen in the fact that the host surrounded the city "by night." Combined with the worldly man"s belief that physical force is irresistible, there is the lurking fear that it may not prove irresistible after all.
2. The trembling servant. Awaking early the next morning, and going forth, the servant of Elisha saw, to his dismay, the city compassed about with both chariot and horse. His cry, as he rushed back to report the fact to his master, was, "Alas, my master! how shall we do?" Thus apt are men to judge of a situation purely by the standard of sense. The material factors are nearly the only ones looked at. Things are esteemed to go well or ill with us according as the natural situation looks favorable or the reverse. It is the constant aim of Bible-teaching to lift us above this point of view to give us a higher one.
3. The invisible protectors. Elisha prayed that the young man"s eyes might be opened, and then he saw the mistake he was committing. "The mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha." No wonder that, in this moment of apparent danger, Elisha was full of calm trust. Knowing Benhadad"s designs, he might have escaped had he desired, but with the forces of the invisible King interposed between him and his enemies, he did not feel even this to be necessary. Not less confidently, in seasons of danger from ungodly men, may the believer commit his way unto the Lord. It may not be given him to see the symbols of invisible protection, but not the less surely can he depend that "the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them". (Psa_34:7) He can say with David, "I will not be afraid of ten thousand of people that have set themselves against me round about". (Psa_3:6) They can do him no further harm than God sees meet to allow. They that are for him are more than they that be against him.
III GOOD FOR EVIL.
1. The supernatural blindness. Descending from the neighsouring heights, on which they had encamped during the night, the Syrians now approached to take Elisha. He, on his part, prayed the Lord, Smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness" The prayer was granted, though the word means rather confusion and dazedness of mind, than absolute deprivation of sight. (Gen_19:11) Their movements became aimless, and Elisha, going up to them, said, "This is not the way, neither is this the city: follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom ye sock." There is the appearance of falsehood in this speech only if we forget that the men were in a mental maze, and probably were actually going aside both from the way and the city in their attempted search for it. Elisha, in promising to bring them to the man whom they wanted, undertook no more than he performed. Only when the Lord opened their eyes, they found they were, not in Dothan, but in Samaria. This is one way in which God frequently discomfits wicked men, pouring confusion into their counsels. They "grope for the wall, like the blind, and grope as if (they) had no eyes: (they) stumble at noonday as in the night; (they) are in desolate places as dead men. (Isa_59:10) They are granted the desires of their hearts, but after a fashion of God"s own; and in such a way as to lead to their final discomfiture". (2Sa_15:31)
1. The King of Israels proposal. It seemed at first as if this great multitude of the Syrians had been led like sheep into the slaughter-house. They were now in the King of Israel"s power, and for what end could Elisha have brought them there but that the king might smite them? The king himself was nothing loath. In eager tones, he urged Elisha to be permitted to destroy them. The policy of slaughter is always an easy one. It might seem sanctioned by Old Testament precedents. Probably, however, even in the Old Testament, there is no example of the divinely sanctioned extermination of a multitude who were not captives in lawful war. This is the point Elisha urges in reply. If the king smote this multitude, would he be smiting those whom he had taken with his sword and bow? He would not. God had delivered these captives into his hands, and with other ends than that he should destroy them.
2. Elishas magnanimous counsel. Elisha showed the King of Israel "a more excellent way". (1Co_12:31) Let him set bread and water before them, that they might eat and drink, and go to their master. Here, surely, in the Old Testament, breathes the spirit of the New. It is Christ"s precept of doing good to enemies, of returning good for evil, of seeking to overcome evil with good. The King of Israel behaved more nobly in this way than if he had shed the blood of these captives. God has no pleasure in the unnecessary effusions of blood. An instance of similar clemency to captives took place in the reign of Pekah, at the instigation of the Prophet Oded. (2Ch_28:9-15) The King of Israel did as Elisha desired, and the captives were first entertained, then sent back. So generous a deed should have evoked a friendly spirit in Benhadad, but at most it only did so for a time. We are not, however, to be discouraged from acting rightly, because those to whom we show kindness do not appreciate our action J.O.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv8, 17, 19 Then the King of Syria warred against Israel.
2Ki_6:8-23
Then the King of Syria warred against Israel.
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Elisha at Dothan
Seeing the invisible! Here is the young business man. He spends his days in a close and musty counting-room, casting up interminable figures, or behind a distasteful counter, selling goods. But he sees something more than the ledger and the counting-house and the dry goods. He sees a beautiful home, and a warm fireside, and a happy family, and an easy competence for old age. It is this glimpse of the invisible that makes him toil on, early and late, uncomplainingly and patiently. Just so is it with the inventor. There was Palissy, the potter, who laboured sixteen years to perfect his invention. But he saw something more before him than the clay and the potters wheel. He had in his minds eye all the time the beautiful vase which, after those wearying years, he should produce. Howe had before him the perfect sewing-machine while working away at his crude experiments, and Morse had in his minds eye the perfect telegraph machine, and Stephenson the perfect locomotive--long before any one else could perceive these machines. It was the vision of the invisible which gave these men courage. Nothing great or good would ever have been accomplished did not these visions of the unseen beckon men on to glorious deeds. Nay, we could not endure this treadmill life, we should die from very weariness of doing the same thing over and over, did not these glimpses of the invisible spur us on. Surely, then, this lesson which Elisha at Dothan teaches us of the unseen power of God is of the utmost practical importance. If we realised the unseen as he realised it, we too should always be brave, and calm, and trustful. In order to obtain a more definite impression, let us ask what are the characteristics of this unseen spiritual power, as here revealed?
I. In the first place, its might and plenitude are taught us. The forces of God which are fighting for our souls, if we could only see them, are more and stronger than the forces of the devil which are fighting against our souls. However full of evil and temptation this world which we see and feel may be, the unseen world is more full of motives and incitements to truth and righteousness, could we but gain the vision. The drunkard often urges, as his excuse, that his appetite is so strong that he cannot overcome it; the worldly man allows his love of money to master every other impulse; the libertine lets his lusts win the victory; and then these men whine that temptations and circumstances and environment are too strong to be resisted. But all the time the hosts of God are round about and ready to do battle for them, if only they are called upon, and these hosts are stronger than appetite and avarice and lust. All the time the crown hangs over their heads; and the crown, if they would but see it, is more attractive than the muck-rake;
II. That these invisible powers of good are very near us. The invisible horses and chariots of fire were round about Elisha. The hill on which Dothan stood was full of them. The young man had only to open his eyes, and there they were. The clanging chariots and neighing horses of the Syrians were no nearer to the man of God than were the heavenly steeds. I have read the story of an escaped prisoner in our late war, who wandered for many days and nights, seeking the Union lines. At last, in the dusk of early twilight, he came to a camp which he supposed belonged to the Confederates. Before he knew it he was surrounded by the pickets and captured, to be hurried back to prison, as he thought; but what was his surprise and joy, on looking a tittle closer, to find that it was the Union blue, and not the Confederate grey, that the soldiers wore. He had been captured by his friends. When he thought that his friends were far away, they were all about him. O wanderer, and fugitive from God, lift up your eyes, the hosts of your friends surround you. God is near you.
