Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Shunammite's Land, and Hazael
2 Kings 8:1-15
1 Now Elisha had spoken to the woman whose son he had restored to life, saying, “Arise, and go, you and your household, and stay for a while wherever you can; for Yahweh has called for a famine. It will also come on the land for seven years.” · WEB
A woman's petition arrives exactly as her story is being told at court — and a prophet weeps in front of the man who will do the killing.
"Arise, and go, you and your household, and stay for a while wherever you can; for Yahweh has called for a famine" 2 Kings 8:1.
The warning to the Shunammite is worth pausing on. The prophet who raised her son now tells her to leave the country for seven years, and she goes — to Philistine territory, of all places. God's care for her includes advance notice of a disaster he is sending, and the care takes the form of information rather than exemption.
Now the king was talking with Gehazi the servant of the man of God, saying, "Please tell me all the great things that Elisha has done" 2 Kings 8:4.
The timing is the miracle here, and it is done entirely without the miraculous. She returns after seven years to find her house and land occupied and goes to petition the king — who happens, at that moment, to be asking Gehazi for stories about Elisha, who happens to be telling the one about the boy raised from the dead. Behold, the woman whose son he had restored to life begged the king for her house and for her land 2 Kings 8:5. She walks in mid-sentence.
"My lord, O king, this is the woman, and this is her son, whom Elisha restored to life" 2 Kings 8:5.
The king restores everything, including seven years of back income from the fields 2 Kings 8:6. Providence in this book usually looks like a coincidence with unusually good timing, and the woman who once said it is well over a dead child gets her land back because a servant was telling a story on the right afternoon.
Elisha came to Damascus; and Benhadad the king of Syria was sick 2 Kings 8:7.
Then the scene shifts to Damascus , the enemy capital, where Israel's prophet has traveled and where his arrival is reported to the palace as news. The Syrian king sends forty camel-loads of gifts and a question — will I recover? — and the courier is Hazael.
"Go, tell him, 'You will surely recover;' however Yahweh has shown me that he will surely die" 2 Kings 8:10.
The answer is two statements that fit together once the next day happens. The illness is survivable; the king will die anyway, and the man asking the question is why. Elisha is not instructing Hazael to lie — he is telling him the medical truth and the actual outcome in the same breath, and letting him hear the gap.
He settled his gaze steadfastly on him, until he was ashamed. Then the man of God wept 2 Kings 8:11.
The stare is long enough to become unbearable, and then the prophet cries. It is one of the most human moments in the book: Elisha is looking at a man and seeing what he will do.
"Because I know the evil that you will do to the children of Israel. You will set their strongholds on fire, and you will kill their young men with the sword, and will dash their little ones in pieces, and rip up their pregnant women" 2 Kings 8:12.
The catalogue is atrocity in plain terms, and Elisha weeps over the man who will commit it rather than denouncing him. God's prophet grieves for Israel's coming suffering and, unmistakably, for what Hazael is going to become.
"But what is your servant, who is but a dog, that he could do this great thing?" 2 Kings 8:13.
His protest sounds like humility and is ambition asking for confirmation. He does not say the atrocities are unthinkable; he says he is too small to manage anything so great. And Elisha answers the question he actually asked: Yahweh has shown me that you will be king over Syria.
On the next day, he took a thick cloth, dipped it in water, and spread it on the king's face, so that he died 2 Kings 8:15.
He smothers his master within a day and reports the prophet's words as a clean bill of health 2 Kings 8:14. Elisha's commission from Horeb included anointing Hazael 1 Kings 19:15, and here it is discharged — a foreign usurper installed as an instrument of judgment on Israel, weeping prophet and all.
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