Elisha came to Damascus; and Benhadad the king of Syria was sick. He was told, “The man of God has come here.”
The king said to Hazael, “Take a present in your hand, and go, meet the man of God, and inquire of Yahweh by him, saying, ‘Will I recover from this sickness?’ ”
So Hazael went to meet him, and took a present with him, even of every good thing of Damascus, forty camels’ burden, and came and stood before him, and said, “Your son Benhadad king of Syria has sent me to you, saying, ‘Will I recover from this sickness?’ ”
Elisha said to him, “Go, tell him, ‘You will surely recover;’ however Yahweh has shown me that he will surely die.”
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv9–10 Of all the chiefest and precious things of the…
Of all the chiefest and precious things of the country.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv7–10 2Ki 8:7 And Elisha came to Damascus; and Benhadad…
2Ki 8:7 And Elisha came to Damascus; and Benhadad the king of Syria was sick; and it was told him, saying, The man of God is come hither.
Ver. 7. Benhadad the king of Syria was sick.] Ex terrore et moerore: he was so vexed at the late shameful flight of his host from the siege of Samaria, occasioned by a causeless fear, that it made him sick, saith Josephus. Philip of Spain bore his great loss in 1588 much better.
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 vv7–10 To Damascus; either to the city, or rather to…
To Damascus; either to the city, or rather to the kingdom, of Damascus, by comparing 2Ki 8:9; as Samaria, which properly was the name of the city, is sometimes the name of the kingdom; of which See Poole "1Ki 13:32". Hither he came by the special direction of the Spirit, and under God’s protection, upon the errand here following.
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 v7 Here, I. We may enquire what brought Elisha to…
Here, I. We may enquire what brought Elisha to Damascus, the chief city of Syria. Was he sent to any but the lost sheep of the house of Israel? It seems he was. Perhaps he went to pay a visit to Naaman his convert, and to confirm him in his choice of the true religion, which was the more needful now because, it should seem, he was not out of his place (for Hazael is supposed to be captain of that host); either he resigned it or was turned out of it, because he would not bow, or not bow heartily, in the house of Rimmon. Some think he went to Damascus upon account of the famine, or rather he went thither in obedience to the orders God gave Elijah, Kg1 19:15, "Go to Damascus to anoint Hazael, thou, or thy successor."
II. We may observe that Ben-hadad, a great king, rich and mighty, lay sick. No honour, wealth, or power, will secure men from the common diseases and disasters of human life; palaces and thrones lie as open to the arrests of sickness and death as the meanest cottage.
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III. We may wonder that the king of Syria, in his sickness, should make Elisha his oracle.
1. Notice was soon brought him that the man of God (for by that title he was well known in Syria since he cured Naaman) had come to Damascus, Kg2 8:7. "Never in better time," says Ben-hadad. "Go, and enquire of the Lord by him." In his health he bowed in the house of Rimmon, but now that he is sick he distrusts his idol, and sends to enquire of the God of Israel. Affliction brings those to God who in their prosperity had made light of him; sometimes sickness opens men's eyes and rectifies their mistakes. This is the more observable, (1.) Because it was not long since a king of Israel had, in his sickness, sent to enquire of the god of Ekron (Kg2 1:2), as if there had been no God in Israel. Note, God sometimes fetches to himself that honour from strangers which is denied him and alienated from him by his own professing people. (2.) Because it was not long since this Ben-hadad had sent a great force to treat Elisha as an enemy (Kg2 6:14), yet now he courts him as a prophet. Note, Among other instances of the change of men's minds by sickness and affliction, this is one, that it often gives them other thoughts of God's ministers, and teaches them to value the counsels and prayers of those whom they had hated and despised.
2. To put an honour upon the prophet, (1.) He sends to him, and does not send for him, as if, with the centurion, he thought himself not worthy that the man of God should come under his roof. (2.) He sends to him by Hazael, his prime-minister of state, and not by a common messenger. It is no disparagement to the greatest of men to attend the prophets of the Lord. Hazael must go and meet him at a place where he had appointed a meeting with his friends. (3.) He sends him a noble present, of every good thing of Damascus, as much as loaded forty camels (Kg2 8:9), testifying hereby his affection to the prophet, bidding him welcome to Damascus, and providing for his sustenance while he sojourned there. It is probable that Elisha accepted it (why should he not?), though he refused Naaman's. (4.) He orders Hazael to call him his son Ben-hadad, conforming to the language of Israel, who called the prophets fathers. (5.) He puts an honour upon him as one acquainted with the secrets of heaven, when he enquires of him, Shall I recover? It is natural to us to desire to know things to come in time, while things to come in eternity are little thought of or enquired after.
IV. What passed between Hazael and Elisha is especially remarkable.
1. Elisha answered his enquiry concerning the king, that he might recover, the disease was not mortal, but that he should die another way (Kg2 8:10), not a natural but a violent death. There are many ways out of the world, and sometimes, while men think to avoid one, they fall by another.
2. He looked Hazael in the face with an unusual concern, till he made Hazael blush and himself weep, Kg2 8:11. The man of God could outface the man of war. It was not in Hazael's countenance that Elisha read what he would do, but God did, at this time, reveal it to him, and it fetched tears from his eyes. The more foresight men have the more grief they are liable to.
3. When Hazael asked him why he wept he told him what a great deal of mischief he foresaw he would do to the Israel of God (Kg2 8:12), what desolations he would make of their strong-holds, and barbarous destruction of their men, women, and children. The sins of Israel provoked God to give them up into the hands of their cruel enemies, yet Elisha wept to think that ever Israelites should be thus abused; for, though he foretold, he did not desire the woeful day. See what havock war makes, what havock sin makes, and how the nature of man is changed by the fall, and stripped even of humanity itself.
4. Hazael was greatly surprised at this prediction (Kg2 8:13): What, says he, Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? This great thing he looks upon to be, (1.) An act of great power, not to be done but by a crowned head. "It must be some mighty potentate that can think to prevail thus against Israel, and therefore not I." Many are raised to that dominion which they never thought of and it often proves to their own hurt, Ecc 8:9. (2.) An act of great barbarity, which could not be done but by one lost to all honour and virtue: "Therefore," says he, "it is what I shall never find in my heart to be guilty of: Is thy servant a dog, to rend, and tear, and devour? Unless I were a dog, I could not do it." See here, [1.] What a bad opinion he had of the sin; he looked upon it to be great wickedness, fitter for a brute, for a beast of prey, to do than a man. Note, It is possible for a wicked man, under the convictions and restraints of natural conscience, to express great abhorrence of a sin, and yet afterwards to be well reconciled to it. [2.] What a good opinion he had of himself, how much better than he deserved; he thought it impossible he should do such barbarous things as the prophet foresaw. Note, We are apt to think ourselves sufficiently armed against those sins which yet we are afterwards overcome by, as Peter, Mat 26:35.
5. In answer to this Elisha only told him he should be king over Syria; then he would have power to do it, and then he would find in his heart to do it. Honours change men's tempers and manners, and seldom for the better: "Thou knowest not what thou wilt do when thou comest to be king, but I tell thee this thou wilt do." Those that are little and low in the world cannot imagine how strong the temptations of power and prosperity are, and, if ever they arrive at them, they will find how deceitful their hearts were and how much worse than they suspected.
V. What mischief Hazael did to his master hereupon. If he took any occasion to do it from what Elisha had said the fault was in him, not in the word. 1. He basely cheated his master, and belied the prophet (Kg2 8:14): He told me thou shouldst certainly recover. This was abominably false; he told him he should die (Kg2 8:10), but he unfairly and unfaithfully concealed that, either because he was loth to put the king out of humour with bad news or because hereby he might the more effectually carry on that bloody design which he conceived when he was told he should be his successor. The devil ruins men by telling them they shall certainly recover and do well, so rocking them asleep in security, than which nothing is more fatal. This was an injury to the king, who lost the benefit of this warning to prepare for death, and an injury to Elisha, who would be counted a false prophet. 2. He barbarously murdered his master, and so made good the prophet's word, Kg2 8:15. He dipped a thick cloth in cold water, and spread it upon his face, under pretence of cooling and refreshing him, but so that it stopped his breath, and stifled him presently, he being weak (and not able to help himself) or perhaps asleep: such a bubble is the life of the greatest of men, and so much exposed are princes to violence. Hazael, who was Ben-hadad's confidant, was his murderer, and some think, was not suspected, nor did the truth ever come out but by the pen of this inspired historian. We found this haughty monarch (1 Kings 20) the terror of the mighty in the land of the living, but he goes down slain to the pit with his iniquity upon his bones, Eze 32:27.
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 vv7–10 And Elisha came to Damascus,.... On what account, and…
And Elisha came to Damascus,.... On what account, and when, is not certain, whether to convert Gehazi, as say the Jews (d); or to confirm Naaman in the true religion he professed, for which he might be dismissed from his office, since another man was made general of the Syrian army; or on account of the famine; or rather it may be to anoint, or, however, to declare that Hazael would be king of Syria; see Kg1 19:15,
and Benhadad the king of Syria was sick; at the time he came thither, where his palace was, and now a Mahometan temple; a very extraordinary building, according to Benjamin the Jew (e):
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and it was told him, saying, the man of God is come hither; the famous prophet in Israel, Elisha, through whom Naaman his general had been cured of his leprosy, of whom he had heard so much.
(d) T. Bab. Sotah, fol. 47. 1. (e) Itinerar. p. 55.