III. The agency of prayer in revealing the invisible. Over and over in this brief story does the prayer of the faithful prophet move the arm that moves the world. In answer to his own devout prayers, doubtless, he saw the invisible hosts himself, so that he could calmly, trustfully say to his servant, They that be with us are more than they that be with them. How often has this been illustrated in other lives than that of Elisha. When the wise men could not interpret Nebuchadnezzars dream, Daniel prayed to God, and his three corn-pardons joined him in prayer. Then, says the simple Bible narrative, was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven, and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are His. He revealeth the deep and secret things; He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him. There is a God in heaven which revealeth secrets, is his bold and confident affirmation to the king.
IV. The symbol which God used to cheer and encourage His servant at Dothan. He sent heavenly horses and chariots, and filled the mountain with them. The very same means which the enemy used to distress and terrify him, God used to defend and encourage him. Every Syrian home that had come to harm was duplicated by a heavenly steed that had come to save. Every hostile chariot had for its double a friendly chariot. The enemy could send nothing against him which God could not match, and more than match, in his defence. Here, too, is a helpful thought for us. It seems to us that Satan is more ingenious and more mighty than ever. He adapts himself with such nice skill to each particular age and phase of life. It looks sometimes as though he had the mastery, and that nothing could overcome the horses and chariots with which he assaults us. The evils of our times are peculiar, we think. Intemperance, Sabbath-breaking, lax divorce laws, dishonesty, worldliness in the Church--over all this catalogue of evils we groan, and think that never was such a host of the devils horses and chariots arrayed against God and truth. But if our eyes could be opened, we should see that the hosts of evil are exactly met and matched at every turn by the hosts of God. We should see that, nicely as the powers of darkness are adapted to pull down, the powers of light are better adapted to build up; that God is always ready for the emergency; that there can never be a horse and chariot of evil which He cannot exactly match and overcome. (Monday Club Sermons.)
Elishas safeguard
Gods people may make use of these words in reference to their adversaries oftener than they think of; but let no one apply them lightly; it were sad to make a mistake in such a matter. As regarded Elisha, The could show proof of what he asserted. It would appear that the prophet was, so to speak, the visible representative of the Providence of God, which was engaged for the preservation of His people.
1. Observe the proof we have here of the long-suffering of God to His people. Much provocation had Israel given Him by their idolatries and backslidings, but still they were helped and forewarned of coming danger, and were furnished with innumerable proofs that the God of Israel was the supreme Lord of all the earth. And it was only when all means failed, and Ephraim was joined to his idols, that God at length gave him up to the spoiler.
2. Another reflection is suggested to us by the miserable suspicions of Ben-hadad. This man waged an unrighteous war with the people of Israel, and was therefore engaged in a nefarious course, and when things went against him he was ready to fancy all sorts of treacherous defections on the part of his servants. What a dreadfully bad time of it they must have had with him when his affairs did not prosper as he expected, and his unworthy suspicions were hatching! Many an innocent man would be regarded with the dark scowl of aversion, and many a faithful one must have seen that his lord and master held him in distrust. And not one of them might speak a word concerning that which every one must have seen.
3. Elishas way of treating the Syrians is worthy of consideration. And let us at once confess that it is unlawful in any circumstances to tell an untruth, and this will show that in our opinion Elisha told none. On the contrary, it will appear, upon strict examination, that he spake what was literally true. He was no longer in the city, for he had advanced to meet them; and when he had brought them to Samaria, he kept his word and revealed himself to them, although it was then their turn to be in fear. If that explanation will not suffice, and if it be supposed that in certain conditions a person may say what is untrue to promote some good end, it will be well that any one who is of this unsafe opinion shall only act upon it when he is assured of having the same monitor as Elisha had to guide him. If, on the other hand, exception be taken to the fact that Elisha meant to deceive the Syrians, we have no defence to offer, because it is our belief that none is required.
4. In the perusal of this and other passages of Scripture in which the wonderful power of prayer is recorded, it will be well to have due regard to the circumstances in which these instances occurred. Any one who should attempt to foil an army in our days by means of prayer and no other weapon, as Elisha did, would run a great risk of being mocked for his pains, without any advantage to set over against it. We are to remember that Israel was the visible Church, and that God was pleased to afford miraculous proof of the care and superintendence which He exercised over it. Besides, prayer was the only means at Elishas command. He never advised the king to disband his army, and trust entirely to his prayers for the preservation of himself and the nation. But the power of prayer may not be less now than it was in ancient times, although its effects are less apparent. (J. Murray.)
Within the circle of flame
I. The saints power and peril.
1. Observe to what heights of power a saint may come.
2. See how Peril waits on Piety that comes to Power. Where is the marauder who can calmly brook the parrying hand of a saint? Let us alone, what have we to do with thee? cry the lawless when checked by the godly. Ambition turns to rage, foaming like baffled breakers at the cliff-foot.
II. Within the flame-circle, and at rest. Two men stand in the seraph-ring. One is a saint, the other a possible saint. One is serene; panic takes the other. Elishas serenity is the quiet of a man all of whose heart-strings are lovingly held in the hands of Infinite Power--a quiet which is only broken by rising praise, as a wave will sometimes edge up, whiten, and turn in music in the midst of a gentle blue sea; or by that profoundest of merriment, the laughter of a fearless soul facing peril. In the processes of sublimation Elisha has become conscious of an ever keener sight for the life men call unseen; and of a familiarity with that border-land of human life, and that infinite beyond out of which heavenly helps come trooping. Serenity is the still air, drenched in smiling light, that enwraps the soul that traffics steadily with God the Undaunted, God the Unshakable. It is the quiet breathing of faith cradled in the everlasting arms.
III. Within the circle, yet afraid.
1. Elishas servant is trembling. He is like a reed shaken with the wind at the foot of a granite crag. Though the ring of fire belts them twain, he does not attain serenity. Where Elisha saw the sun-white host his servant found a blank. The blank upon the hill coincided with a blank in his soul. Little did it avail him that his eyes were young and keener to detect the common furniture of earth than the old mans--his masters. Even had Elisha been stone-blind, and the youths eyes so superb that he could fix the forms of flying motes; or tell the spot a mile beneath grey seas where the Euplectella hides its loveliness in slime; or figure forth the astral systems careering in the infinite beyond the glittering fence of the Milky Way, such seeing would not be worth a thought beside the vision, the ever-widening, ever-strengthening vision of the seers pure and spiritual heart. All lifes advantages are not the heritage of youth. Holiness is heir to more and greater. The lamp of faith illuminates a wider and a gander world than the shining of the sun.
2. The seer who has saved his king now saves his own servant. Deep in saintliness, as an integral part of it, is this amazing versatility of helpfulness. Away over the young mans head flies Elishas prayer. Every day such intercessions flock heavenward, carrying often the ripest faith and love the Church Militant can show. (J. Dunk.)
