Scripture Daily

Context No. 776 of 4322 · 2 Kings

Context · Reflection

2 Kings 6:6-11: in context

6The man of God asked, “Where did it fall?” He showed him the place. He cut down a stick, threw it in there, and made the iron float. 7He said, “Take it.” So he put out his hand and took it. 8Now the king of Syria was at war against Israel; and he took counsel with his servants, saying, “My camp will be in such and such a place.” 9The man of God sent to the king of Israel, saying, “Beware that you not pass this place, for the Syrians are coming down there.” 10The king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God told him and warned him of; and he saved himself there, not once or twice. 11The king of Syria’s heart was very troubled about this. He called his servants, and said to them, “Won’t you show me which of us is for the king of Israel?”

The Elisha stories are full of great deliverances, but this one begins with something almost comically small. A company of prophets is out cutting wood by the Jordan, and as one of them swings, the iron head flies off his axe and sinks into the river. His cry says everything: alas, master, it was borrowed. It is not a national emergency. It is one poor man's lost tool, and worse, a borrowed one, which he now owes and cannot repay. Elisha asks where it fell, cuts a stick, throws it into the water, and makes the iron float up to the surface. Reach out and take it, he says, and the man does.

It is easy to skip past as a minor miracle, but the smallness is the point. The prophet who will shortly be reading the secret battle plans of the king of Syria, saving a whole nation from ambush after ambush, first stops to recover one workman's sunken axe head, because it mattered to the workman and because it was not even his to lose. God's attention here is not reserved for the fate of kingdoms. It bends down to a borrowed tool at the bottom of a river and the quiet shame of a man who cannot afford to replace it. Nothing is too small or too embarrassing to bring.

Elisha stopped to raise one poor man's borrowed axe head from the river before he went on to save the nation. What small, embarrassing trouble have I decided is too minor to bring to God, when he bends down even to a sunken tool?

Sources