When Elijah supposed that his work was done he was ordered by Jehovah to
go up and return on his way to the wilderness of Damascus; and he who
supposed that his ministry was concluded had yet to anoint Hazael to be
king over Syria and Jehu, the son of Nimshi, to be king over Israel.
But the anointing of these kings was a comparatively insignificant
circumstance. The great point of the commission is contained in this
sentence:
“And Elisha, the son of Shaphat of Abel-mehola, shalt thou anoint to be
prophet in thy room.”
Probably it had not occurred to Elijah that he could have a successor. A
very subtle indication is thus given of his approaching end. The Lord,
instead of telling Elijah that he had many a year left to spend in holy
service, gave him to understand that even he, mighty prophet though he
was, could be dispensed with, and a man of almost unknown name would be
qualified by divine inspiration to take his room. We can not imagine
Elijah’s feelings under these circumstances. If a great demonstration
of regard had been made, on the part of the Lord God of Israel, because
Elijah was weary, the prophet might have supposed himself to be of vital
consequence to the divine economy; but to be told that Elisha, a man
who was plowing the twelfth plow in the field while his eleven servants
were plowing beside him, would succeed to the high dignity was really to
inflict in the most gracious way a very solemn humiliation upon a man
who had become so self-conscious as practically to ignore the resources
of the living God.
Elisha was a man in what we should now term comfortable circumstances. As
he was plowing in his field of Abel-mehola (“the meadow dance”) Elijah
drew near and threw over the plowman his prophetic sheep-skin mantle, and
passed on in silence, leaving Elisha himself to interpret the graphic
symbol. Elisha instantly comprehended the purpose, and, running after
Elijah, he begged to be allowed to kiss his father and mother, after
which he promised to follow the senior prophet.
It is noteworthy that at this time Elisha must have been quite a young
man--an inference which may be fairly drawn from the fact that sixty
years after this event he was still in the exercise of his prophetic
office.
It is a noticeable circumstance, which repeats itself even in our own
day, that Elisha was in many respects the exact counterpart of Elijah.
By choosing all kinds of character and capacity to represent the divine
kingdom, God shows His infinite wisdom in a way which even the dullest
understanding can hardly fail to appreciate. He is not dependent upon
one particular aspect of genius, or one particular aspect of eloquence;
but He calls whom He will to the prophetic office and the ministerial
function, and it should be our part to accept His vocations, however
much we may be surprised at the course which they take and at the social
consequences which they involve.
At the time in which Elijah and Elisha exercised their functions religion
and morals had gone down to the lowest possible point in Israel. The very
schools of the prophets had themselves felt the corrupting influence of
the times. Ahab was able to gather four hundred false prophets at a time,
the remarkable circumstance being that they were not prophets of Baal,
but false prophets of the Lord himself.
It can hardly be a matter of surprise, therefore, that a man of burning
spirit, arising under such circumstances, should begin his ministry with
displays of power which can hardly escape the charge of being stern or
even violent.
The second chapter of the second Book of Kings introduces us to the
beginning of Elisha’s ministry. He had just seen Elijah ascend, and he
felt that he was left alone to carry on the great work which had been so
wondrously conducted by a master hand.
In the twelfth verse we see how Elisha estimated the character and
service of Elijah. He exclaims: “My father! My father!” He thus indicates
the most serious loss which can befall human life. This is not altogether
a cry of reverence, but it is also a cry of orphanhood. In their brief
intercourse, one with the other, Elijah had naturally taken the paternal
place, and Elisha, as a very young man, had felt the comforting influence
exercised upon him by the mighty prophet.
This is a cry of young sensibility. The almost child feels himself to be
quite alone. He who an hour ago supposed that, after all, he might be
able to continue the work of Elijah now felt how terrible was the void
that was created by Elijah’s absence.
We do not know the bulk and value of some ministries until they are
removed from us. We become quite familiar with them, and attach no
particular significance to their exercise; we come to think we have some
right in them, and that by some means or other they will be present with
us always. When, however, the great removal does take place and we look
around for the familiar face and expect to be touched by the familiar
hand, but find our expectations disappointed, the natural cry is: “My
father! My father!”