The encompassing defence of the faithful
I. That the greatest forces in this world are the forces which we call spiritual and invisible, and the strong, brave, fearless men are the men who believe in these forces, lean upon them, and in a certain sense see and grasp them. It is not so with the man of facts and figures, with what the Bible calls the darkened mind of the children of this world. He sets at nought all that he cannot see and measure. He stupidly thinks that the five senses take in everything. He takes stock of his material resources, counts men, weapons, machinery, and money, throws in perhaps a little brain, scientific knowledge, intellectual smartness, and then concludes that he has all the equipment which he needs for lifes battle, or at least all the equipment which it is possible to gain. Turn to the Bible, and you at once get into the company of men whose might is in other weapons, who are covered with the invisible panoply of God, and who see around them the spiritual chariots and horses. They take little account of material masses and numbers. They laugh at huge figures. A grain of faith outweighs the resources of a kingdom. And there is no question about their heroic strength and fearlessness. The sceptic would call it imagination, but it is the kind of imagination which invests them with wonderful power. For these men are the worlds masters; they have all a touch of the superhuman. Moses defying the might of Egypt; Gideon with his little regiment charging the vast army of Midianites; Elijah in lonely grandeur challenging the furious rabble of Baals prophets; Daniel setting at naught the kings princes, nobles, and hungry lions of Babylon; Peter and John scornfully resisting the browbeating magistrates. Magnificent figures were all these. We would give all our goods to be like them. Yet it was simply their belief in the unseen forces which made them what they were. They saw the fiery chariots and the armies of heaven. They knew that God and Omnipotence were on their side, and only the fickle whims and passions of men against them.
II. It is always these unseen forces that we reckon upon in our Christian warfare to-day. What we call faith is just Elishas vision and the steadfast heart which it brings. Faith, if not actually compassed about by invisible armies, is nerved, inspired, and energised by thoughts, upliftings, and confidences which make a man more than a match for his fellow-men. Without that, the battle for Gods truth and roll, on would be a forlorn and wretchedly hopeless business. The valiant fighters in it are always outnumbered and overmatched. Religious censuses would fill us with despair if we weighed spiritual forces in ordinary scales. Where there is one man mightily earnest in this struggle there are ten standing aloof, and ten more lukewarm. The odds are all apparently on the evil side. Yet we never lose heart until we have lost all faith. We are always optimists until our eyes become blind to the unseen forces. These unseen forces are operating on every man. We have allies in every mans heart. When he is most against us, there is something in him that is for us. Every man has occasional visions of the fiery chariots. There is a judgment throne which he can never wholly forget. There is an eternal righteousness which he knows he must reckon with. There is something in every man which secretly sides with the good. There is conscience, and memory, and unrest, and a lurking fear of the very God whom he denies. The warfare is not unequal, as it seems.
III. Remember that these and countless unseen forces are over and around every one who is resolutely bent on living the Christian life. We often hear of the difficulties of the Christian life. I think we hear more about its difficulties than about its helps. We get into the murmuring vein of the children of Israel, who were always magnifying shadows into mountains and ordinary fees into terrible giants. Yet surely there is another and brighter and diviner side to all that which the darkened eyes do not see, and which the despondent mind often forgets. There are many things against the godly life, but there are more things for it. Yes, we have more helps than temptations, more inspirations than discouragements, more incentives and wings than drawbacks and chains. (J. G. Greenhough, M. A.)
Elishas defenders
I. God is the protector of His people. Was Elisha so much dearer to Gods heart than His other children that for him alone the forces of heaven came down to earth? Cannot all Gods people say, The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge?
II. The reality and nearness of the invisible world. The unseen is not the unreal. It needed just the opening of the eyes, and nothing more, to reveal to this young man agencies unseen and unsuspected before. We are citizens of two worlds--one material, the other spiritual. We cannot too frequently remind ourselves of this fact: that the world we see is not the only one in which we live. All about us is another, vast and mighty, although invisible and silent. When Dr. Judson was at Rangoon for the last time, endeavouring to gain a footing for the Gospel, he heard one day that the savage Burman magistrate had stationed guards with orders to seize every native seen coming out of the house of the teacher. Mrs. Judson writes: I shall never forget the expression of my husbands face, as though really piercing to the invisible, when he exclaimed. I tell you, if we had but the power to see them, the air about us is thick with contending spirits, the good and the bad, striving for mastery. However many and strong our foes, our friendly helpers are yet more numerous and powerful. Elishas bodyguard was more than a match for the Syrian host. Rank upon rank they stood about him, countless as sunbeams; chariots that were billows of fire, and horses that were clouds of flame. So Gods defending hosts surround His people, invisible, innumerable, invincible.
III. The ministry of the angels. As sons of God by creation, we of the human race do not stand alone. There is another race of intelligent beings, to whom, by the fact of a common fatherhood, we are nearly related. They are our brethren in the household of the divine offspring. They are the elder, we the younger, born. With them there is neither childhood nor age, for they came into being, not by successive generations, but swept forth in all their glittering hosts, full-statured, at a single fiat of creative will. They are no flock of idle dreamers, sauntering along streets of gold, lying on fleecy clouds, listening to the music of fountains, their gravest task to practise psalmody and carry their part in some grand chorus. The word assures us that they are employed, every one, in rendering service in this earthly life to them who are heirs of salvation. There is something impressive and stimulating in the thought that we are constantly surrounded by these unseen helpers. No power of evil can avoid their scrutiny. Wherever a foe lurks an angel watches. They attend us in our solitudes, walk by our side in danger, and mingle with us in our solemn assemblies. Over the sorrowing, the tempted, the toiling, the dying they bend in true and tender sympathy. (George W. Brown.)
Our allies
Dothan is not an unusual place for the at least occasional residence of a Christian man. Sometimes the Christian man is in the Dothan--
(1) Of hard circumstances;
(2) of business disappointments;
(3) of the sudden re-emergence of an old sin he thought conquered;
(4) of a whelming sorrow;
(5) of sickness and failing physical energy;
(6) of a chilling doubt.
Beleaguered Dothan is not a place so unusual for a Christian man to stand in. But, in the ancient story, Elisha, though in Dothan, and so beleaguered, was not fearful. It is a good thing, amid the stress and strain of life, to count up our allies. I have often found great heartening in doing it.
1. Though a man be in Dothan, God the Almighty is his ally.
(1) When a man looks out upon this universe, the arresting thing he sees is perpetual change. The universe is a vast procession of effects. What we at first call causes, on analysis resolve themselves into effects. But every effect must have a cause. Every effect must have a cause adequate to the effect. The fontal cause must be God the Almighty, since only an Almighty cause can be efficient for such vast and varied effects.
(2) The evident design everywhere. But design implies mind; mind implies thought; thought implies a thinker; a thinker implies a person. And so a man rises to the conception of an Almighty Person, above him and around him.
(3) Man looks at himself and finds that, on every side, limitations of all sorts bind him in; but the finite implies an Infinite, some unlimited One; and so the intention of the Infinite springs up within him.
(4) Man finds he has a conscience. That conscience stands for righteousness. There must be some righteous cause, of which such conscience, protesting for righteousness, is effect. And so man comes to the intention of a righteous, a holy God. And when a man stands in Dothan, and will choose the most right he knows, he may be sure that this Almighty, infinite, personal, holy God is his ally.