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John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv8–10 Inquire of the Lord,&c. - In his health he…
Inquire of the Lord,&c. - In his health he bowed down in the house of Rimmon; but now he tends to inquire of the God of Israel. Among other instances of the change of mens minds by affliction or sickness, this is one; that it often gives them other thoughts of God's ministers, and teacheth them to value those whom they before hated and despised.
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Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv7, 8, 10 Verse 7. Elisha came to Damascus] That he might…
Verse 7. Elisha came to Damascus] That he might lead Gehazi to repentance; according to Jarchi and some others.
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 vv7–10 2Ki 8:7. Elisha came to Damascus — Either to…
2Ki 8:7. Elisha came to Damascus — Either to the city so called, or rather, as it seems from 2Ki 8:9, to the kingdom of Damascus; as Samaria, which properly was the name of a city, sometimes means the kingdom of which that city was the capital. Some have thought that Elisha went thither to avoid the famine; but it is more probable that he was sent by God, on the errand following. Ben-hadad, the king of Syria, was sick — For neither honour, wealth, nor power will secure men from the common diseases and disasters of human life: palaces and thrones lie as open to the arrests of death as the meanest cottage. It was told him, saying, The man of God is come hither — Which doubtless had rarely, if ever, been the case before; and his having cured Naaman had raised a great opinion of his power with God in that country.
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 vv7–10 The hour had come for carrying out the command…
The hour had come for carrying out the command given by God to Elijah (marginal reference “e”), and by him probably passed on to his successor. Elisha, careless of his own safety, quitted the land of Israel, and proceeded into the enemy’s country, thus putting into the power of the Syrian king that life which he had lately sought so eagerly 2Ki 6:13-19.
The man of God - The Damascenes had perhaps known Elisha by this title from the time of his curing Naaman. Or the phrase may be used as equivalent to “prophet,” which is the title commonly given to Elisha by the Syrians. See 2Ki 6:12. Compare 2Ki 5:13.
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 vv7, 9, 10 Damascus, the territory, (ver. 8.) to announce the king’s…
Damascus, the territory, (ver. 8.) to announce the king’s death, and to anoint Hazael, as God had ordered Elias, 3 Kings xix. 15. (Calmet) --- Sick, at the ill success of his late expedition. (Josephus) (Tirinus)
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).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv7, 9, 10 HAZAEL KILLS HIS MASTER, AND SUCCEEDS HIM. (Kg2 8:7-15)
HAZAEL KILLS HIS MASTER, AND SUCCEEDS HIM. (Kg2 8:7-15)
Elisha came to Damascus--He was directed thither by the Spirit of God, in pursuance of the mission formerly given to his master in Horeb (Kg1 19:15), to anoint Hazael king of Syria. On the arrival of the prophet being known, Ben-hadad, who was sick, sent to inquire the issue of his disease, and, according to the practice of the heathens in consulting their soothsayers, ordered a liberal present in remuneration for the service.
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 vv7–10 HAZAEL MADE KING OF SYRIA, 2Ki_8:7-15.
HAZAEL MADE KING OF SYRIA, 2Ki_8:7-15.
7. Elisha came to Damascus — To fulfil the word of the Lord spoken long before to Elijah. See 1Ki_19:15, and note there.
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 vv7–10 7–15. Elisha visits Damascus. Benhadad, being sick, sends Hazael…
7–15. Elisha visits Damascus. Benhadad, being sick, sends Hazael to enquire of Elisha. Benhadad is murdered by Hazael (Not in Chronicles)
7. And Elisha came to Damascus] Probably here ‘Damascus’ is used not for the city, but for the district. For Hazael (verse 9) has a journey to make to meet the prophet, and is sent from the royal city by the sick king with his enquiry. We need not suppose that Elisha went to fulfil the command which had been given to Elijah (1Ki_19:15) to anoint Hazael king over Syria. For he does not anoint him, but merely says ‘The Lord hath shewed me that thou shalt be king over Syria’. Elisha appears to have been in no peril when he went into Syria, for the sick king’s message is of the most peaceable kind, and the presents which Hazael brought with him are an indication of the honour in which the prophet was held. This may be accounted for by the cure of Naaman, and by the release of the Syrian soldiers whom the prophet had brought into Samaria (2Ki_6:22-23).
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The man of God is come hither] Benhadad had experienced in many ways the power of the God of Israel, and though Rimmon was the god of Damascus, yet, in common with other idolaters, the king thinks that it may be possible for him, through the prophet, to obtain help from the Israelites’ God. Josephus (Ant. IX. 4. 6) represents Benhadad as having sickened from despondency after his late flight from Samaria, and because the God of Israel was hostile to him.
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 vv7–10 (7) And Elisha came to Damascus.—In the fragmentary condition…
(7) And Elisha came to Damascus.—In the fragmentary condition of the narrative, why he came is not clear. Rashi suggests that it was to fetch back Gehazi, who had fled to the Syrians (!), an idea based upon 1Ki_2:39, seq. Keil and others think the prophet went with the intention of anointing Hazael, in accordance with a supposed charge of Elijah’s. (Comp. 1Ki_19:15, where Elijah himself is bidden to anoint Hazael). Ewald believes that Elisha retreated to Damascene territory, in consequence of the strained relations existing between him and Jehoram, owing to the latter’s toleration of idolatry. Obviously all this rests upon pure conjecture. It is clear from 2Ki_8:7 that Elisha’s visit was not expected in Damascus, and further, that there was peace at the time between Damascus and Samaria. We do not know how much of Elisha’s history has been omitted between 2Ki_7:20 and 2Ki_8:7; but we may fairly assume that a divine impulse led the prophet to Damascus. The revelation, of which he speaks in 2Ki_8:10; 2Ki_8:13, probably came to him at the time, and so was not the occasion of his journey.
Ben-hadad . . . was sick.—According to Josephus, on account of the failure of his expedition against Samaria (?).
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The man of God.—As if Elisha were well known and highly esteemed in Syria.
Is come hither.—This certainly implies that Elisha had entered Damascus itself.
(7-15) Elisha’s visit to Damascus, and its consequences.
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 vv7–10 Vers. 7-15. Elisha"s visit to Damascus, and its consequences.…
Vers. 7-15. Elisha"s visit to Damascus, and its consequences. It has been usual to connect this visit of Elisha"s to Damascus with the commission given to Elijah many years previously, to anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. (1Ki_19:16) But it is certainly worthy of remark that neither is Elijah authorized to devolve his corn-mission on another, nor is he said to have done so, nor is there any statement in the present narrative or elsewhere that Elisha anointed Hazael. It is therefore quite possible that Elisha"s journey was wholly unconnected with the command given to Elijah. It may, as Ewald imagines, have been the consequence of disorders and dangers in Samaria, growing out of the divergence of views between Jehoram and the queen-mother Jezebel, who still retained considerable influence over the government; and Elisha may have taken his journey, not so much for the sake of a visit, as of a prolonged sojourn. That he attracted the attention both of Benhadad and of his successor Hazael is not surprising.
And Elisha came to Damascus. It was a bold step, whatever the circumstances that led to it. Not very long previously the Syrian king had made extraordinary efforts to capture Elisha, intending either to kin him or to keep him confined as a prisoner. (2Ki_6:18-19) Elisha had subsequently helped to baffle his plans of conquest, and might be thought to have caused the disgraceful retreat of the Syrian army from the walls of Samaria, which he had certainly prophesied. (2Ki_7:1) But Elisha was not afraid. He was probably commissioned to take his journey, whether its purpose was the anointing of Hazael or no. And Benhadad the King of Syria was sick. Ewald supposes that this "sickness" was the result of the disgrace and discredit into which he had fallen since his ignominious retreat, without assignable reason, from before the walls of Samaria; but Ben-hadad must have been of an age When the infirmities of nature press in upon a man, and when illness has to be expected. He was a contemporary of Ahab, (1Ki_20:1) who had now been dead ten or twelve years. And it was told him, saying, The man of God is come hither. Elisha seems to have attempted no concealment of his presence. No sooner was he arrived than his coming was reported to Benhadad. The Syrians had by this time learnt to give him the name by which he was commonly known (2Ki_4:7, 2Ki_4:21, 40 5:20 6:6, 10 7:2, 18) in Israel.
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Vers. 7-15. Elisha, Hazael, and Benhadad.