These words, too, may fairly be construed as suggesting an aspect of
Elijah’s character which is generally overlooked. Probably it has hardly
occurred to us to regard Elijah as a man of special tenderness. We think
of him as a great comet, or as a flash of lightning, or as a mighty
whirlwind, or under any figure that suggests grandeur, majesty and force;
but we have never associated with Elijah the notion of graciousness,
tenderness, love and that easy familiarity which constitutes the very
soul of friendship.
Now, however, by the ascription of his name we do seem to know somewhat
of the genial intercourse which passed between father and son--the senior
prophet and the young apostle of God; and it is delightful to infer that
such intercourse had been conducted on the one side paternally and on the
other side filially.
We do not know altogether what men are when we only see them in public
life. The great parliamentary orator may be the simplest of all men
when he is in the domestic circle. The great commander of armies, whose
courage never quails, may have the heart of a woman when he stands in the
presence of suffering childhood. It is important for all who attempt to
delineate the characters of public men to remember that they see only
one aspect of those characters, and are not qualified to pronounce upon
the whole man.
The next expression of Elisha is: “The chariot of Israel, and the
horsemen thereof.”
This is an apparently incoherent exclamation. When properly understood,
however, it conveys a further tribute to the ministry which was exercised
by the ascending prophet. The real meaning is: “My father--so much better
than all chariots and horses; in thy absence the chariot of Israel and
the horsemen thereof are useless. They were used by thee, and under thy
conduct could be turned to good account; but, now that thou art gone,
they do but mock our loneliness and make us feel still more bitterly our
helpless condition.”
A greater question than “Where is Elijah?” now occurred to the desolate
young man. Instantly he seizes the reality of the occasion, and by
exclaiming “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” he shows that he is not
called to a merely official position, but that he is elected to represent
the divine majesty upon Earth.
The young man thus begins well. There is nothing frivolous in his inquiry
or in his interpretation of events. The very depth of his feeling gives
us an index to the capacity of his mind. Rely upon it, that he who can
feel as Elisha did must have a mind equal in its proportions to the fine
emotions which enlarge and ennoble his heart. Had the young man deported
himself in a way which suggested self-sufficiency, his prophetic office
would have been destroyed well-nigh before it was created.
It is when we stand back in humility and in almost despair, and cry out
in our desolateness “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” that we begin our
work in the right spirit, and only then.
In this whole ministry of righteousness and redemption there is no place
for self-sufficiency. Apostle Paul said: “Our sufficiency is of God.”
The great inquiry “Who is sufficient for these things?” keeps down
human ambition and vanity, and prepares the heart for the utterance of
prevailing prayer. The question which was thus propounded by Elisha is
full of suggestion to ourselves. When we come to read the Bible we should
not inquire so much where inspiration is, but where is wisdom which can
be applied to our own circumstances and be made unto us as the very staff
of life.
We need not exclaim, in considering the Christian ministry of our own
day: “Where are the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles?”
Our inquiry should be: “Where are the healed men, the comforted hearts,
the forgiven souls, the rejoicing spirits?”
Who care to inquire into the mechanism of the organ when he can hear its
music and be bowed down by its most solemn appeals?
“And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him,
they said: ‘The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha.’ And they came to
meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him.”
There was no mistaking that spirit. Who can mistake the presence and
influence of fire? Better that our spirit should be discovered than that
our credentials should be examined.
Of what avail is it that a man can produce a whole portfolio of
testimonials, if nobody has discovered in him the presence and effect of
the divine Spirit?
This tribute is also to the credit of the sons of the prophets, for their
judgment was vital, and was not accidental. There are men who will only
regard providence as operating in one way, or as operating in one form.
These sons of the prophets did not belong to such an inferior class of
judges.
It is remarkable, too, that the organic unity of the prophetic office
is hereby recognized. The sons of the prophets do not treat Elisha as a
novelty, a new sensation, or as representing a new point of departure.
They unite the old with the new; though the man has changed, the spirit
remains the same.
