2 Kings 8:6-11: a reflection

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.

When Elisha meets Hazael, an officer of the king of Syria, the prophet sees, by God's revelation, the terrible things Hazael would one day do to Israel, the cruelty, the violence, the suffering he would inflict. And the passage records Elisha's response: he fixed his gaze on Hazael until the man was ashamed, and then the man of God wept. Foreseeing the evil and suffering to come, Elisha did not respond with cold detachment, but with tears. The weight of the coming evil moved him to grief.

Notice Elisha's tears over foreseen evil. He might have received the revelation with prophetic detachment, or hardened himself against it. Instead, seeing the suffering that was coming, he wept. His heart was tender enough to grieve over evil and the suffering of its victims, even before it happened, even suffering that would come upon Israel through this foreign officer. He did not grow numb to evil; it made him weep.

That is a grace worth praying for: a heart tender enough to weep over evil and suffering. It is easy, in a world full of evil and pain, to grow hard, detached, numb, to shield ourselves from grief by no longer letting the suffering of the world move us. Elisha shows a better way: a heart soft enough to be moved to tears by evil and suffering, sharing something of God's own grief over a broken world. Do not let your heart grow hard to the evil and suffering around you. Ask God for a tender heart, one that can still weep, as Elisha wept, over the evil and pain of the world, rather than growing numb to it. A heart that grieves over suffering is closer to the heart of God than one that has grown cold.

Lord, when Elisha foresaw the evil and suffering Hazael would inflict, he did not respond with cold detachment but wept; his heart was tender enough to grieve over the evil to come. Give me such a heart. In a world full of evil and pain, it is easy to grow hard, detached, numb, to shield myself from grief by no longer letting the suffering of the world move me. Keep my heart from growing cold. Give me a heart soft enough to weep, as Elisha wept, over the evil and suffering around me, sharing something of your own grief over a broken world. Do not let me grow numb to the pain of others. Keep my heart tender, able to grieve, and near to your own heart, which is moved by the suffering of the world.