2. Consider further, though a man stand in Dothan, Christ the Saviour is his ally. The Saviour is evidence
(1) Of the Divine love. God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, etc.
(2) Of the Divine nearness; in Incarnation Deity assumes our nature.
(3) Of the Divine forgiveness through the Atonement. And when a man stands in Dothan confessing and forsaking sin, he may be utterly sure that Christ the Saviour is his ally.
3. Consider further, though a man be beleaguered in Dothan, the Holy Spirit is his ally. Joh_16:1-33. is full of promise here.
4. Consider further, though a man be in Dothan, good angels are his allies (Heb_1:14).
5. Consider further, though a man be in Dothan, Gods Providence is his ally (Rom_8:28).
6. Consider further, though a man be in Dothan, Gods Promises are his allies. Fear not, therefore, because of oppositions, because of your weakness, because of your mistakes, because of your sins even, because of death. Count up your allies. They that be with us are more than they that be with them. (W. Hoyt, D. D.)
Secure amid perils
It is related that, on the first awful day of the fight against fire made on board The City of Rome, the passengers had been driven out of the forward cabins and their quarters were shifted aft. It was impossible to set the evening meal in the first cabin, and it was spread aft also. It is a remarkable fact that the discipline of the ship made it possible to serve the evening meal, and perhaps still more remarkable that most of the passengers gathered at it, and many of them enjoyed it. In fact, it was even a cheerful meal, and the prevailing spirit seemed to reflect the motto of the Atlantic Line, Secure amid Perils. If voyagers could sit down and eat their dinner quietly and with good cheer, knowing that they were hundreds of miles from land and an awful fire was raging, in the hold underneath them, because of their faith in the captain and the heroic fidelity of the crew, how much more should we on the voyage of life trust the Great Captain, and face the storms of human living with good cheer and confidence, (L. A. Banks, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v8 2Ki_6:12. Elisha … telleth … the words thou speakest…
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
2Ki_6:12. Elisha … telleth … the words thou speakest in thy bedchamber—Elisha apprised king Jehoram of the designs of the Syrian king, who thereby was enabled to anticipate and defeat his guerilla attacks.
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2Ki_6:13. Behold he is in Dothan—In a narrow pass through mountains, on the caravan road from Gilead to Egypt, twelve miles north of Samaria, in the Esdraelon plain.
2Ki_6:17. The mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire—For in this case, and in contrast with the mere “horses and chariots” (2Ki_6:15) of the Syrian army, this was fiery host, אֵשׁ, denoting their supernatural and divine origin, for it is the symbol of Deity.
HOMILETICS OF 2Ki_6:8-17
THE TRIUMPHS OF PRAYER
We have seen the power of Elisha in the working of miracles in the realm of private life, and, for the most part, on behalf of the individual. Now we are to witness the beneficent power of the prophet as it operates in the wider sphere of public and national life. He appears as the seer, the man of supernatural insight, the prophet who is in habitual and prayerful communion with God, the adviser and friend of a perplexed sovereign and a harassed nation. In him is a combination of great gentleness with great power. The character in which the history now reveals him, as a man of prayer, may explain the source of his enormous power, and the vast range of his influence. The incidents here described illustrate the triumphs of prayer.
I. Seen in giving extraordinary insight into the plottings of the enemy (2Ki_6:8-12). Elisha had power to read the secret counsels of the invading Syrian, and thus enabled the king of Israel to disconcert the plans of Benhadad, and to escape his ambuscades. Prayer intensifies the sensibilities of the soul, and makes it more keenly alive to the movements of the wicked one; it can see sights and hear sounds unperceived by others. After Elijah had wrestled with God in prayer, on Mount Carmel, he heard “a sound of abundance of rain,” though others heard it not. The sky was cloudless and hard as steel, the earth seamed and cracked, vegetation withered, the cattle were perishing, and the gaunt figure of famine, which had been tightening its grasp upon the land for two years and a half, was as pitiless and inflexible as ever. The soul that is quick to perceive coming good, is also quick to detect coming evil. The man of prayer is more than a match for the subtlest adversary.
2Ki_6:2. Seen in inspiring a fearless courage in the midst of threatened danger (2Ki_6:13-16). The glittering spears and chariots surrounding the city, which filled the servant of Elisha with so much alarm, struck no fear in the breast of his undaunted master. With what unutterable confidence he whispers those reassuring words: “Fear not; for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.” The praying spirit is ever brave and strong in great emergencies. It was prayer that sustained Moses when at Rephidim he was surrounded by the mutinous host clamouring for water, and threatening to stone him to death (Exo_17:1-4). Before Luther went to the Diet of Worms, where he expected the worst, and before Knox was tried for high treason, which threatened his own life and the ruin of the Reformation movement in Scotland, they both found relief in prayer. When a steamer went down in the Bay of Biscay a short time ago, what enabled the minister and his wife to speak with such calmness and hope to their fellow-passengers and the crew assembled in the already flooded cabin, when they expected the next lurch of the vessel would be the last? It was prayer. The solitary praying prophet felt far more confidence and courage than did Benhadad with all his warlike hosts.
III. Seen in giving the soul sublime visions of the nearness and all-sufficiency of heavenly help (2Ki_6:17). The horses and chariots of fire were there before; but they were not seen by the young man, though they were seen by Elisha. Both had the ordinary common sense by which external objects are apprehended; but in Elisha’s case there was superadded the God-given sense of supernatural vision. Our common sense, however sound and accurate, is limited in its scope. When the comet of 1858 appeared, an observer declared that its luminous tail was just four feet long, while to the educated scientific sense it was known to extend for millions of miles. So the glories of the heavenly firmament are diminished or altogether hidden to the ordinary sense, and are revealed only to the eye of faith. Prayer intensifies the spiritual vision, and the soul beholds around it the shining hosts of heavenly ministrants ready to do the bidding of the all-powerful Jehovah.
IV. Seen in giving power to baffle and defeat the foe (2Ki_6:18-20). Through the prayer of Elisha the Syrian host is smitten with blindness, so that they could not recognise him, nor the way in which he led them. What was their astonishment when, the blindness being removed at the instance of the man of prayer, they beheld themselves in the midst of Samaria, at the mercy of the soldiers of Jehoram. The soul has to contend with enemies, fierce and form dable. When Napoleon at Waterloo watched the tremendous charge of the Scots Greys, and witnessed the havoc wrought among the French columns, he exclaimed “How terrible are these Greys!” But more terrible still are the enemies with which we have to fight. Prayer only can give the skill and power to conquer. Gideon prayed, and though his army was reduced from 32,000 to 300, he inflicted upon the Midianites a most disastrous defeat (Jdg_6:7). Samson prayed, and with restored strength he pulled down the Philistian temple, and destroyed more of his own and the Lord’s enemies in his death than he had done in his lifetime.