The present interview between Elisha and Hazael arose out of Benhadad"s illness. Benhadad heard that Elisha had come to Damascus, and he sent Hazael to inquire of the Lord by him if he would recover of his disease. It is wonderful how ready men are to forsake God when they are well, and, to seek his help when they are in sickness or trouble. When he was well, the King of Syria" bowed himself in the house of Rimmon," but now, in his time of weakness and anxiety about his life, he sends to inquire of the God of Israel. Elisha"s answer to Benhadad"s question was evidently an enigma. "Go, say unto him, Thou mayest certainly recover: howbeit the Lord hath showed me that he shall surely die." Elisha looked steadfastly into Hazael"s face. Did Hazael understand the enigma or not? Why, then, are such signs of confusion in his face? Why does his eye fail to meet the prophet"s gaze? Why does his cheek grow pale? Why that uneasy twitching of the mouth? Yes. Elisha"s suspicions and perhaps also the hints which God had given him are confirmed. It was true that Benhadad might recover. His illness was not mortal. And yet his death was certain, and Hazael"s conscience told him that he was already a murderer in his heart. As Elisha thinks of all the trouble and suffering that shall come upon Israel through Hazael"s instrumentality, he can no longer restrain his feelings, lie bursts into tears. When Hazael asks him why he weeps, it is then that the prophet tells him all the cruelties which he will perpetrate upon God"s people. This tale of horrors called forth the question from Hazael, "What is thy servant, this dog, that he should do this great thing?" It was only then that Elisha showed him that he knew that murder was already in his mind. He quietly says, "Behold, the Lord hath showed me that thou shalt be king over Syria." Hazael then went back to Benhadad, and gave him an answer very different from that which Elisha had really given to him. Instead of giving him the whole message, he gives him merely a part, tells him that he shall recover, omits that it has been revealed to the prophet that he shall surely die. The morrow came; and on the morrow Hazael was a murderer. Despite all his protestations of weakness and inability to do "great things," he the king"s trusted servant betrays his master"s confidence and takes away his life. Taking a thick cloth and dipping it in water, he spread it upon the king"s face, either when he was asleep, or under pretext of cooling and refreshing him, so that the breathing was stopped and the king died. Terrible succession of falsehood, treachery, and murder. We learn from this incident
I THE POSSIBILITIES OF EVIL IN THE HUMAN HEART. Many persons deny the depravity of human nature. They deny the story of the Fall. They object to such ideas, and regard them as theological dogmas, and the mere creations of narrow, hard, illiberal minds. But these truths of the fall of man and the depravity of human nature are something more than theological dogmas. They are facts of experience painful, indeed, and humiliating to human pride, but facts nevertheless. And here it may be stated that to believe in the fall of man and the depravity of human nature is quite consistent with the deepest human sympathy and love. To believe in the possibilities of evil that there are in the human heart is quite consistent with believing in its great possibilities of good. The Bible, which teaches man"s fall, teaches also that man was made in the image of God, and that it is possible yet for that lost and faded image to be restored. The Bible, which tells man that he is a sinner, helpless, condemned, perishing, tells him also that, in the infinite mercy of that God against whom he has sinned, a way of salvation has been provided; that the Savior is the Son of God himself; that we may have "redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins;" and that "whosoever believeth on him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." It is for our own good that we should know what possibilities of evil there are in the unregenerate heart. What use is it to say, "Peace! Peace!" when there is no peace? What avails it for the watchman to cry," Ali"s well!" if the enemy are not only at the gates, but actually within the city? He who would help men to do the right and overcome the wrong must faithfully point out to them the possibilities of evil that are within their own heart. Who that knows human nature, that knows the facts of history, can doubt that such possibilities exist? Look at Hazael, hitherto the faithful, trusted servant, stooping over the bedside of his master, and calmly and deliberately taking away his life. He had the ambition to be King of Syria, and he wades to the throne through his master"s blood. Who that knows what crimes men will commit when under the influence of covetousness, intemperance, hatred, or some other passion men who otherwise would have shrunk from the very mention of suchacts can doubt the possibilities of evil within the human heart? There are possibilities of evil even in good men. The old nature is not taken away. "When I would do good," said St. Paul, "evil is present with me, so that how to perform that which is good I find not." "For I see a law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin." What, then, is the difference between a Christian and an unregenerate man? There are possibilities of evil in them both, but the Christian strives against the evil, whereas the unregenerate man yields to sin and loves it. The Christian may fall, but if so, he is filled with penitence. The Christian will have his faults, but, if so, he acknowledges them and seeks help to forsake them. "Faults!" says Thomas Carlyle, in his lectures on "Hero-Worship," "the greatest of faults is to be conscious of none." Yes; there are possibilities of evil, there are actualities of evil, in the best of men. Christ might still say to an assembly of even his own disciples, "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone at a fallen sister or an erring brother.
II THE DANGER OF IGNORING THESE POSSIBILITIES. Hazael did not become a murderer all at once. The old Latin saying is, Nemo repente fit turpissimusNo one becomes suddenly very wicked." It is true. Perhaps a few years before this if any one had told Hazael that he would be a murderer, he would have been highly indignant. Even now he asks, "What is thy servant, this dog, that he should do this great thing?" It is uncertain whether this exclamation of Hazael refers only to Elisha"s prophecy about the cruelties he would perpetrate on Israel, or whether it refers also to the suggestion of Elisha that he was to be the murderer of Benhadad. If it refers to the murder of the king, then the exclamation would express surprise at the idea of his venturing to lift his hand against his master. If it only refers to the subsequent cruelties which he was to commit, it shows in any case that Hazael did not know of what he was capable. Shakespeare"s representation of Brutus when meditating the murder of Julius Caesar, to which he had been incited by other conspirators, throws light upon Hazael"s feelings. "Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of a man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection." It is, indeed, a dangerous thing to tamper with temptation. There is that affinity between the evil which is in our own heart and the temptations which are without, that there is between the gunpowder and the spark. It is wisdom to keep the sparks away. It is wisdom to keep away from the temptation. "Vice is a monster of so hideous mien, As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace." It is "fools" who make a mock at sin. It is a foolish thing to make light of the guilt of sin in God"s sight. It is a foolish thing to make light of the power of sin in our own hearts. "Lead us not into temptation.
III THERE IS ONLY ONE SAFEGUARD AGAINST THESE EVIL TENDENCIES IN OUR OWN HEARTS: THAT SAFEGUARD IS THE GRACE OF GOD. Of the power of that grace Hazael knew nothing. Temptation upon temptation came crowding into his mind. The first was the great ambition to be king. He has yielded to that long since. It has taken complete possession of his mind. Then there came the temptation to carry a false message to his master, who had reposed such confidence in him. He yielded to that. Then there came the temptation to take away his master"s life. It was a strong one, no doubt. There was but that weak, helpless king, upon a bed of sickness, between him and the throne. One little act , which no one would suspect, and the object of his ambition would be attained. But if he had resisted the other temptations, this one might never have assailed him at all, or, if it had, he would easily have resisted it. The reason of his fall was the want of an ancient force within. We need something more than human to conquer the Satanic power of sin. "What but thy grace can foil the tempter"s power?" Hazael had no restraining power to check his own evil tendencies, no resisting power to stop the temptation at the door, ere it entered and took possession of his heart. He seems to have had a feeling of shame, as when he became confused before Elisha"s steady glance. But shame, by itself, with no other superior influence to sustain it, is easily vanquished. Lust, covetousness, ambition, intemperance, every one of these is able to put shame to flight. The immoral man he has long since trampled on shame. The miser, the covetous man he will stop at nothing that will increase his possessions. The ambitious man he will not allow shame to hinder him in the desire for power and place. The drunkard shame has long since ceased in his besotted mind; no blush is seen upon his bloated face. No; if we are to resist evil, if we are to conquer sin, it must be in some power stronger than poor human nature can supply. Hazael did not know that power. He trusted in his own sense of shame, in his own sense of what was right, and that failed him. He who had said, "What is thy servant, this dog, that he should do this great thing?" on the morrow took his master"s life. Contrast Hazael"s exclamation with Joseph"s when he was tempted: "How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" Ah! there was something there to which Hazael was a stranger. There was the personal presence of a personal God; there was the fear of offending that holy God; there was the fear of grieving that loving heavenly Father who had watched over Joseph when his brethren had forsaken him, and who had provided for all his wants. Hazael"s feeling is more like that of Peter, "Though all men forsake thee, yet will not I the expression of wounded pride, of boastful serf-security. Yet Peter fell into the very sin of which he had expressed such horror only a few hours before. It is not such self-confidence, but a humble feeling of our own weakness and an attitude of entire dependence upon God, that will really Keep the door barred against temptation.
One or two practical applications.
1. Be on your guard against the beginnings of evil. If you yield to one temptation, no matter how small and insignificant it may be, others are sure to follow in its wake.
2. Be charitable toward the faults and failings of others. When we know what possibilities of evil there are in our own hearts, how can we have the presumption to sit in judgment upon others? If others have fallen and we are secure, perhaps it was because we were not exposed to the same temptations. We are to consider ourselves, lest we also be tempted.
3. If you have not yet experienced the forgiveness that is in Christ Jesus and the power of Divine grace, seek them now! Let it be your earnest prayer, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." If you would be safe. from the possibilities of evil that are in your own heart, and from the temptations of a godless world, then your prayer should be now and always, "Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I C.H.I.
Vers. 7-16.
Striking characters.
"And Elisha came to Damascus," etc. We have here
I A DYING KING. "Benhadad the King of Syria was sick." Benhadad, for his age and country, was a great king, rich and mighty, but now he is on his dying-bed. Kings die as well as others. Observe:
1. This dying king was very anxious. What was he anxious about? Not about any great spiritual interest concerning himself or others, but concerning his own physical condition. "Shall I recover of this disease?" This was the question he wanted Elisha to answer. Not, you may be sure, in the negative. Knowing some of the wonders that Elisha had performed, he in all likelihood imagined he would exert his miraculous power on his behalf, and restore him to life. All men more or less fear death, kings perhaps more than others. If ungodly, they have more to lose and nothing to gain.
2. His anxiety prompted him to do strange things.
(1) It was strange for him to ask a favor from the man whom he had so long regarded as his enemy. We read (2Ki_6:14, 2Ki_6:15) that this Benhadad had sent to Dothan "horses, and chariots, and a great host: and they came by night, and compassed the city about," in order to capture this lonely prophet. What a change is this! Dying hours reverse our judgments, revolutionize our feelings, bring the lofty down.
