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Context No. 947 of 4322 · 2 Kings

Context · Reflection

2 Kings 8:6-11: in context

6When the king asked the woman, she told him. So the king appointed to her a certain officer, saying, “Restore all that was hers, and all the fruits of the field since the day that she left the land, even until now.” 7Elisha came to Damascus; and Benhadad the king of Syria was sick. He was told, “The man of God has come here.” 8The king said to Hazael, “Take a present in your hand, and go meet the man of God, and inquire of the LORD by him, saying, ‘Will I recover from this sickness?’” 9So 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?’” 10Elisha said to him, “Go, tell him, ‘You will surely recover;’ however the LORD has shown me that he will surely die.” 11He settled his gaze steadfastly on him, until he was ashamed. Then the man of God wept.

Elisha the prophet has come to Damascus, where the Syrian king Benhadad is sick. The king sends his officer Hazael with lavish gifts to ask the prophet whether he will recover. Elisha gives a strange, two-edged answer: go tell him he will surely recover, though the LORD has shown me he will surely die. Then Elisha fixes his gaze on Hazael until Hazael is ashamed, and the man of God begins to weep. When Hazael asks why, Elisha tells him: because I know the evil you will do to Israel, burning their fortresses, killing their young men, harming their children and their women.

The image that stays is the prophet weeping while he looks at a man's face. Elisha sees, laid out before him, all the atrocities Hazael will commit as the future king of Syria, and instead of denouncing him or gloating over an enemy's coming cruelty, he weeps. He grieves in advance for suffering that has not happened yet, for victims not yet harmed and a man not yet the ruler he will become. There is something of God's own heart in those tears, a sorrow over evil that runs deeper than the desire to condemn it. And there is a warning folded into the scene, because Hazael protests, is your servant a dog, that he should do such a thing, and yet he goes on to do every bit of it. He cannot imagine himself capable of such cruelty, and he becomes capable of all of it. The evil we are sure we would never do is often exactly what we drift into when the means to do it arrive.

Do I assume, like Hazael, that I could never become cruel, and can I let the tears of God over future harm keep me from drifting toward the very things I swear I am incapable of?

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