V. Seen in treating a conquered and distressed enemy with clemency and kindness (2Ki_6:20-23). The king of Israel, seeing the Syrians thus brought into his power, was anxious at once to despatch them. Perhaps he remembered Ahab’s great mistake in not slaying the Syrian king when in his power, and for which mistake he was sternly rebuked by one of the prophets (1Ki_20:35-43). But the man of prayer interposed between the fury of the king and his captives; instead of being slaughtered, they were hospitably entertained and then released, refreshed and unscathed. There are enemies of the soul to whom no mercy should be shown; no opportunity to crush them should be missed. There are enemies, again, who, when their wrong is exposed and acknowledged, we may generously forgive. Prayer fills the soul with sympathy and mercy, and expands it with magnanimity. Abraham prayed for Abimelech, and he and his house were healed. Moses prayed, and Miriam, who was punished because she had joined in the sedition against her brother, was cured of her leprosy.
VI. Seen in giving rest and security to a harrassed nation. “So the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel” (2Ki_6:23). The prayers and wisdom of one man relieved the troubles of the court and of the people. The nation is often unspeakably indebted to the prayers of a faithful few. Hezekiah prayed when Rabshekah thundered at the gates of Jerusalem, and the Assyrians were smitten with death (2Ki_19:14-36). Ezra’s prayer led to national reform and prosperity (Eze_9:10). More solid good is wrought in a nation by prayer than by diplomacy or arms.
LESSONS:—
1. Prayer is essential to building up a great and influential moral character.
2. Prayer intensifies the perceptive and realizing power of faith.
3. Prayer is an all-potent agency in conquering spiritual adversaries.
THE VISION PERMITTED TO ELISHA’S SERVANT AS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE TRUE FAITH OF THE SOUL (2Ki_6:17)
The chariots and horses are not here, as in the account of the ascent of Elijah a few chapters before, vehicles for a glorious passage to the skies, but simply symbols of the Divine power and protection; but in both passages the highest intelligences are represented as taking shapes, like the forms in Ezekiel, which imply that their true nobility is always service. The immaterial spirits become cognizable by the servant of Elisha under forms best calculated to reassure his fainting faith. Fire is a symbol of the Godhead, because fire is the most ethereal of the earthly elements. The gift of Pentecost sat as tongues of fire on the heads of the apostles. God is said by His prophet and His apostle to be “a consuming fire.” “The seraph is properly the burning spirit.” The horses and chariots mean, therefore, warlike force. Still, what the servant sees is not a material, it is a spiritual reality, taking a form which assures him of God’s sure protection, through the agencies of these ministers of His who do His pleasure, and at a time when all was death to the eye of flesh.
I. Now, here we see, as if through a microscope, the act or process of faith in the human soul. Faith, first of all, is not an act of the natural imagination. It is necessary to say this, because a great many persons constantly allude to faith in terms which imply that it is. They speak of a person of great faith, meaning that he is a very imaginative person, that he has quite an unusual share of that privileged, that versatile faculty which does indeed achieve so much in society, so much for literature, which is the very wellspring of poetry, which is the soul, the genius of constructive art, but which is less welcome in the sphere of religious truth, because its highest efforts result in surrounding us with the unreal, while investing it with the attributes of reality. When men speak of faith as a vivid and energetic form of imagination, they mean to imply this, without stating in terms that they do so; they mean to imply that just as the poet Virgil projected a picture of the nether world out of the immense wealth of his fancy, so evangelists and apostles have traced their own beautiful pictures of heaven, and their awful descriptions of hell and of judgment, on the pages of our testaments, by the aid of an extraordinary variety of the religious imagination. The evangelists and apostles, whatever else they were—I say it with reverence—were not poets, they were eminently prosaic; and the remarks of Rousseau that the inventor of the gospel history must have been not less wonderful than its hero if he were entirely unassisted from above, is at least a satisfactory reply to this theory of faith doing the work of pure imagination. In the case before us Elisha’s servant did not create, by an act of imagination, a splendid picture in the air, after the manner of a Milton or a Rubens, a picture of fiery beings circling round the form of his beloved, of his imperilled master. The thing is psychologically impossible. He had his eye upon the hard and menacing fact before him, upon the lines of the Syrian troops who were sent to capture the prophet his master. He could, for the time, see nothing beyond the sphere of sense. His new power of seeing the chariots and horses of fire sweeping around Elisha did not create these spiritual forms and beings; there they were, whether he and other men saw them or not, just as the more remote planets were certainly revolving in their orbits during the centuries when our science had not yet reached them by her reckonings and telescopes. Elisha had been just as much encompassed by the spirit-world the moment before his servant saw that this was the case, as he was the moment afterwards. The man’s new sight could not create, as his blindness could not have destroyed, the supernatural reality.
II. Nor is faith only the conclusion, the final act, of a process of natural reasoning. If this were the case, if faith were merely the conclusion of a syllogism, it would necessarily follow that all people with good undertandings must necessarily be believers in Christianity. We know, my brethren, that this is not the case. We know, alas! that many persons of great natural abilities, such as was Voltaire, are and have been unbelievers; and this alone would seem to show that something besides intelligence is implied in an act of faith. No man whose mind was not impaired could go through a proposition of Euclid and refuse to assent to a conclusion; but many people do read “Paley’s Evidences,” or, what is more to the purpose, what St. Paul himself says about the resurrection, and yet do not admit Paley’s and St. Paul’s conclusion that Christianity comes from God. If believing in Christianity were simply an affair of the natural understanding, this could not be. It would be just as inevitable to believe St. Paul as it is intellectually to believe Euclid. The affections and the will have a great deal to say to every pure act of faith. The understanding cannot compel faith. The evidence at the disposal of the understanding is always less than absolutely mathematical; it does not convince unless the moral nature is in such a condition that it is possible for it to be convincing. What is it which makes the desire, the heart on the one side, and the evidence at the disposal of the understanding on the other side, result in the complex, in the perfect act of faith? What is it which strikes the sacred spark which thus combines the action of the understanding and the yearnings of the heart into the single act which supersedes while it combines them?
III. Faith is, in the last resort, the fire which is lighted up in the soul by a ray from Heaven, by a ray of grace. It is a gift from God. It is a fresh gift, which nature can neither rival nor anticipate. Elisha might have insisted upon many considerations which ought in reason to have satisfied his servant that God and His holy ones were now, as of old, near at hand, that the near presence of the Syrians did not amount to a real reason of despair. Elisha did not argue. There are times when it is worse than useless. Elisha prayed; he prayed that the Lord would open the eyes of the young man to see things, not as they appear to sense, but as they are; to see, not merely the world of sense, but the world of spirit; and his prayer was granted. Reason can do very much for faith. Reason stands to faith just as did the Baptist to Christ our Lord. She is the messenger which goes before the face of faith to make ready its path within the soul. Reason can explain, she can infer, she can combine, she can reduce difficulties to their true proportions, she can make the most of considerations which show what, upon the whole, is to be expected; but here she must stop. She cannot do the work of God’s grace; she cannot transfigure the moral nature so as to enable it to correspond to the conclusions of the illuminated intellect; she cannot open the eyes of the young man and make him see. If this last triumph is to be achieved, it must be by grace given in answer to prayer.