This is what must be always regarded in reading Christian history and in
watching the course of the Christian ministry. Old ministers depart, but
when new men come they come with the old spirit and with the old truth,
or if they come with any other spirit or any other doctrine, they should,
in the degree of the change, be suspected of being other than genuine
successors of the prophets.
Elisha begins his ministry by doing good--that is to say, by healing
the water that was diseased. This appeal to the prophet to do something
for the city of Jericho was itself a tribute to the genuineness of the
prophetic office as exercised by him. It is always beautiful to notice
how great power is associated with the doing of good. What is it to
be a prophet of any age, if the age is not practically benefited by
the exercise of the office? The age does not want ornamental prophets,
nominal prophets, official prophets. The age is crying out for men who
can give it bread, who can heal its water, who can mitigate its sorrows,
who can destroy its oppressions.
By this sign must all prophets live or die. It would have been a poor
thing on the part of Elisha to have shown the mantle of his predecessor
if he could not also show his power. We are only in the apostolic
succession as we are in the apostolic spirit.
We may have all the relics which the apostles left behind--the cloak
that was left at Troas, the parchment, the staff and the vessels out of
which they ate and drank--we may even have the scrolls which they used in
reading the Holy Scriptures; but all these things will constitute only a
burden if we have not, along with all other possessions, the mighty and
eternal Spirit of the living God, without whose energy even the apostles
themselves were but common men.
Elisha, having cured the water, went up from the depressed plain of
Jericho to the top of the highland of Jordan, to the height of three
thousand feet, that he might come unto Beth-el--which, alas, became the
chief stronghold of the calf worship. The popular sentiment was debased
to the lowest possible point; even the little children were tainted with
the awful disease of contempt for the greatest names and the greatest
thoughts in all Israel.
“And he went up from thence to Beth-el; and as he was going up by the
way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him,
and said unto him: ‘Go up, thou bald head! Go up, thou bald head!’ And
he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the
Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty
and two children of them. And he went from thence to Mount Carmel, and
from thence he returned to Samaria.”
This miracle has occasioned no little difficulty to those who read it
only in the letter. It is not a narrow incident which can be regarded
as a mere anecdote and treated, as it were, within the limits of its
own four corners. We must understand the spirit of the age in which
the incident occurred. We must realize that the whole air was full of
idolatry and blasphemy. We must also remember that the very Church of
Israel itself was deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, with
hardly one spot of health on all the altar from the crown of the head to
the sole of the foot. We must keep steadily before our minds the fact
that the places which are mentioned in this incident had become as Sodom
and Gomorrah--not, perhaps, in the physical and carnal sense, but in the
still worse sense of spiritual alienation and spiritual contempt for
every thing associated with the name of the living God.
When Elisha, therefore, wrought this deed of violence--this miracle of
destruction--his action must be regarded typically and as strictly in
keeping with the necessities of the occasion. Only this kind of miracle
could have been understood by the people among whom it was worked and
who had an opportunity of feeling its effects, either directly or
incidentally. How often it happens that the first miracle is one which is
marked peculiarly by a destructive energy!
This would seem to be the miracle which our own first zealous impulses
would work, had they the power to express themselves in such a form. When
the soul is alive with the purity of God, when the heart glows and burns
with love, when the whole being is in vital sympathy with the purposes of
the cross of Christ, the first and all but uncontrollable impulse is to
destroy evil--not to reason with it, or make truce with it, or give it
further treatment of any kind, but instantly and violently to crush it
out of existence.
This impulse will be trained unto other uses in the School of Christ.
We see, in the opening of the sixth chapter of the second Book of Kings,
some of the simple and happy relations which existed between the elder
and the younger prophets.
Is it not possible to revive some of these relations? Look at the case:
“And the sons of the prophets said unto Elisha: ‘Behold, now, the place
where we dwell with thee is too strait for us.’”
Put into modern language, the statement amounts to this: “Our college is
getting too small, and we want more room. Let us, therefore, consider
this practical question, and see what can be done.”