(2) It was strange for him to ask a favor of a man whose religion he hated. Benhadad was an idolater; Elisha was a monotheist, a worshipper of the one true God. Now, in dying, all the king"s idolatrous thoughts have taken wing, and the one God appears as the great reality, and to the servant of that one God he sends, urging a favor.
(3) It was strange for him to make costly presents to a poor lonely man. "The king said unto Hazael, Take a present in thine hand, and go, meet the man of God, and inquire of the Lord by him, saying, Shall I recover of this disease? So Hazael went to meet him, and took a present with him, even of every good thing of Damascus, forty camels" burden, and came and stood before him," etc. What is the wealth, the grandeur, the crown, the scepter, of the mightiest monarch to him when he feels himself dying? He will barter all away for a few short hours of life.
II A PATRIOTIC PROPHET. "The man of God wept." Elisha, forecasting the king"s death, and knowing the wickedness of this Hazael who was to succeed to the throne, smitten with patriotic tenderness, looked so "steadfastly" into the eye of Hazael that he blushed with shame, and the prophet broke into tears: "The man of God wept." But why did he weep? "Why weepeth my lord?" said Hazael. "And he answered, Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel: their strongholds wilt thou set on fire," etc. This was the overwhelming misery that the prophet foresaw would befall Israel, when this wretched courtier, his interrogator, would take the throne. As Christ foresaw the coming doom of Jerusalem, and wept over it, so Elisha saw the horrors approaching Israel, and broke into tears. The loving sympathies of a godly man are not confined to men or places, but spread over the ages, and flow down to bless posterity. D.T.
Vers. 7-15. Elisha and Hazad.
Elisha had come to Damascus, probably sent thither by God to carry out in spirit the commission given long before to Elijah. (1Ki_19:15)
I BENHADAD"S MESSAGE.
1. Its occasion. "Benhadad the King of Syria was sick." Royal rank affords no protection against the invasions of disease. Nor is the thought of death less alarming to the monarch than to the peasant. Benhadad"s heart trembled as he reflected on the possible issues of his trouble, and he gladly availed himself of the opportunity of Elisha"s presence in Damascus to send a messenger to him. His conduct is in striking contrast with Ahaziah"s. (2Ki 1) That Israelitish king, forsaking the God of Israel, sent to inquire at an idol shrine at Ekron. Benhadad, though a Syrian and a worshipper of Rimmon, turns in his sickness from Rimmon to Jehovah.
1. The messenger. The person sent was Hazael, one of Benhadad"s great courtiers. Hazael was a very different kind of a man from Naaman. He was a bold, bad, ambitious intriguer, who was already cherishing deep thoughts of crime against his master. Yet Benhadad seems to have trusted him. How unreliable are the friendships of the wicked! Men flatter with their tongue, but in their hearts are malice, falsehood, and selfish, ambitious designs. (Psa_5:9)
2. The message. Hazael came to Elisha with great pomp. He brought a present borne on forty camels. If lavish wealth could buy a favorable answer from Jehovah, surely now it would be obtained. But God is no respecter of persons; still less does he bestow favor for bribes. We may be sure that, as in a former case, (2Ki_5:16) Elisha touched nothing of all this wealth that was brought to him. Accompanying the present was a message from the king: "Thy son Benhadad hath sent me to thee, saying, Shall I recover from this disease?" For those to whom this world is all, such a question is of very terrible moment, Well may they cling to life who have nothing beyond to hope for.
II THE INTERVIEW WITH HAZAEL.
1. Elisha"s exposure of Hazaels motives. As Hazael stood before Elisha, the prophet"s clear vision read to the depths of his soul. Hazael was evidently speculating on the possibilities of his master"s death, and had private designs upon the throne. When once the idea of making himself king had occurred to him, he was not the man to let the ambitious project readily drop again. The thought of removing the king by violence had no doubt flashed upon him, but he waited to learn whether the sickness would prove fatal before he framed a settled purpose. Elisha showed by his answer that he read the whole character of the man. "Go, say unto him, Thou shalt certainly recover that was the truth as regards the sickness; then he added, "Howbeit the Lord hath showed me that he shall surely die." Hazael"s guilty thoughts would furnish the explanation. We do well to remember that there is nothing we can conceal from the Searcher of hearts. "All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do". (Heb_4:13) Our thoughts, even in their most inchoate condition, are known to him. He understandeth our thoughts "afar off". (Psa_139:2)
2. Elishas prophecy of Hazaels barbarities. Did Elisha approve of Hazael"s designs, and mean to give them Divine sanction? We are able to answer this by noting his subsequent conduct.
(1) He settled his face steadfastly, and looked with a fixed gaze at Hazael till the latter was ashamed. Then Elisha wept. Elisha stood before Hazael as a kind of outward conscience. He revealed Hazael to himself, but at the same time condemned the thoughts which he saw in his mind. It was a holy, earnest gaze which Elisha turned on Hazael a look of reproval, of sorrow, of holy pain; and Hazael felt that it was so when he blushed under it.
(2) When Hazael asked concerning his weeping, Elisha became more explicit, and told him of the awful barbarities he would inflict on Israel. The picture was so dreadful that even Hazael, with apparent sincerity, asked, Who is thy servant, this dog, that he should do this great thing?" Hazael, like many others, was not aware of the possibilities of his own heart, A certain measure of crime he knew himself to be capable of, but he thought that other iniquities were beyond him. Once on the downward grade, how, ever, there is no point at which a sinner can be sure of stopping. One crime leads with a fatal facility to a worse. The heart grows hardened, and things are done which, at an earlier stage, might have been thought impossible. It is told of Robespierre that, in the beginning of his career, he was almost driven distracted by the thought of having sentenced a man to death. The greatest criminals were once innocent children, and at one period of their lives would have shuddered at the deeds they afterwards calmly perpetrated. The only safe course is to resist the beginnings of evil.
3. Elishas announcement of Hazael"s greatness. Elisha"s final announcement to Hazael was, "The Lord hath showed me that thou shalt be king over Syria." The prophet announces the fact, which indeed fulfilled a Divine purpose regarding Hazael, (1Ki_19:15) but announces it without approval of the particular means by which that purpose would be realized. Jacob would have received the blessing in God"s time and way, though his mother Rebekah had not counseled deceit as a means of obtaining it; and the kingdom would have come to Hazael, also in God"s good time and way, though he had kept his hands free from crime.
III A PALACE MURDER. If Elisha"s words did not arrest the guilty purpose which was shaping itself in Hazael"s mind, they could only have the contrary effect of inflaming his ambition. Like Macbeth with the witches" salutation ringing in his ears, he felt himself a child of destiny, and took speedy means to fulfill his destiny.
1. He deceived the king. He repeated, in the letter of them, Elisha"s words, "Thou shalt surely recover;" but said nothing of the context, which gave the words so terrible a significance. The king was assured that his disease was not mortal, which was true; but he was left in the dark as to the declaration that he should nevertheless surely die.
2. He slew the king. Next day, probably while Benhadad slept, Hazael took a thick quilt, and, dipping it in water, spread it over the king"s face, and suffocated him. He thus fulfilled the prediction that he should be King of Syria. He "had his reward." But was it worth the crime? What could compensate for a soul stained with the sin of treachery and murder? Of Banquo it was prophesied that he would be lesser than Macbeth, yet greater; not so happy, yet happier. Would the same not have been true of Hazael had he been content to remain Benhadad"s faithful officer, instead of climbing to the throne in this hateful fashion? What, after all, is there so much to envy in the state of kings, that a soul"s peace should be bartered to acquire it? Surrounded by false friends; served by courtiers ready at any moment to turn against him if it serves their interests better; envied even by those who flatter him; exposed to the peril of assassination, the monarch is almost more to be pitied than the humblest of his subjects. Hazael had but exchanged his own pillow for a more thorny one. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. 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 vv7, 10 Elisha came to Damascus.
2Ki_8:7-15
Elisha came to Damascus.
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Striking characters
We have here--
I. A dying king.
1. This dying king was very anxious. Shall I recover of this disease? This was the question he wanted Elisha to answer. Not, you may be sure, in the negative. Knowing some of the wonders that Elisha had performed, he in all likelihood imagined he would exert his miraculous power on his behalf, and restore him to life. All men more or less fear death, kings perhaps more than others. If ungodly, they have more to lose and nothing to gain. Observe,
2. His anxiety prompted him to do strange things.
(1) It was strange for him to ask a favour from the man whose death he had ravenously sought. What a change is this! Dying hours reverse our judgments, revolutionise our feelings, bring the lofty down.
(2) It was strange for him to ask a favour of a man whose religion he hated. Ben-hadad was an idolater.
(3) It was strange for him to make costly presents to a poor lonely man. What is the wealth, the grandeur, the crown, the sceptre of the mightiest monarch to him when he feels himself dying? He will barter all away for a few short hours of life. We have here--
II. A Patriotic Prophet. And Elisha said unto him, Go, say unto him (Ben-hadad), Thou mayest certainly recover: howbeit the Lord hath showed me that he shall surely die. There was no contradiction in this message. The first part was properly the answer, to Ben-hadads inquiry. The second part was intended for Hazael, who, like an artful and ambitious courtier, reported only as much of the prophets statement as suited his own views. We have here--
III. A self-ignorant courtier. And Hazael said, But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? The conduct of this man as here recorded suggests two general remarks.