IV. Let us see in this history a remedy against despondency, such as good Christians often feel on contemplating the state of the world at particular periods. All seems to be going against the cause of right, of truth, of God. Intellectual assailants, political adversaries, all the passions, all the prejudices, all the misapprehensions of an unregenerate humanity come down and besiege the prophet in Dothan. All might seem to be lost again and again, if it were not that again and again the eyes of the spirit are opened to perceive that they which are with as are more than they which are with them. Courage; the unseen is greater than the seen, the eternal will surely outlive the things of time. An act of faith may cross the threshold of the door which separates us from that world which is beyond the senses, and may at once correct the apparent preponderance of evil by a vision of the throne, and the resources of the All-good.
V. And see, too, in this history, our true pattern of nobility. It has been a common saying, quoted again and again of late, to explain and justify changes on the Continent that have taken place within the last ten years, that it is better to be the citizens of a great state than the citizens of a small one. It is better for many reasons; for this among the rest, there is an inspiration for good, which comes from the sense of wide and noble fellowship, of high and distinguished associates and guardians, which is denied to those who are members of a small society that have it not. And in His kingdom God has provided us with this. All the races of the world furnish their contributions to the universal church. But the frontier of sense is not the frontier of the church of Christ. It embraces both worlds, the unseen world as well as the visible. The church is a mixed as well as a world-embracing society, consisting, here of the faithful, there of the blessed angels and of the spirits of the dead, united in the bonds of one indissoluble communion, and all ranged beneath the throne of thrones, the throne of God, the throne of Jesus. The Syrian host may press us hard; the host of temptations and bad thoughts and bad acquaintances; of haunting memories; but when, at the voice of prayer, our eyes open upon the realities around and above us, we must remember that we have a destiny before us, and means at hand to prepare for it.
VI. Lastly, we see here the secret of real effective prayer. Why is prayer, public prayer especially, in so many cases nothing better than the coldest of cold, heartless forms? For two reasons especially. They enter on it without having any true knowledge of themselves whatever; of their sins and wants, as well as of their hopes and fears; of their real state before God, as well as of their reputed character in the eyes of men; in a word, they have no true knowledge of that for which prayer wins something like a remedy, and thus they have no personal interest of their own which they can import into and identify with the public language of the Church. This is the first reason. But there is a second. Prayer is so cold and heartless a thing in numbers of instances, because men see nothing of Him to whom prayer is addressed, nothing of God, nothing of Jesus, nothing of the spirit-world around the throne, nothing of the majesty, the beauty, the glory which encircles God, such as is possible, really possible, to our finite and purbliud gaze—nothing of the everlasting worship which surrounds Him, nothing of the ministers of His that do His pleasure. There are, believe it, few better prayers on entering a church than Elisha’s, “Lord, open mine eyes, that I may see.” “I do not wish to mock Thee by lip service, I do not wish to pile up my ordinary business thoughts, or my thoughts of pleasure, on the very steps of Thy throne; open mine eyes, then, that I may see in Thy beauty, and in Thy glorious presence may lose all relish which belongs only to the things of time.” It is when the soul struggles thus in an honest spiritual agony that it is really emanicipated from the tyranny of sense, and, like the young man in this history, or rather like the dying martyr of the gospel times, see the heavens opened, sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God.—Canon Liddon, condensed from Hom. Quarterly.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2Ki_6:8-17. Hints of the course of things in Zion.
1. The revealed plot.
2. The military expedition against one man.
3. The peaceful abode.
4. The cry of alarm.
5. The unveiled protection from above.—Krummacher.
2Ki_6:8-12. The mischief maker.
1. Consults with kindred spirits who are most likely to carry out his designs.
2. Delights in plotting evil against the weak and inoffensive.
3. Fondly dreams his schemes are too cunningly devised for discovery.
4. Is intensely mortified when his plans prove abortive.
5. Is first to suspect his accomplices of treachery.
6. Cannot tolerate a superior.
2Ki_6:9. It is no treason to bring crafty and malicious plots to the light. It is a sacred duty (Act_23:16). Beware of going into places where thou wilt be in jeopardy of soul and body. Be on thy guard when the enemy advances.—Osiander.
2Ki_6:11. When God brings to naught the plots of the crafty, they become enraged, and, instead of recognizing the hand of God and humbling themselves, they lay the blame upon other men, and become more malicious and obstinate. He who does not understand the ways of God thinks that he sees human treason in what is really God’s dispensation. Woe to the ruler who cannot trust his nearest attendants.—Starke.
2Ki_6:12. God-given Wisdom
1. Bestowed on men eminent for prayer and obedience.
2. Enables man to discern the unsuspected secrets of others.
3. Is more than a match for the most consummate subtlety of the wicked.
4. Should be used in warning and delivering the innocent.
—Tremble with fear, ye obstinate sinners, because all is bared and discovered before His eyes, and shudder at the thought that the veil behind which ye carry on your works does not exist for Him! All which ye plot in your secret corners to-day, ye will find to-morrow inscribed upon His book; and however secretly and cunningly ye spin your web, not a single thread of it shall escape His eye!—Krumm.
2Ki_6:13-16. Moral courage.
1. Is gained by communion with God.
2. Is a tower of strength to man in whatever locality he may dwell.
3. Is not intimidated by the most formidable host.
4. Inspires confidence in the timid and fearful.
5. Is conscious of being backed by superior force.
2Ki_6:17. The vision of the supernatural.
1. Hidden from the most highly educated natural powers.
2. Granted by a special operation of the Divine Spirit on the human mind.
3. A dazzling revelation of heavenly power and beauty.
4. Inspires invincible bravery in times of peril.
—In answer to Elisha’s prayer, God opened his spiritual eyes, unveiled his inner sense, and lifted him for a moment to the high plane of Elisha’s supernatural vision, whence he obtained a view of the mighty creations of the spiritual world around him. This sight into the spiritual world was not an instance of hallucination, but a miracle of grace; an instance of that Divine ecstacy or trance in which the holy scers were enabled to behold the visions of the supersensual world, and which consists essentially in this, that the human spirit is seized and compassed by the Divine spirit with such force and energy, that, being lifted from its natural state, it becomes altogether a seeing eye, a hearing ear, a perceiving sense, that takes most vivid cognizance of things in either heaven, earth, or hell.—Whedon.
—Invisible armies guard the servants of God while they seem most forsaken of earthly aid, most exposed to certain dangers. If the eyes of our faith be as open as those of our sense, to see angels as well as Syrians, we cannot be appalled with the most unequal terms of hostility. Those blessed spirits are ready either to rescue our bodies, or to carry up our souls to blessedness.—Bp. Hall.
2Ki_6:18-23. The Divine treatment of sin.
1. Sin blinds the soul so that it does not justly apprehend the true character of what it sees.
2. Sin causes the soul to wander in darkness and error.
3. The wicked are always eager to take advantage of the mistakes of their opponents.
4. God spares the sinner, though he is completely in His power.
5. Divine mercy has made every provision for the present and future welfare of the sinner.
6. The Divine clemency should disarm hostility, and promote amity and peace among men.
2Ki_6:18. The Lord smites with blindness those who fight against Him, not in order that they may remain blind, but in order that they may truly see, after they shall have observed how far they have strayed, and shall have recognized the error of their way.