Elisha did not live with the young men. That, perhaps, was rather a happy
than an unhappy circumstance--though a very beautiful picture could be
drawn concerning domestic collegiate life. A college or a school with the
teachers and the students all living together must, one would surely say,
be a little Heaven on Earth. What can be, ideally, more perfect than the
old prophet surrounded by all the younger prophets, eating and living
together, having a common room, a common hostelry--a common home? What
can be, imaginatively, more taking, pathetic and satisfactory?
Without pronouncing a judgment upon that inquiry, it is enough to be
so far just to the text to say that Elisha did not adopt that system
of collegiate life. He went around from place to place; he visited the
schools of the prophets in the various localities, and when he came to
this place the young men said: “We have not room enough; we must consider
our circumstances, and endeavor to enlarge our accommodation.”
What did they propose?
It is well now and again to hear what young men have to suggest. It is
useful to listen to young politicians in national crises, that we may
hear how they would treat the patient. It is most desirable that young
voices should mingle with old voices in the common council.
Now it is the turn of the young men to speak. What will they propose to
Elisha?
The answer is given in the second verse: “Let us go, we pray thee, unto
Jordan, and take thence every man a beam, and let us make a place there
where we may dwell.”
The city was not situated exactly upon the Jordan, but upon a stream a
little way from it, which flowed into that great river; and now the young
men proposed to get a little nearer to the main stream, for the district
of it was called The Valley of Palms.
Palestine was notably destitute of trees, but in this particular locality
timber was to be got. So the young men made the proposition to Elisha.
What does the proposition amount to? It amounts to something which in
this day might horrify a good many of the successors of Elisha.
The young men said: “Let us go and cut down our timber, and enlarge our
college with our own hands.” Did they propose that the question should be
“reported upon”--that it should be brought first under the attention of
the general committee, then be referred to a sub-committee being bound to
make a report to the general committee, and the general committee being
unable to attend, or to constitute a quorum, and so go on to forget the
whole business? The young men said:
“We want room; let us make it. We want a larger college; let us build it.”
Why not adopt the same principle today? There is nothing so easy as to
send around an appeal for a contribution and never get any reply to it.
We, wanting to be missionaries, should go by the next boat; wanting to
preach the Gospel to the heathen, we should ask: “When does the ship
start?” Being unable to pay the fare, we should work our passage. If
people should ask us what we are doing, and whether we have lost our
senses, we should say: “Yes; if we be beside ourselves, it is unto God.”
Then an impression might be made upon those who look on. They would say:
“Surely, these men are in earnest; be they right or be they wrong, be
they fanatical or sober-minded, their earnestness burns in them like a
fire, and such men can neither be put back nor be kept down.”
However, without wishing to modernize the details of this incident,
which, owing to our civilization, would be impossible, it is enough to
remember that, in the early days of collegiate and school life, the
scholars were prepared to do something toward helping themselves. They
did not send for builders from Jerusalem, or even from the city of
Jericho; they undertook the work at their own impulse and at their own
charges.
There is a line of beauty even in the proposition of the young men. They
desired Elisha’s permission. They said, in effect: “Father, may we go?”
They were enthusiastic, but they were under discipline; they had fire
enough, but they responded to the touch of the master. And one said to
Elisha: “Be content, I pray thee, and go with thy servants.” They were
stronger when the elder man was with them.
Sometimes the eye is the best master. It often happens that the man who
is standing in the harvest field, resting upon his rake, a picture of
dignity and ease, is doing more than if he were sweltering himself by
cutting down corn with his own sickle. His eye is doing the work, and his
presence is exerting an immeasurable and happy influence upon the whole
field.
Elisha was not asked to go and fell the timber, but to be with the young
men while they did the hard work; and, becoming young again himself, as
old men do become young when associated with young life, he replied:
“I will go. The work is a common work. It belongs to me as well as to
you; it belongs to all Israel, in so far as all Israel is true to the
living God. Come, let us go in one band; union is strength.”