1. The germs of evil may exist in the mind of a wicked man, of which he is utterly unconscious.
2. By the force of circumstances these germs become developed in all their enormity. (Homilist.)
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 v7 2Ki_8:7. And Elisha came to Damascus—Elijah, his master, had…
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
2Ki_8:7. And Elisha came to Damascus—Elijah, his master, had been divinely commissioned to this (1Ki_19:15), and now Elisha. “by the instigation of the Spirit” (Thenius), sets out to the task he inherited to perform. Benhadad, king of Syria, was sick—He. hearing of Elish is arrival, sent to enquire if he should recover; his messenger bearing propitiatory gifts for the prophet.
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2Ki_8:9. Took a present with him, even of, &c.—lit., present in his hand, and of every good thing of Damascus. Forty camels’ burden—A camel’s burden is some six hundred pounds; but it was customary to give only a small burden to each, in order that the presentation, being borne by many, might have a more imposing effect, and express greater respect.
2Ki_8:10. Go, say onto him, thou mayst certainly recover—A sentence which, like Delphic oracles, has two possible meanings, each the contradiction of the other. The words are, אֱמר לֹא חָיה תִחְיֶה. The second word, written לֹא, is in sound the same as לוֹ. The keri retains the form given in our text, לֹא, to him, “Say to him, thou wilt live.” The kethibh adopts the form לוֹ, not—“Say, thou wilt not live.” The sentence spoken would convey either meaning, and each form has equal authority. Doubtless the eager king would seize the hopeful meaning of the words, while Hazael would reserve in his own thoughts the doom which the words held. It should, however, be noted that Hazael reports the prophet’s words without uttering either the לֹא or לוֹ.
2Ki_8:11. He settled his countenance steadfastly—Elisha’s fixed gaze, followed by his weeping, must have convinced Hazael that his guilty purpose to usurp the throne of Benhadad was known to him.
2Ki_8:13. But what, is thy servant a dog, &c.—But surely dogs are less capable of guilty craft and horrid atrocities than base men are! The more brutal Hazael should not have maligned the nobler brute, by suggesting that any creature except man was capable of such villany. כֶּלֶב, dog, is an Eastern term for a servile and despicable man (see 1Sa_17:43, &c.)
2Ki_8:15. Spread it over his face—The bed coverlet, a quilt of thick cotton or wool. This, steeped in water, would effectually suffocate. It is, however, suggested that in warm countries guaze nets wetted, to keep off flies and gnats, or in cases of fever, are spread over a sleeper’s face. Bet it is superfluous to evade Hazael’s murderous design, for a wetted guaze would not prevent respiration. The coverlet is properly described as “a thick cloth,” מַכְבֵּר (comp. Jdg_4:18), a mantle, and it killed the king—which Hazael desired.
HOMILETICS OF 2Ki_8:7-15
THE LUST OF AMBITION
I. That the lust of ambition makes man keenly alive to every opportunity of accomplishing its aims. Benhadad, the king of Syria, was sick. The dream of Hazael, cherished, perhaps, for years, was coming nearer to its realization. Death may come any hour; then the sceptre, the crown, boundless pomp and power are his. With what sinister eagerness would he watch every changing phase of the sick king’s affliction! with what facility would his busy brain lay down the plans of future enterprises! A crown has a dangerous fascination for some minds. Gibbon describes, in his vivid and stately style, the heroic manner in which Septimus Severus became emperor of Rome, an ambition he had cherished for years. He waited his opportunity, his keen glance took in the bearing of every revolutionary change in the imperial city, and when the crowning disgrace was reached of offering the empire by auction to the highest bidder, he saw the time for action was come. Though opposed by two formidable rivals, his promptness and vigour conquered all difficulties. He ascended the imperial throne, which he found, as others have done before and since, was more difficult to sustain than to acquire. The ambitious man lives an anxious, restless life: he is ready to seize on every favouring circumstance.
II. That the lust of ambition may be cherished under the guise of devotion to its victim. Hazael readily complies with the wish of the sick monarch, and, with all the oriental display of profuse generosity, and the oriental mingling of pomp and humility, he enquires of the man of God as to the recovery of his master. It would seem as though none was more concerned than he, and yet the while plotting the most effectual way of removing the only obstacle to his aspiring designs. An unholy ambition generates falseness and unreality: the man’s outer life gives the lie to his true character. The great dramatist has depicted this in the double-faced, hesitating conduct of the great regicide—Macbeth—
To beguile the time,
Look like the time: bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under it.
Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
Fake face must hide what the false heart doth know.
III. That the lust of ambition blinds man as to the atrocities it may urge him to commit. When Elisha, looking with prophetic insight in the mirror of the future, detailed to this man the horrible crimes he foresaw he would commit, Hazael stood aghast at the bare possibility of sinking down into such a monster of iniquity; and yet, doubtless, all these cruelties were perpetrated in the wars which this usurper carried on in Israel. Hazael reigned more than forty years, and during that time greatly harassed and oppressed the Israelites (see 2Ki_8:28-29; 2Ki_10:32-33; 2Ki_12:17-18; 2Ki_13:3-7; 2Ki_13:22; 2Ch_24:23-24). A man who is under the spell of an unholy ambition is hurried on to sins and excesses of which he little dreamed, and from which in earlier days his better nature stoutly recoiled. He is spurred on by the—
Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself.
IV. That the lust of ambition is unscrupulous as to the methods by which it attains its ends.
1. It will employ falsehood (2Ki_8:14). Hazael assures the king that Elisha prophesied his recovery—the exact opposite of what the prophet had said. He purposely deceived Benhadad, intending to put him off his guard. But he who meditated a darker crime, and in whose heart Elisha’s words had roused a boundless ambition, was not too good to lie. Truth or falsehood is of small concern to one who grasps at power. The ambition must be sated, though truth is trampled on at every advancing step.
2. It shrinks not from murder (2Ki_8:15). The man who shrank with indignant horror at the simple enumeration of the outrages he might commit, heartlessly smothered his royal master on the following day—a method of assassination that would leave no marks of violence on the dead body, and give colour to the suspicion of suicide rather than murder. There was but one obstacle now between Hazael and his long-coveted prize—a royal life—and that is sacrificed without compunction. O, infatuate, short-sighted mortal! The sceptre rashly seized with the red hand of the murderer will change into a cross of trial, the crown into one of thorns, the throne into a bed of torture!
LESSONS:—
1. Ambition dissociated from sound moral principle is full of peril.
2. There is no act of wickedness of which unholy ambition is incapable.
3. The most commendable ambition is to get and do the most good.
THE INFLUENCE OF CIRCUMSTANCFS UPON HUMAN CHARACTER (2Ki_8:13)
Hazael came to the prophet to inquire whether his master would recover from his sickness. The answer is ambiguous. So far as the disease itself was concerned, he might recover. Yet his days were numbered; and the purpose to kill him was already being formed in the heart of his hitherto faithful servant. The prophet saw before him not only the king’s enemy, but also the man who would one day inflict dire evils upon Israel. The thought of the horrors about to come to his people made the man of God weep. Hazael asks the cause of his sorrow. Elisha tells him frankly, and in the plainest terms, what was in the not very distant future. Hazael starts back with horror, when he sees in this prophetic mirror the image of his own baseness. “Is thy servant a dog?” The prophet seems to evade the question; and yet, in his reply, we have the full and complete explanation, if not to Hazael, at least to us, of all that occurred. “The Lord hath showed me that thou shalt be king over Syria.” Is this man, then, a base and guilty hypocrite? Is he a man who hides under the cloak of pretended affection for his master, and reverence for humanity, his fiendish designs? How are we to account for the fact that he actually did all that Elisha foretold, if he was not a hypocrite? If we take humanity as it is, not as it has been described in poetry, and sometimes in what was intended to be prose, we shall have no difficulty in accepting both statements—that of Elisha regarding the atrocities of Hazael, and that of Hazael regarding his horror and amazement at the very mention of the crimes. Hazael simply failed to take into account the influence of circumstances upon human character.
I. There is a doctrine of circumstances utterly at variance, not only with the teachings of Scripture, but also with the experience and deepest convictions of mankind—a doctrine which asserts, or appears to assert, that circumstances make men, and that the only difference between the noblest saint and the basest criminal is a difference simply in the structure of the brain, and the character of the surroundings. Some men teach this, but no man believes it, or acts upon it, either in his feelings respecting his own deeds, or his judgments of the moral character of the actions of his friend. But we must, while rejecting a doctrine so monstrous, yet remember that, in a very real sense, circumstances have a power over character and life. Hazael’s error is one of the commonest among ourselves. How many promises are made in early life that cannot afterwards be kept without doing moral wrong to ourselves and others! When the public mind is filled with horrors of some tragedy, or when men see one who has been universally trusted and respected, convicted of some base crime, the tendency is to deny to the criminal the common feelings of humanity, and to attribute to a momentary impulse of an insane mind, what has been the outcome of long-formed habits of thought and settled purposes. Life grows not by sudden freaks of this sort; but, like the plant or tree, derives its nourishment from its surroundings, and, year by year, though it may be imperceptible, assimilates these to itself. In order to form its present and its future, God ever requires its past, which men may forget or ignore. We may here learn a lesson from, and see some analogy in, the teachings of geology regarding the formation of the solid earth on which we tread. Go to the rock, and learn from its formation that once it was loose sand-dust, blown about by every wind! Behold in that rock, now fossilised, the print of the tiny foot, the ripple mark left by the wave on the falling leaf, even the march of the rain-drop as it fell there ages before. Now all is solid, it is true; but once it was far otherwise. So do we find character and life daily forming itself, and being formed, by the slow action of outward circumstances. They are to the mind as food is to the physical frame. The babe grows under the influence of nourishing food, pure air, and healthy exercise. So does our mental and moral nature grow up to a large extent by means of what is supplied in the surroundings.