2Ki_6:23. The king of Israel has done by his feast what he could not have done by his sword. The bands of Syria will no more come by way of ambush or incursion into the bounds of Israel. Never did a charitable act go away without the retribution of a blessing. In doing some good to our enemies, we do most good to ourselves. God cannot but love in us this imitation of His mercy, who bids His sun shine, and His rain fall, where He is most provoked; and that love is never fruitless.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v8 2 Kings
2 Kings
SIGHT AND BLINDNESS
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2Ki 6:8 - 2Ki 6:18.
The revelation of the angel guard around Elisha is the important part of this incident, but the preliminaries to it may yield some instruction. The first point to be noted is the friendly relations between the king and the prophet. The king was probably Joram, who had given up Baal worship, though still retaining the calves at Bethel and Dan {2Ki 3:2}. The whole tone of things is changed from the stormy days of Elijah. The prophet is frequently an inhabitant of the capital, and a trusted counsellor. No doubt much of this improvement was owing to Elijah’s undaunted denunciation, but much, too, was due to Elisha’s gentle persuasion. We are often tempted to do injustice to the sterner predecessors when we see how the gentler ways of their followers seem to accomplish more than theirs did. Unless winter storms had come first, spring sunshine would draw forth few flowers. All honour to the heroes who begin the fight, and do not see the victory.
The Syrian king’s way of warfare was not by a regular continued invasion, but by dashes across the border on undefended places; and time after time he found himself out in his calculations, and troops enough to beat him off massed where he meant to strike. No wonder that he suspected treachery. The prompt answer of his servants implies that Elisha’s intervention was well known by them, and measures the reputation in which he stood. Let no one suppose that thwarting Syria was an unworthy use of a supernatural gift. The preservation of Israel and the revelation of God were worthy ends, and all that is accessory to a worthy end is worthy. It is foolish to call anything a trifle which serves a great purpose.
Joram had learned to obey the prophet, and his people and their enemies had learned that Elisha was a prophet. That was much. He had no great revelations of the deep things of God to give to his generation or to posterity, but he gave directions as to practical life which bore on the wellbeing of the state; and that office was not less divinely conferred. It is a good thing when God’s servants are not afraid to make their voices heard in politics, and a safeguard for a nation when their counsels are taken. The quiet prophet was more to Israel than an army.
The ‘great host’ sent to capture Elisha shows the terror which he had inspired, and the importance attached to getting possession of him. It is, too, an odd instance of the inconsistency of godless men, in that it never occurs to the Syrian king that Elisha, who knew all his schemes, might know this one too, or that horses and chariots were of little use against a man who had Heaven to back him. Dothan lay on an isolated hill in a wide plain, and could easily be surrounded. A night-march offered the chance of a surprise, which seems to have been prevented by the unusually early rising of Elisha’s servant, the young successor of Gehazi. Apparently he had gone out of the little city before he discovered the besiegers, and then rushed back in terror. Note the strongly contrasted pictures of the lad and his master,-the one representing the despair of sense, the other the confidence of faith. The lad’s passionate exclamation was most natural, and fear darkening to bewildered helplessness is reasonable to men who only see the material and visible dangers and enemies that beset every life. The wonder is, not that we should sometimes be afraid, but that we should ever be free from fear, if we look only at visible facts. Worse foes ring us round than those whose armour glittered in the morning sunshine at Dothan, and we are as helpless to cope with them as that frightened youth was. Any man who calmly reflects on the possibilities and certainties of his life will find abundant reason for a sinking heart. So much that is dreadful and sad may come, and so much must come, that the boldest may well shrink, and the most resourceful cry ‘Alas! how shall we do?’ It is not courage, but blindness, which enables godless men to front life so unconcernedly.
How nobly the calmness of Elisha shows beside the lad’s alarm! Probably both were now outside the city, as the immediately following verse speaks of the mountain as the scene. If so, Elisha had gone forth to meet the enemy, and that must have brought fresh terror to his servant. The quiet ‘Fear not!’ was of little use without the assurance of the next clause; for there is no more idle expenditure of breath than in telling a man not to be afraid, and doing nothing to remove the grounds of his fear. That is all that the world can do to comfort or hearten. ‘Fear not?’ the youth might well have said. ‘It is all very easy to say that; but look there! How can I help being afraid?’ There is only one way to help it, and that is to believe that ‘they that be with us are more than they that be with them.’ The true and only conqueror of reasonable fear is still more reasonable trust. The two parts played by the servant and the prophet are united in the man who cleaves to Jesus Christ as his defence. He would not cling so close to Him but for the fear that tightens his grip. He would tremble far more but for that grip. He who says in his heart, ‘What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee,’ will presently get to saying, ‘I will trust, and not be afraid.’
Note, further, the sight seen by opened eyes. Elisha did not pray that the heavenly guards might come; for they were there already. Nor does it appear that he saw them; for he did not need that heightened condition of spiritual perception which appears to be meant by the opening of the eyes. And what a sight the trembling young man saw! Where he had seen only barren rock or sparse vegetation, he saw that same fiery host that had attended Elijah in his translation, now enclosing the unarmed prophet and himself within a flaming ring. The manifestation, not the presence, of the angel guards was the miracle. It was a momentary unveiling of what always was, and would be after the curtain was drawn again. I suppose that no reverent reader of Scripture can doubt the existence of angelic beings, or their office to ‘minister to the heirs of salvation.’ To us, indeed, who know Him who is the ‘Head of all principalities and powers,’ the doctrine of angelic ministration is of less importance than that of Christ’s divine help; but the latter truth does not supersede the former, though its brightness throws the other, about which we know so much less, into comparative shadow. But we may still learn from this transient disclosure of ‘the things that are,’ the permanent truth of the ever-active presence of divinely sent helps and guards, with all who trust in Him.
This manifestation has several features of resemblance to that given to Jacob, in his most defenceless hour, when he saw beside his unprotected camp of women and children ‘God’s host,’ and, in a rapture of thankful wonder, named the place ‘Mahanaim,’-’Two Camps.’ The sight teaches us that God’s messengers are ever near, and then most near when needed most. It tells us, too, that they come in the form needed. They are warriors when we are ringed about by foes, counsellors when we are perplexed, comforters when we mourn. Their shapes are as varied as our needs, and ever correspond to ‘the present distress.’ They come in power sufficient to conquer. There was force enough circling the prophet to have annihilated all the Syrians. True, they did not draw their celestial swords, but they were there, and their presence was enough for the triumphant faith of the guarded men. What living thing could come through that wall of fire?
