Day 107. 2 Kings 6-8

The story of the floating ax-head seems like a rather petty miracle. Yet it is told not only to demonstrate the prophet's power, but it shows his compassion for someone who is in genuine distress—"Alas, Master! It was borrowed," cries the  prophet who lost it (6:5), and Elisha responds with kindness.  The story also demonstrates how precious iron tools are during the period recorded in our reading. We noted before that the prophets are considered by the compiler of the Books of Kings as Israel's "first line of defense."  This is demonstrated again in the story of how Elisha divines the plans of the king of Aram and passes them along to the king of Israel (6:10).  When the king of Aram discovers Israel's secret weapon, he sends an army to besiege the city of Dothan, where the prophet is with intention of killing him (6:14).  The prophet's servant is terrified when he sees the troops outside the city, but Elisha reassures  him—"Do not be afraid" (6:16). Then he prays, "O LORD, please open his eyes that he may see." And the LORD opens the eyes of the servant so that he could see that "the mountain [is] full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha" (6:17). Again Elisha prays and this time the Aramean soldiers are struck with blindness--this is a story of miraculous seeing and miraculous blinding—and then he leads them helplessly into the city of Samaria. There he opens their eyes—but they are now prisoners of war. The king of Israel—we are not told which one—asks if he should kill them, but the prophet commands that their lives be spared. They are fed and released, and this act of mercy wins a respite in the hostilities, "and the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of Israel" (6:23). This peace does not last--or the following story comes from a different time. In either case, Ben-hadad lays siege to the city of Samaria. Conditions in the city deteriorate to the point that mothers devour their own children (6:28-29). The king—we are not told which one—is so angry with the LORD for the misery of his people that he sends a messenger to kill his prophet. Elisha is warned by the LORD to bar the door against the assassin. But when the king himself appears he rants at the prophet—"This trouble is from the LORD! Why should I hope in the LORD any longer"—and his words echo the experience of anyone who in the extreme of suffering questions why the God who is supposed to care for us allows us to experience such pain (6:33). In response, Elisha foretells that the next day food will be plentiful and cheap in the city. But "the captain on whose hand the king leaned" expresses doubt at such an outcome. "Even if the LORD were to make windows in the sky, could such a thing happen?" he asks. But his skepticism wins him a stinging rebuke from the prophet. "You shall see it with your own eyes," Elisha tells him, "but you shall not eat from it" (7:2). That very day four lepers, driven by hunger, venture at twilight into the Aramean camp and find it completely abandoned. They start to loot, and then think better and go back to tell the people. It appears that the besiegers, hearing the approach of a great army, have fled. It was all from the LORD. "The LORD . . . caused the Aramean army to hear the sound of chariots, and horses, the sound of a great army." Terrified that "the king of Israel has hired the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to fight against" them, they flee  (7:6-7).        So the people rush out to plunder the camp. The prophet's prediction was fulfilled—overnight food was cheap in Samaria. (7:18). But in the stampede the captain who had expressed doubt at the prophet's words is trampled to death, so that again the prophecy of the man of God is fulfilled (7:17). Remember Elisha's crafty servant Gehazi who was struck with leprosy for defrauding Naaman the Syrian (5:25-27)? Here he appears again, and we wonder if this story may have happened earlier and may now be out of chronological order. In any case, Gehazi tells the king—again we are not told which—the story of how Elisha had raised the son of the Shunammite woman. Impressed, the king acts on the woman's behalf to restore the land she lost when she fled to the land of the Philistines to escape a famine in the land of Israel (8:5-6). Again, the LORD is taking care of those who protect and care for his prophets. Now Ben-hadad, the powerful king of Aram, becomes ill, and he sends Hazael to ask the prophet Elisha if he will recover. The prophet replies that he should tell the king he will recover, but in fact, he will not (8:10).  Then the man of God weeps (8:11), and when Hazael asks why, the prophet tells him it is because of the terrible suffering he himself will inflict upon Israel when he is king of Aram (8:12-13).  Hazael delivers the prophet's message to Ben-hadad, the good news that he will recover, then "he [takes] the bed-cover and [dips] it in water and [spreads} it over the king's face, until he [dies]. And Hazael [succeeds] him" (8:15), just as the prophet had said he would. It isn't easy to keep these kings straightened out in our minds. Right now Joram the second son of Ahab is king in Israel. Jehoshaphat dies and his son Jehoram succeeds to the throne of Judah. He is married to one of the daughters of Ahab, and the compiler tells us that Jehoram is a wicked king on the model of the kings of Israel (8:18). But the Lord does not destroy Judah "for the sake of his servant David, since he had promised to give a lamp to him and to his descendents forever" (8:19). The lamp of David will not go out—it is the great theme of hope in the Old Testament scriptures. But king Jehoram faces a revolt in Judah's vassal state of Edom, which he is unable to put down by force (8:20-21). The fortunes of Judah are sinking. Jehoram's son Ahaziah also connects himself to the northern kingdom by marriage, and he is also evil in the style of the northern kings. He allies himself with his cousin Joram of Israel to wage war against the rising power of Hazael of Aram.  Joram is wounded in the campaign, but survives. Nevertheless the future is dark for both kingdoms.