II. Circumstances bring men into new temptations never felt before. Hazael king of Syria, or even with the throne within his reach, would be a very different person from Hazael the honoured servant of his master. The very thought passing through his mind, the very possibility of attaining such a position, would give a shock to the moral nature of a man who had been wont to regulate his life by expediency. Circumstances not only suggest new temptations, but also give an intensity to those already felt. As we pass from youth to manhood and womanhood, we enter into a new world, peopled with inhabitants whom we may have seen before, but only as trees walking, not in distinct and definite outline. Now they become actual powers in life. They speak to us in a language we can understand, and inspire us with new ideas. So when we enter into new relationships in life we extend the area of our pleasures, it may be, but we also make new desires and wants possible, and expose our moral nature to new dangers. It is a mere commonplace to say that city life, to those who have been brought up in the quiet of the country, will awaken new cravings. A few years amid these surroundings will be sufficient to change the old ways of thought and habits of life. It is not so much that the promises before made, and the views of life entertained, betokened any unreality or hypocrisy, but that they were the outcome of ignorance and inexperience of life. From this point of view, and in their bearing on this subject, nothing can be more instructive than the examples recorded for our guidance in the Holy Scriptures, “profitable indeed for correction and discipline in righteousness.” Had Cain been told that one day he would lift up his hand against Abel his brother, he would, and not without feeling, have said, “Am I a dog?” Joseph’s brethren could hardly have sold their brother into slavery had they not first fitted themselves for this by envy, malice, and hatred. Nor did Potiphar’s wife persecute Joseph altogether from pure hatred, but because her conduct made this necessary, in order that she might appear righteous in the eyes of his master. Suppose we apply the same principles to the crimes associated with Christ’s death. Pilate was not a dog, yet he did “great things.” He simply gave way to popular clamour, in order to gain popular favour (a vice by no means confined to Roman governers), and out of this weakness, or time-serving policy, came all his guilt and crime. If we judge the traitor Judas by the same standard, we shall, perhaps, stand more in awe of that which leads men to awful crimes. His terrible end shows that he did not realise where his avarice and his greed were leading him. Step by step, instead of resisting the tempter, he yielded to circumstances, and at last found himself completely under the powers of darkness. “And it was night,” says the Evangelist.
III. If we could, in one sentence, point the moral lesson of the history of crime in all ages, and in all countries, it would be this for us all: “Is thy servant a dog?” No, thy servant is no dog. He is a man—has in him two natures struggling for the mastery. He is not without his good impulses. Perhaps he often resolves to give himself up to their sway, but he yields too readily to the passions that war against the soul; he gives way to the circumstances that surround him, and that appeal to him. Visit our great convict prisons. Who are their immates? No doubt many of the so-called criminal classes are men and women who come from the lowest ranks of the community. Yes, but they are not all such; yea, these very names may blind us to the origin, progress, and end of wicked deeds. The “criminal classes” are what they are because of the power or circumstances over human nature; because “man is also flesh,” and when once he gives way to the baser passions, tends ever to sink lower and lower in the scale of being, to hand down his very vices to his children. But you will find many in these crowds to whom all life’s pleasures are now denied, who have belonged to the higher classes of society. They yielded to the lie, they gave way to passion, they yielded themselves up to the pleasures of sin. Now they stand aghast at the position in which they have placed themselves, and the depth to which they have fallen. Had you told them of this terrible fall years before, they would have been amazed and incredulous. “Therefore, let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.”
IV. My text seems to suggest that much of what passes for virtue amongst us may simply be vice not manifested by circumstances. How much do women who are sometimes boastful owe to the fact that the world is harder in its judgments on their sins, than in the case of the other sex! How much to the fact they are more protected by circumstances! The rich man knows nothing of the temptations of the man hard pressed by circumstances, and hence his hard and unjust censures. The poor man, protected by his very poverty, knows not the temptation of those nursed in the lap of wealth; hence, when he hears of the sins of the other, he flatters himself on his superiority. He owes it not to his moral heroism, but to his surroundings. We have spoken much of the power of circumstances. Let not man think he is the creature of his surroundings. By God’s grace he may rise above them, and triumph over them, making his very passions minister to his success, and making his enemies his benefactors. There is for man, frail, weak, temptable as he is, and surrounded by everything that can minister to his weakness, one, and only one safe path. It is the way of holiness. It is the path of humility and obedience to the Divine word. These examples are given us as beacon lights to warn of danger, and to point to the one and only way of safety. He only is perfectly safe who commits his way to the Lord, who yields himself to the guidance of the word, who is conscious of weakness, and who, ceasing from man, looks above him to the strong Son of God, who can succour him when tempted. He only is safe who has been delivered from himself, and who is being “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.”—C. W. P.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2Ki_8:7-15. Hazael discovered.
1. Unconscious wickedness Hazael had a heart that was capable of planning and executing great wickedness, yet knew it not. Would not believe it when told. If we could have the wickedness of our hearts disclosed to us, how appalled we should be. We judge ourselves by the past. That is bad enough But we think we shall and can do nothing worse than that. We forget that the things of the past furnish only a hint of the direction of the future, and may be excelled in the future. More evil in each of us, even the best, than we suppose. We should fear ourselves, distrust ourselves, and only trust God. What might we do under severe temptation. No safeguard against sin but in the help of God.
2. Anxious enquiry. Benhadad a wicked and idolatrous king. Very ill and full of anxious concern. Has no one to enquire of but the prophet Elisha, whose God he denied. In life many deride those ministers of religion whom they send for in sickness, and disobey that God whose pardon they need in sickness as the only source of comfort. If we love and serve God, we shall not be anxious to know whether we shall live or die.
3. The prediction accomplished. Elisha looked in Hazael’s face and read his character and history there. Wept at that sad sight. Hazael was indignant, yet did the crime predicted of him. Had he thoroughly believed it to be possible, and been right-hearted, how he would have prayed. Let us believe the possibility of future sin, and pray earnestly for delivering grace. If we stand, let us take heed est we fall. Many strong men have fallen; let us not be too self-reliant. Huzael might recall the prophet’s words when too late. So may we. Let us seek Divine grace betimes. LEARN:—
1. To trust in the Lord at all times.
2. To put no confidence in the flesh.
3. Not to judge of the future by our present feelings.
4. Seek Divine forgiveness of the past, and Divine guidance for the future.—Class and Desk.
2Ki_8:7-10. The power of a holy character.
1. Is recognised everywhere, even by the enemies of God: “The man of God is come hither” (2Ki_8:7).
2. Inspires the hope of succour in affliction: “Enquire of the Lord by him, saying, Shall I recover of this disease?” (2Ki_8:8).
3. Commands the deference of the rich and powerful (2Ki_8:9).
4. Gives the deepest significance to words spoken at a critical moment (2Ki_8:10).
—The subduing power of suffering.
1. Bears down, the strongest and proudest warrior
2. Convinces the idolater of the helplessness and vanity of his own deities.
3. Renders the sufferer ready and eager to receive help from any quarter. Benhadad humbly seeks assistance from the man whose life he had threatened (2Ki_6:13). In the days of his health and prosperity he had not heeded the lesson of Naaman’s cure, but in the hour of sickness he consults the same wonderful physician.
2Ki_8:7-8. Benhadad upon the sick bed.
1. The rebellious, haughty and mighty king, the arch-enemy of Israel, who had never troubled himself about the living God, lies in wretchedness; he has lost courage, and now he seeks the prophet, whom he once wished to capture, just as a servant seeks his master. The Lord can with his hammer, which breaketh in pieces even the flinty rock, also make tender the hearts of men. Those who are the most self-willed in prosperity are often the most despairing in misfortune. Not until the end approaches do they seek God; but He cannot help in death those who have never thought of Him.
2. He does not send to ask the prophet, What shall I, a poor sinner, do that I may find grace and be saved? but only whether he shall recover his health. The children of this world are only anxious for bodily welfare; about eternal welfare they are indifferent. It should be our first care in severe illness to set our house in order and to surrender ourselves to the will of God. The time and the hour of death are concealed from men, and it is vain to enquire about them.
2Ki_8:7. The man of God is come! That was the cry in the heathen city of Damascus, and the news penetrated even to the king, who rejoiced to hear it. This did not occur to Elisha in any city of Israel. Blessed is the city and the country where there is rejoicing that a Man of God is come!—Lange.
—Whether for the idolatries, or for the famine of Israel, the prophet is gone into Syria, no doubt Naaman welcomed him thither, and now would force upon him thanks for his cure, which the man of God would not receive at home. How famous is he now grown who was taken from the team! His name is not confined to his own nation; foreign countries take notice of it, and kings are glad to listen to him, and woo him with presents. The king of Syria, whose counsels he had detected, rejoiced to hear of his presence; and now, as having forgotten, he had sent a whole host to beseige the prophet in Dothan, sends an honourable messenger to him, laden with the burden of forty camels.—Bp. Hall.
2Ki_8:9. What will not princes part with for their life and health? “Wherefore should I die, being so rich?” said Cardinal Beauford, Chancellor of England in the reign of Henry VI. “If the whole realm would save my life, I am able either by policy to get it, or by riches to buy it. Fie! will not death be hired? Will money do nothing?”