Now, they went--the old and the young together. Why would they not go
alone? Perhaps they were all reminded of what happened when once they
did go alone. Elisha ordered that food should be prepared, and when the
seething pot was on, one of the young men went out and gathered something
and threw it into the pot, and nearly poisoned the whole college. Small
wonder if one of them, remembering this, said:
“No more going out alone, if you please. We once took the case into our
own hands, and I remember how many of us fell sick, and how we cried
to Elisha: ‘Master, there is death in the pot!’ And he kindly took
up a handful of meal, sprinkled it into the vessel and restored its
healthfulness. The pot was relieved of all the disease which it had
contained, and the meal most happily proceeded.”
We should remember our blunders, and learn from them. We are always safer
in the company of the old and wise than when we are in our own society.
Happy is the man who takes counsel with his elder neighbors, and who can
sometimes renounce himself and say unto wise men: “Such and such are my
circumstances; now, what would you advise me to do?”
Elisha and the young men have now gone down to the Jordan. Elisha felled
no tree but he did his own particular kind of work.
The Syrian king could not rest. In his heart he hated or feared the king
and the hosts of Israel. There was chronic war between Israel and Syria.
The king of Syria said: “I will fix my camp in such and such a place.” Of
this the sacred record says: “And the man of God sent unto the king of
Israel, saying: ‘Beware that thou pass not such a place, for thither the
Syrians are come down.’”
There is a ministry of warning. Men may not go themselves to battle,
and yet they may be controlling the fortunes of war. We need statesmen,
spiritual interpreters, religious teachers, men of thought and men of
prayer; and they may be doing more practical work than is being done
by those who are engaged in the physical work of leading armies and
commanding military hosts.
This is what Elisha did.
He felled no tree; he wielded no sword. Yet, alike in the building of the
college and in the direction of the war, his was the supreme mind. The
prophet saved the king. This must always be the case.
The great man of the nation is the man who can think most profoundly
and most comprehensively. The architect is a greater man than the
builder. The prophet is a greater man than the king. He reads more; he
sees farther; he grasps a larger field. He is master of metaphysical
principles, which alone endure. They wear the clothes of the present
time; they adopt the form of the passing generation, but they go on from
age to age--themselves always the same, their adaptations being addressed
to the immediate and pressing necessities of the people.
We have been told that “Justice is not an intermittent apparition.”
That is perfectly true in one sense; but justice is often a deferred
creditor, and sometimes that may be done tomorrow which can not be justly
done today. The prophet sees all this. He looks ahead; he has a larger
horizon than is accessible to the vision of other men.
So let it stand, an eternal lesson, that the greatest men in any nation
are the men who can think most, pray best, feel most deeply and penetrate
the metaphysics and the inmost reality of politics and of civilization.
Spiritual power is not only useful in one direction; it is alarming in
another. When the king of Syria felt himself baffled, all his plans
thrown into uncontrollable bewilderment, his heart was sorely troubled.
It is the Immeasurable that frightens men. It is the Unknown Quantity
that troubles all their calculations and causes them to feel that after
they have completed their arithmetic their conclusion is a lie.
What was in the air? Whose was this ghostly presence that was upsetting
Ben-hadad’s well laid schemes? What was it, or who, that always went
before him, and that made his proposals abortive and turned all his
policies into mocking nothings?
Had there been any man who was visible and measurable, that man could
have been dealt with. There is always a quantity equal to any quantity
that is known. What is wanting in one way can be made up in another--as,
for example, what is wanting in number may be made up in quality. As one
great leader said in ancient history, when his soldiers were saying they
were too few for the battle: “How many do you count me for?” That touched
the fire of the army, and inspired the soldiers with confidence.
Now, the matter was revealed to the king, and he took means to remove the
spectral influence. He made this arrangement: “Go and spy where he is,
that I may send and fetch him.” When he knew that Elisha was in Dothan
the king sent “thither horses and chariots and a great host.”
What unconscious tributes bad men pay to good influences! Men do not know
wholly what they are doing. Why, this was but a poor prophet, wearing a
hairy robe that had descended to him; he was no king; he had no sword or
horse; he was but a man of prayer. How did Ben-hadad propose to capture
him?