Our eyes are blinded and we need to have them cleared, if not in the same manner as this lad’s, yet in an analogous way. We look so constantly at the things seen that we have no sight for the unseen. Worldliness, sin, unbelief, sense and its trifles, time and its transitoriness, blind the eyes of our mind; and we need those of sense to be closed, that these may open. The truest vision is the vision of faith. It is certain, direct, and conclusive. The world says, ‘Seeing is believing’; the gospel says, ‘Believing is seeing.’ If we would but live near to Jesus Christ, pray to Him to touch our blind eyeballs, and turn away from the dazzling unrealities which sense brings, we should find Him ‘the master-light of all our seeing,’ and be sure of the eternal, invisible things, with an assurance superior to that given by the keenest sight in the brightest sunshine. When we are blind to earth, we see earth glorified by angel presences, and fear and despair and helplessness and sorrow flee away from our tranquil hearts. If, on the other hand, we fix our gaze on earth and its trifles, there will generally be more to alarm than to encourage, and we shall do well to be afraid, if we do not see, as in such a case we shall certainly not see, the fiery wall around us, behind which God keeps His people safe.
Note, finally, the blindness. Elisha’s dealing with the advancing host of Syria can only be rightly estimated by looking beyond the limits of the text. His object was to carry the whole army into Samaria, that they might there be won by giving them bread to eat and water to drink, and so heaping coals of fire on their head. The prophet, who was in so many points a foreshadowing of the gospel type of excellence, was the first to show the right way to conquer. Nineteen centuries of so-called Christianity have not brought ‘Christendom’ to practise Elisha’s recipe for finishing a war. It succeeded in his hands; for, after that feast and liberation of a captured army, ‘the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel.’ How could they, as long as the remembrance of that kindness lasted? Pity that the same sort of treatment were not tried to-day!
The blindness which fell on the Syrians does not seem to have been total loss of sight,-for, if so, they could not have followed Elisha to Samaria, nearly fifteen miles off,-but rather an ocular affection which prevented them from recognising what they saw. It was a supernatural impediment in any case, however far it extended. God did ‘according to the word of Elisha,’ a wonderful inversion of the ordinary formula. But that was because Elisha was doing according to the word of the Lord. The prayers which are ‘according to His will’ are the answered prayers.
They who see not the angels, see nothing clearly. There is a mist over every eye that beholds only the things of time, which prevents it from seeing these as they are, and from recognising a prophet when he is before them. If we would rightly estimate the objects of sense, we must discern, shining through them, the far loftier and greater things of eternity. That flaming background is needed to supply a scale by which to measure the others. The flat plain of Lombardy is most beautiful when its flatness is seen girdled by the giant Alps, where lies the purity of the snow which feeds the rivers that fertilise the levels below.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v8 The Blindness of the Syrians
The Blindness of the Syrians
v. 8. Then the king of Syria, still during the reign of Jehoram of Israel, warred against Israel, more by expeditions which had the plundering of the country for their object than by regular campaigns, and took counsel with his servants, saying, In such and such a place shall be my camp. He fixed the location of his various encampments in advance and informed his captains in secret council.
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v. 9. And the man of God, Elisha, sent unto the king of Israel, saying, Beware that thou pass not such a place, namely, for the purpose of occupying it with a sufficiently strong body of men to keep the Syrians away; for thither the Syrians are come down, he knew the places which they had selected for their encampments.
v. 10. And the king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God told him and warned him of, always occupying these places in advance, and saved himself there, thus frustrating the plans of the Syrians, not once nor twice, it happened time and again.
v. 11. Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this thing, the matter vexed him severely. And he called his servants and said unto them, Will ye not show me which of us is for the king of Israel? He believed that there was a traitor in their own camp, who made known their plans to the enemy.
v. 12. And one of his servants said, None, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bed-chamber, he possessed such a great amount of prophetic wisdom that he knew all the secrets of the Syrian king.
v. 13. And he said, Go and spy where he is that I may send and fetch him, intending to get Elisha into his power and thus to prevent him from making known his plans to the king of Israel. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan, some twelve miles north of Samaria.
v. 14. Therefore sent he, the king of Syria, thither horses and chariots and a great host, a large body of infantry; and they came by night, and compassed the city about.
v. 15. And when the servant of the man of God, either Gehazi or some prophet-disciple, was risen early and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master, how shall we do? He felt that they were now in the power of the enemies and could not escape.
v. 16. And he, Elisha, answered, Fear not; for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. Cf Num 14:9; 2Ch 32:7; Psa 3:6; Psa 27:3.
v. 17. And Elisha prayed and said, Lord, I pray Thee, open his eyes that he may see, that his physical eyes might behold what his spirit should have known. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw, what was ordinarily hidden from the eyes of mortals; and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha, the hosts of the heavenly angels had been sent to protect him.
v. 18. And when they, the Syrians, came down to him, Elisha prayed unto the Lord and said, Smite this people, I pray Thee, with blindness. And He, Jehovah, smote them with blindness according to the word of Elisha; they were in a condition that their eyes could not distinguish properly, although the ability to see was not taken from them.
v. 19. And Elisha said unto them, This is not the way, neither is this the city, he prepared deliberately to mislead them. Follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom ye seek. But he led them to Samaria, while they were virtually his captives.
v. 20. And it came to pass, when they were come into Samaria, that Elisha said, Lord, open the eyes of these men, of the Syrians who had followed him so trustfully and blindly, that they may see. And the Lord opened their eyes, and they saw; and, behold, they were in the midst of Samaria.
v. 21. And the king of Israel said unto Elisha when he saw them, My father, namely, in the spiritual sense, shall I smite them? Shall I smite them? He was eager to make use of the advantage offered by the presence of the enemy, for they were now in his power.
v. 22. And he, with the proper humaneness which would consider it highly improper to take a mean advantage of an enemy, answered, Thou shalt not smite them. Wouldest thou smite those whom thou hast taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow? The meaning is: If thou shouldst put these to death, could thy action be justified as in the case of prisoners of war? Set bread and water before them, preparing them a bounteous meal,that they may eat and drink and go to their master.
v. 23. And he prepared great provision for them; and when they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master. So the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel; they realized that such expeditions were useless as long as Elisha was in the country and revealed all their plans. The angel of the Lord encamps round about those that fear Him. The true children of God keep many a great misfortune from entire countries.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv8, 10, 12, 14, 17, 20, 22 Now the king of Aram was waging war against…
Now the king of Aram was waging war against Israel
"When the king of Aram was at war with Israel,"
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Now
This word is used here to mark a break in the main story line. Here the author starts to tell a new part of the story.
saying, "My camp will be in such and such a place
The king of Aram was telling his counselors where to set up the camp. Here the phrase "such and such" is a way to refer to the information of the location of the camp without writing it out. If this phase does not translate well into your language this may be written as indirect speech. AT: "and told them where his camp would be located" (See: Direct and Indirect Quotations)
the man of God
"Elisha the man of God"
Be careful not to pass that place, for the Arameans are going down there
Elisha knew the specific place that the Arameans were going to set up their camp and advised the king of Israel for his soldiers to avoid that area.
translationWords
king
Aram
kingdom of Israel
servant
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv8, 11, 15, 16, 21, 23 6:8-10 Elisha’s ability to know the Aramean king’s raiding…
6:8-10 Elisha’s ability to know the Aramean king’s raiding strategies allowed him to warn Joram of danger. Apparently, the healing of Naaman (5:1-19) had improved relations between Elisha and Joram (see 3:13-14).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.