2Ki_8:11-13. The possibilities of human character detected and exposed. I. That some men are especially gifted in reading the tendencies of human character. Elisha had supernatural discernment. He saw in the eyes of Hazael, as in a mirror, the reflection of his true character, and had the courage to tell him of it. Much of the real man is imaged in the face, though it is possible to cherish the foulest villany under a misleading exterior. II. That the vision of prospective wickedness fill a tender heart with profound grief. Elisha beheld, as in a panorama, the enormities Hazael would perpetrate, and the prophet wept not only because of the obduracy and cruelty of character he foresaw in Hazael, but also because of the sufferings he saw coming on his own nation on account of their sins. How much grief is spared to some parents that they cannot see the crimes their children afterwards commit! They have grief enough when they dis over the undoubted facts, without the torture of anticipation. III. That man indignantly spurns the imputation of great crimes of which he is unconscious. “What is thy servant—a dog—that he should do this great thing?” The career of Hazael illustrates a humiliating truth, that, though unconscious of it, there is in human nature the possibility of the greatest crimes.
2Ki_8:11-12. He who has a good conscience is never disturbed or embarrassed if anyone looks him directly in the eye; but a bad conscience cannot endure an open, firm look, and trembles with terror at every rustling leaf. Elisha weeps. These were not tears of sentiment, but of the deepest pain, worthy of a man of God, who knows of no greater evil than the apostacy of his people from the living God, the determined contempt for the Divine Word, and the rejection of the Divine Grace. Where are the men who nowadays weep such tears? They were also tears of the most faithful love, which is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, vaunteth not itself, and is not puffed up. So our Lord wept once over Jerusalem (Luk_19:41), and Paul over Israel (Rom_9:1-3).—Lange.
2Ki_8:11. Heart reading. We believe the man lives not, and never did live, who could stand such inspection without quailing before it. Is there one who can affirm that he could stand with unblanched cheek before the man whom he believed to be viewing his naked soul, divested of all the purple and fine linen which cover its littleness—its foulness—its deformities—its soreness from the outer world? Is there one who could endure, without confusion of face—without a quivering frame—the keen dissection of his character, his conduct, his spirit, by even the most friendly hand in the world? Would he be content that any human eye should trace the tortuous meanderings of feeling in regard to any one matter in which he has ever been engaged—the unholy thought—the ungenerous imputation—the low suspicion—the doubt—the dislike—the covetousness—the hate—the contention—the lust of the flesh—the lust of the eye—the pride of life—that more or less enter into, and defile with, the prints of villanous hoofs the fairest garden of life? In this we show how much more fear we have of man than of God. To us it is of infinitely less concernment, both for this world and the world to come, what man thinks of us, than what God thinks—what man knows than what God knows. Yet, while we shrink with such instinctive dread from the too near survey of fellow-sinners, we manage to get on very quietly, with small trouble of mind, in the perfect knowledge that One who cannot be mistaken has a sleepless eye fixed with unceasing vigilance upon our hearts. This keen susceptibility to the inspection and good opinion of man, and this comparative indifference to the constant survey of God, is a familiar thing, and strikes us little because it is familiar; but it is nevertheless one of the strangest anomalies of our nature, and is beheld with astonishment and grief by the angels of God. In their view it is an inversion of the whole order of life and being. To them God is all—His inspection is all; and that different state of things which gives more practical importance to the survey of a sinful fellow-creature like ourselves, must present a greater mystery than any of those deep problems in material or spiritual nature which men have vainly laboured for a thousand years to solve. To us it is plainer. Evil is, alas! more intelligible to man than to angels; and the good and the true is more intelligible to them than to us. It is sin which has cast a veil between our souls and God—a veil transparent to Him, but opaque to us. He sees us as clearly in our deformity as He did in our beauty; but we have ceased to see Him as He is. We do not realise the unseen. We live by sight, and not by faith. How different would be our conversation and our walk if we lived and moved in the ever-present consciousness that the Unseen Eye was upon us, and that the opinion of us hereafter to be pronounced in the presence of the assembled universe is a matter of inconceivably more importance to us than all that the world can think or say. Let us believe that to walk and act from day to day with this as a vital consciousness about us—without any supreme anxiety but to walk so as to please God—is a most pleasant life—is the very antepast of Heaven. There is no bondage in it. It is perfect freedom; and is happiness as complete as this world allows.—Kitto.
2Ki_8:13. Wicked men are carried into those heights of impiety which they could not in their good mood have possibly believed. Nature is subject to favourable opinions of herself, and will rather mistrust a prophet of God than her own good disposition. How many, from honest beginnings, have risen to incredible licentiousness, whose lives are now such that it were as hard for a man to believe they had ever been good, as to have pursuaded them once they should prove so desperately ill!—Bp. Hall.
—Subserviency before men is always joined with falseness and hypocrisy. Therefore, trust no one who is more than humble and modest. Hazael called himself a dog, while he plotted in his heart to become king of a great people. It is the way with all hypocrites that they bend and cringe, humble themselves and conceal their tricks, until they perceive their opportunity and have found the key of the situation. There is scarcely anything more discordant and disgusting than the dialect of self-abasement when it bears upon its face the stamp of affectation and falsehood.
2Ki_8:11; 2Ki_8:15. The regicide.
1. Does not scruple to tell a lie.
2. Seeks to commit his great crime in such a way as to create least suspicion.
3. Is spuired on by an ungovernable ambition.
4. Nevers reaps the advantage for which he has sacrificed everything.
—It is the curse which rests upon him who has sold himself to sin, that all which ought to awaken his conscience and terrify and shock him out of his security, only makes him more obstinate, and pushes him on to carry out his evil designs.
2Ki_8:15. Buchanan tells of Natholicus, the thirty-first king of the Scots, that, having usurped the crown, he sent a trusty friend to a famous witch, to know what success he should have in his kingdom, and how long he should live. The witch answered that he should shortly be murdered, not by an enemy, but by his friend. The messenger instantly enquired, by what friend? “By thyself,” said the witch. The messenger at first abhorred the thought of any such villany; but afterwards, conceiving that it was not safe to reveal the witch’s answer, and yet that it could not be concealed, he resolved rather to kill the king to the content of many, than to hazard the loss of his own head. Thereupon, at his return, being in secret with the king to declare to him the witch’s answer, he suddenly slew him.—Trapp.
—At heart proud, haughty, and imperious, Hazael affects humility and submissiveness. Towards his master, who had entrusted him with the most important commission, he is false and treacherous. He shrinks from no means to attain his object. He lies and deceives, but, at the same time, he is cunning and crafty, and knows how to conceal his traitorous purposes. When, alarmed and exposed by the words of the prophet, he can no longer keep them secret, he marches on to the crime; although he seeks to execute it in such a way that he may not appear to be guilty. With all this he combines energy, courage, cruelty, and a blind hatred against Israel, as the sequel shows. On account of these qualities he is well fitted to be, in the hand of God, a rod of anger, and a staff of indignation. The Lord makes the vessels of wrath serviceable for the purposes of His government; and here we have again, as often in the history of redemption, an example of wickedness punished by wickedness, and of godless men made, without their will or knowledge, instruments of holiness and justice.—Lange.
—O! Hazael; thou shalt not thus easily stop the mouth of thine own conscience. That shall call thee traitor, even in thy chair of state, and shall check all thy royal triumphs with, “Thou hast founded thy throne in blood!” I am deceived if this wet cloth shall not wipe thy lips in thy jolliest feasts, and make thy best morsels unsavoury. Sovereignty is painful upon the fairest terms; but upon treachery and murder, tormenting. Woeful is the case of that man whose public cares are aggravated with private guiltiness; and happy is he that can enjoy a little with the peace of an honest heart.—Bishop Hall.
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 v9 2 Kings
2 Kings
THE STORY OF HAZAEL
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2Ki 8:9 - 2Ki 8:15.
This is a strange, wild story. That Damascene monarchy burst into sudden power, warlike and commercial-for the two things went together in those days. As is usually the case, Hazael the successful soldier becomes ambitious. His sword seems to be the real sceptre, and he will have the dominion. Many years before this Elijah had anointed him to be king over Syria. That had wrought upon him and stirred ambition in him. Elijah’s other appointments, coeval with his own, had already taken effect, Jehu was king of Israel, Elisha was prophet, and he only had not attained the dignity to which he had been designated.
He comes now with his message from the king of Damascus to Elisha. No doubt he had been often contrasting his own vigour with the decrepit, nominal king, and many a time had thought of the anointing, and had nursed ambitious hopes, which gradually turned to dark resolves.
He hoped, no doubt, that Ben-hadad was mortally sick, and it must have been a cruel, crushing disappointment when he heard that there was nothing deadly in the illness. Another hope was gone from him. The throne seemed further off than ever. I suppose that, at that instant, there sprang in his heart the resolve that he would kill Ben-hadad. The recoil of disappointment spurred Hazael to the resolution which he then and there took. It had been gathering form, no doubt, through some years, but now it became definite and settled. While his face glowed with the new determination, and his lips clenched themselves in the firmness of his purpose, the even voice of the prophet went on, ‘howbeit he shall certainly die,’ and the eye of the man of God searched him till he turned away ashamed because aware that his inmost heart was read.