The king sent “horses and chariots and a great host” to take a man whose
sword was the word of God, whose helmet was the defense of the Most High,
whose breastplate was Righteousness!
Here are three arms of the Syrian service--footmen, horsemen and
chariots; and remember that these were all employed to bring one poor man
to the king’s presence. Well might Elisha have said, before Antigonus
uttered it: “How many do you count _me_ for?” Elisha might have taunted
the king of Syria, saying: “Why all this ado? Would not one soldier have
been enough to take one prophet? He might have come on foot; a horse was
not necessary, and certainly not a sword. One soldier might surely have
arrested me.”
But bad men unconsciously pay tribute to good men. They say, in effect:
“Elisha is only one, but a stubborn one; only one tree, but his roots
seem to have spread themselves through the Earth, and to have taken hold
of the entire scheme of things; he is only one, yet, what is strange, he
is many in one.”
And this, indeed, was the interpretation given by Elisha, for he said:
“They that be with us are more than they that be with them.”
Who can tell how many angels are round about the praying man? How is it
that when the arresting hand is laid upon some men it becomes softened,
the muscles relax and have no more pith in them, and the men come back
to say: “Never man spake like this man; arrest him we can not”? This is
a tribute paid to the Christian religion. Men have passed parliamentary
statutes against it, but the religion of the cross has outlived the
statutes--has seen them grow into yellow letters, has observed them being
canceled or otherwise passing into obsoleteness.
We are now brought to a very striking point in the incident. The servant
of Elisha came back, saying: “Alas, my master, how shall we do? I have
been up early, and behold, a host compasses the city--both with horses
and chariots.”
Then Elisha said: “Lord, open his eyes; let this young man see. At
present he can only look upon appearances, which are not realities. The
universe is within the universe. The Bible is within the Bible. The man
is within the man. This servant of mine sees only the outer circle--the
rim or rind of things. Lord, show him the reality; let him see, and then
he will be at peace.”
There is a view of sight; there is a view of faith. The worldly man goes
by what his bodily eyes notice or discern; the spiritually minded man
walks by faith, not by sight.
The telescope does not create the stars; the telescope only reveals them,
or enables the eye to see them. If, then, a telescope can do this, shall
we deny to that spiritual power within us called Faith the power which we
ascribe to a mechanical instrument which our own hands have fashioned?
Look upon a given object--say, you take a piece of glass two inches
square; look upon it and ask: “Is there any thing on that glass?” Looking
with the naked eye, the sharpest man would say: “That glass is perfectly
free from blot, stain, flaw or inscription of any kind whatsoever.”
Now, put that same two-inch square of glass under a microscope, and look
through the microscope. What is upon it? The Lord’s Prayer, upon a speck
not discernible by the naked eye.
If, then, we ascribe such wonderful powers to a glass which we ourselves
have determined as to its size and its relation to other glasses, shall
we deny to a certain spiritual faculty the power of seeing that which can
not be discriminated by unaided reason?
By all the pressure of analogy, by all the reasoning of inference, we
insist that, if such wonderful things can be done mechanically, things at
least equally wonderful can be done by forces that are spiritual.
The Sun does not make the landscape; the Sun only shows it. A man may
stand upon a high hill on a dull-gray day and say: “I can imagine what
this would be when the Sun was shining.” But no man can imagine light. It
stands as a sacred mystery in our life that the Sun never comes within
the lines of imagination. The Sun light is a continual surprise, even to
the eyes that have most reverently and lovingly studied it.
When the Sun looks upon the landscape there are new colors, new
distances, new forms; a whole work is wrought upon the landscape which
can only be described by the word “wizardry.”
So it is with the Bible, the great work of the living God. Look at it
with the natural vision, and you may discover in it particular beauties.
You may say: “The poetry is noble; the English is pure; and the moral
sentiment of the book is not without a certain elevation.”
But the Bible wants no such reluctant or impoverished compliments. Let
the soul be touched by the Spirit that wrote the book; let the eyes be
anointed by the living God; and then the Bible is like a landscape shone
upon by the noonday’s cloudless Sun.