Then there followed the prophet’s weeping, and the solemn announcement of what Hazael would do when he had climbed to the throne. He shrank in real horror from the thought of such enormity of sin. ‘Is thy servant a dog that he should do such a thing?’ Elisha sternly answers: ‘The Lord hath shewed me that thou shalt be king over Syria.’ The certainty is that in his character occasion will develop evil. The certainty is that a course begun by such crime will be of a piece, and consistent with itself.
This conversation with Elisha seems to have accelerated Hazael’s purpose, as if the prediction were to his mind a justification of his means of fulfilling it.
How like Macbeth he is!-the successful soldier, stirred by supernatural monitions of a greatness which he should achieve, and at last a murderer.
This narrative opens to us some of the solemn, dark places of human life, of men’s hearts, of God’s ways. Let us look at some of the lessons which lie here.
I. Man’s responsibility for the sin which God foresees.
It seems as if the prophet’s words had much to do in exciting the ambitious desires which led to the crime. Hazael’s purpose of executing the deed is clearly known to the prophet. His ascending the throne is part of the divine purpose. He could find excuses for his guilt, and fling the responsibility for firing his ambition on the divine messenger. It may be asked-What sort of God is this who works on the mind of a man by exciting promises, and having done so, and having it fixed in His purposes that the man is to do the crime, yet treats it when done as guilt?
But now, whatever you may say, or whatever excuses Hazael might have found for himself, here is just in its most naked form that which is true about all sin. God foresees it all. God puts men into circumstances where they will fall, God presents to them things which they will make temptations. God takes the consequences of their wrongdoing and works them into His great scheme. That is undeniable on one side, and on the other it is as undeniable that God’s foreseeing leaves men free. God’s putting men into circumstances where they fall is not His tempting them. God’s non-prevention of sin is not permission to sin. God’s overruling the consequences of sin is not His condoning of sin as part of the scheme of His providence.
Man is free. Man is responsible. God hates sin. God foresees and permits sin.
It is all a terrible mystery, but the facts are as undeniable as the mystery of their co-existence is inscrutable.
II. The slumbering possibilities of sin.
Hazael indignantly protests against the thought that he should do such a thing. There is conscience left in him yet. His example suggests how little any of us know what it is in us to be or to do. We are all of us a mystery to ourselves. Slumbering powers lie in us. We are like quiescent volcanoes.
So much in us lies dormant, needing occasion for its development, like seeds that may sleep for centuries. That is true in regard to both the good and the bad in us. Life reveals us to ourselves. We learn to know ourselves by our actions, better than by mental self-inspection.
All sin is one in essence, and may pass into diverse forms according to circumstances. Of course characters differ, but the root of sin is in us all. We are largely good because not tempted, as a house may well stand firm when there are no floods. By the nature of the case, thorough self-knowledge is impossible.
Sin has the power of blinding us to its presence. It comes in a cloud as the old gods were fabled to do. The lungs get accustomed to a vitiated atmosphere, and scarcely are conscious of oppression till they cease to play.
All this should teach us-
Lessons of wary walking and humility. We are good because we have not been tried.
Lessons of charity and brotherly kindness. Every thief in the hulks, every prostitute on the streets, is our brother and sister, and they prove their fraternity by their sin. ‘Whatever man has done man may do.’ ‘Nihil humanum alienum a me puto.’ ‘Let him that is without sin cast the first stone.’
III. The fatal necessity by which sin repeats itself in aggravated forms.
See how Hazael is drifted into his worst crimes. His first one leads on by fell necessity to others. A man who has done no sin is conceivable, but a man who has done only one is impossible. Did you ever see a dam bursting or breaking down? Through a little crack comes one drop: will it stop there-the gap or the trickle? No! The drop has widened the crack, it has softened the earth around, it has cleared away some impediments. So another and another follow ever more rapidly, until the water pours out in a flood and the retaining embankment is swept away.
No sin ‘is dead, being alone.’ The demon brings seven other devils worse than himself. The reason for that aggravation is plain.
There is, first, habit.
There is, second, growing inclination.
There is, third, weakened restraint.
There is, fourth, a craving for excitement to still conscience.
There is, fifth, the necessity of the man’s position.
There is, sixth, the strange love of consistency which tones all life down or up to one tint, as near as may be. There comes at last despair.
But not merely does every sin tend to repeat itself and to draw others after it. It tends to repeat itself in aggravated forms. There is growth, the law of increase as well as of perpetuity. The seed produces ‘some sixty and some an hundredfold.’
And so the slaughtered soldiers and desolated homesteads of Israel were the sequel of the cloth on Ben-hadad’s face. The secret of much enormous crime is the kind of relief from conscience which is found in committing a yet greater sin. The Furies drive with whips of scorpions, and the poor wretch goes plunging and kicking deeper and deeper in the mire, further and farther from the path. So you can never say: ‘I will only do this one wrong thing.’
We see here how powerless against sin are all restraints. The prophecy did not prevent Hazael from his sins. The clear sense that they were sins did not prevent him. The horror-struck shudder of conscience did not prevent him. It was soon gagged.
Hear, then, the conclusion of the whole matter. Christ reveals us to ourselves. Christ breaks the chain of sin, makes a new beginning, cuts off the entail, reverses the irreversible, erases the indelible, cancels the irrevocable, forgives all the faultful past, and by the power of His love in the soul, works a mightier miracle than changing the Ethiopian’s skin; teaches them that are accustomed to evil to do well, and though sins be as scarlet, makes them white as snow. He gives us a cleansed past and a bright future, and out of all our sins and wasted years makes pardoned sinners and glorified, perfected saints.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v7 Hazael Anointed King
Hazael Anointed King
v. 7. And Elisha came to Damascus, the capital of Syria; and Benhadad, the king of Syria, was sick; and it was told him, saying, The man of God is come hither, he had reached tile district in which the city was located.
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v. 8. And the king said unto Hazael, one of his high officers, perhaps even commander-in-chief of the army, Take a present in thine hand and go, meet the man of God, whose fame had been spread far and wide, and enquire of the Lord by him, saying, Shall I recover of this disease? The question was probably intended to convey the request as well that the prophet should pray for the restoration of his health.
v. 9. So Hazael went to meet him and took a present with him, even of every good thing of Damascus, the choicest products which the city afforded, forty camels’ burden, thus making a very impressive display of tile proposed gift, and came and stood before him, and said, Thy son Benhadad, king of Syria, hath sent me to thee, saying, Shall I recover of this disease?
v. 10. And Elisha said unto him, Go, say unto him, Thou mayest certainly recover, literally, "Not wilt thou live"; howbeit, the Lord hath showed me that he shall surely die, not, indeed, of this disease, but by violence.
v. 11. And he settled his countenance steadfastly until he was ashamed. If this is said of Elisha, it means that he fixed such a piercing look upon Hazael, showing that he knew of the ambition and treachery by which he intended to murder his master that Hazael shrank from the searching look. If Hazael is the subject, it means that he did not so much as move one muscle of his face, although he realized that Elisha knew his wickedness. And the man of God wept, since the prophetic Spirit revealed to him what would happen to his countrymen in the future.
v. 12. And Hazael said, Why weepeth my lord? And he answered, Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel, after his accession to the throne. Their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women with child, practicing all the cruelties of the most bitter wars. Cf 2Ki 10:32-33; 2Ki 13:3-4; 2Ki 13:7-22.
v. 13. And Hazael, a hypocrite and actor, said, But what, is thy servant a dog, a lowly, contemptible person, that he should do this great thing, wield such a mighty power? And Elisha answered, The Lord hath showed me that thou shalt be king over Syria, a statement which revealed the secret, ambitious plans of Hazael.
v. 14. So he departed from Elisha and came to his master, who said to him, What said Elisha to thee? And he answered, He told me that thou shouldest surely recover, an answer which did not accord with the truth and was purposely framed to lull Benhadad into security.
v. 15. And it came to pass on the morrow that he took a thick cloth, a heavy, woven coverlet, and dipped it in water, which increased its heaviness still more, and spread it on his face so that he died. And Hazael reigned in his stead, usurping the throne. Note: It is God who directs the affairs of this world, even when wickedness apparently is in power; for the punishments which strike the unrepentant sinners serve to emphasize the government of the one Lord on high.
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 vv7, 10 Ben Hadad
Ben Hadad
This is the name of the king of Aram. His name means "son of Hadad." See how you translated this man's name in 2 Kings 6:24. (See: How to Translate Names)
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Hazael
This is the name of a man. (See: How to Translate Names)
Take a gift
Hazael was to take many gifts, not just one. AT: "take many gifts" (See: Synecdoche)
in your hand
The phrase "in your hand" is an idiom meaning for him to take the gifts with him. AT: "with you" (See: Idiom)
the man of God
"Elisha, the man of God"
consult with Yahweh through him, saying
"ask Elisha to ask Yahweh"
carried by forty camels
This can be stated in active form. AT: "which forty camels carried"
forty camels
"40 camels" (See: Numbers)
Your son Ben Hadad king of Aram
Ben Hadad was not actually Elisha's son, but Hazael called him that to show a close relationship between them. AT: "Ben Hadad, the king of Aram, who is like a son to you" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
Elisha
Damascus
Aram
gift
hand
camel
send
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 vv7–10 8:7 Elisha’s freedom to visit Damascus demonstrated the great…
8:7 Elisha’s freedom to visit Damascus demonstrated the great respect that even Israel’s enemies had for him. The visit fulfilled the commission originally given to Elijah (1 Kgs 19:15).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.