Elisha took his own way with the Syrian army, and here occurs a point
worthy of special note. When the Lord smote the people with blindness,
according to the word of Elisha, the latter said unto them: “This is not
the way, neither is this the city; follow me, and I will bring you to the
man whom ye seek.” But he led them to Samaria.
What! Then did the man of God resort to a false strategy? This is a very
serious case, indeed, and has occasioned much difficulty. Nor need we
wonder, for in “The Speaker’s Commentary” we find such words as these:
“Untruth has been held by all moralists to be justifiable toward a public
enemy. Where we have a right to kill, much more have we a right to
deceive by stratagem.”
When words like these occur in a Christian commentary, no wonder that
infidelity should seize upon the annotation as a prize, or use it as a
weapon. No such comment can we adopt in perusing this portion of sacred
Scripture. It can not be justifiable to treat a public enemy by untruth
or deception. We have no right to kill, and therefore we have no right to
deceive by stratagem. This is not the way to recommend the word of the
living God.
The incident must be taken in its totality. The reader must not arrest
the progress of the narrative by stopping here or there to ask a
question. He must see the incident in its completeness, and, seeing it,
he will have reason further to glorify God for the pure morality of the
book and the noble spirit of the record.
Elisha might well so far follow his illustrious predecessor as to use the
weapon of irony or taunting in dealing with the Lord’s enemies.
Elijah said to the prophets of Baal: “Cry aloud; for he is a god.” As
well might we stop there, and say: “By Elijah’s own testimony deity was
ascribed to Baal.” We forget the irony of the tone; we forget that Elijah
was mocking the debased prophets.
So Elisha might say: “This is not the way, neither is this the city;
follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom ye seek.”
There was a taunt in the tone; there was sarcasm in the emphasis. Nor is
the verse to be read in its unity. It is to be read as part and parcel of
a whole narrative.
Now, what became of all this so-called deception and stratagem?
When the people were come into Samaria, Elisha said: “Lord, open the
eyes of these men, that they may see.”
He prayed, first, that their sight might be taken away. That seemed to be
cruel. Now he prays that their sight may be given to them again.
“And, behold, they were in the midst of Samaria. And the king of Israel
said unto Elisha, when he saw them: ‘My father!’” As if he had become
a convert. The son of Ahab and Jezebel said to Elisha: “My father!” A
reluctant and hypocritical compliment, for Jehoram could be neither
reverent or true.
But, said he, observing the prize that was before him: “Shall I smite
them? Shall I smite them?” This was a Hebraism equal to: “Smiting, shall
I smite?” So Jehoram said: “Shall I, smiting, smite them?”
Elisha answered: “No.”
Now, let us hear what this man can say who has been judged guilty of
untruth and of stratagem.
Elisha said to Jehoram: “Thou shalt not smite them. Wouldst thou smite
those whom thou hast taken captive without thy sword and without thy
bow?” This is the same as saying: “If you yourself have won the victory,
then you can smite; but you did not take these men, and therefore you
shall not smite them. What you have taken by your own sword and spear may
be your lawful prize in war; but here is a capture with which you have
had nothing to do.”
What, then, is to be done? Hear Elisha: “Set bread and water before them,
that they may eat and drink and go to their master.”
And so great provision was prepared, “and when they had eaten and drunk,
he sent them away, and they went to their master.”
We might even excuse a strategic act in order to secure such a conclusion.
Elisha was supposed to be about a hundred years of age when he died. We
have seen that he was a domestic rather than a public prophet. He was
unlike his great predecessor and father. The awful Elijah dwelt alone.
He came upon society now and then--came down like a flood from the
threatening clouds; shot out like a fire, and burned the men whom he
approached.
Elisha was exactly the contrary. He worked his miracles in the house.
He often called upon people; he was quiet, serene, most sympathetic and
tender-hearted. Now and then he could stand bolt upright and send away
proud men from his door with a disdain that they could never forget; but
in the usual process of his life he was a mother-man in Israel. He went
into people’s houses and asked how they were. He consented to increase
their oil and their flour, and to bless their family life with prophetic
benedictions.