"But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great
thing?"--2 KINGS viii. 13.
Hazael was the chief minister and prime favourite of Benhadad, the
Syrian king. He had been raised from a humble lot and promoted to that
high post by the partiality of his sovereign, who had doubtless
discerned his exceptional abilities, and certainly placed implicit
trust in him. Just now the king was dangerously ill, and Hazael had
been sent to inquire of the prophet of Israel as to the probable issue
of the sickness. He put the question with seeming anxiety: "Will my
master recover?" He spoke as if that was his dearest wish; perhaps he
did wish it. But there were evidently other thoughts half-formed,
lurking and hiding themselves in the background. Suppose the king
should die and leave the throne vacant, what then? May there not be a
chance for me? Elisha read these hidden thoughts, and looked the man
in the face long and steadfastly, until the face turned crimson and the
head was lowered with shame. And then the prophet said, "Thy master
need not die of the sickness; nevertheless, he will die, and I see you
filling a throne won by murder, and I have a picture before me of the
terrible things which you will do to my dear land of Israel." And as
this vision passed before the prophet's eyes, he wept. Then Hazael
gave the answer which stands at the head of this paper.
It is open to two interpretations. The Authorised Version gives one
and the Revised Version the other. According to the first, it is an
indignant denial; he recoils with horror from the picture of perfidy,
cruelty, and enormous criminality which the prophet has sketched for
him. I am not capable of such a thing, he says; "_Is thy servant a
dog, that he should do this great thing_?" According to the other
reading it is not the crime that he revolts from, but the kingship and
the greatness that he refuses to believe in. It seems so improbable
and all but impossible that he, a man of obscure birth, should climb to
such eminence. He exclaims against it as a piece of incredulous and
extravagant imagination. "_What is thy servant, which is but a dog,
that he should do this great thing_?"
Now, I doubt not that both readings may be allowed. For certainly both
thoughts were in the speaker's mind. He did not believe at that moment
that he could ever be brought to commit such infamous deeds, and he did
not believe that he could ever attain such high ambitions and power.
There was a dark moral depth predicted for him to which he was sure he
would never fall, and there was a certain grandeur and elevation to
which he was confident he would never rise. To both things he said,
"It is impossible," and yet the impossible came to pass.
Now I would have you observe that this is one of the prominent lessons
of the Bible; on many a page does it bring out an unexpected
development like this. Again and again it is the unlikely that happens
in the lives which figure on its pages. They rise or they fall in a
way that no one looked for, and which they, least of all, anticipated
themselves. We seem to hear them saying with Hazael, "Impossible," and
then, before we get far, the thing is done. Impossible, we say, that
king Saul should ever descend so low as to deal in witches; or that
Solomon, the wise, God-fearing youth, should give himself up to the
sway of lustful passions and idolatries. Yet that comes to pass.
Impossible, we say, that the cunning, lying Jacob should ever develop
into a man of prayer; and the outcast beggar, Jephthah, ever grow into
a hero-patriot and king. Yet we see it. In the Bible stories
greatness always comes to those who have neither marked themselves out
for it, nor deemed themselves fit for it; and, on the contrary, its
most infamous deeds are done, and its most shameful lives lived, by
those who have given promise of fairer things, and who in their early
manhood would have scouted the possibility of descending so low. The
men whom it describes have no suspicion, to begin with, of the great
power for good that is in them, or the equally great possibilities of
evil. Tell the shepherd youth, David, that he has in him the making of
a king and an immortal poet, and he will think you are poking fun at
him. Tell him that he will one day fall into the crimes of adultery
and murder, and make all Israel blush for him, and he will be indignant
enough to strike you to the ground. Speak to the fisherman, Peter, of
the commanding influence which awaits him in some coming kingdom of
God, and he will think you are beside yourself: and then tell him that
he will one day deny and curse his sworn Master and kindest Friend, and
he will ask you, Do you think I am a dog or a devil that I should do
this? Impossible! And yet the thing comes off.
Why do the sacred writers give us so many stories of this kind? Surely
it is because we need both the warning and encouragement. It is to
prove to us that on one side of our nature we are greater than we
think, and on the other side weaker and lower than we believe. It is
to inspire the diffident with courage, and the despairing with hope,
while it pulls up the forward, the careless, and the over-confident
with the wholesome and humbling word, "_Let him that thinketh he
standeth, take heed lest he fall_." These men of the Bible were
strangely mixed. They were conspicuous instances of the contradictions
and surprises which are in us all. For that is the point: the thing
comes home to us.
Believe me, we are all a riddle to ourselves. Each man is to himself,
and each woman too, the greatest of all mysteries save the one greater
mystery, God. None of us know of what elements he is composed, and how
strangely the good and evil mix and mingle and clash and strive in each
day's doings, and through the whole of life. They who believe that the
saint is all saint, and the sinner all sinner, are blindly and pitiably
ignorant of human nature. God has made no man without putting some
little bit of the Divine image in him. The worst has some lingering
trace or ruin of it. And the best is not so entirely the temple of the
Holy Ghost that no fouler spirits ever obtain entrance there. You may
say that you do not believe in a devil. Well, that may be; but there
is something like a devil in all of us at certain times, and I would
rather believe that it comes from the outside than that it is born and
bred and originates within. At any rate, there are in all of us the
strange oppositions, the darkness and the light overlapping each other,
the evil and the good ever contending, like Esau and Jacob, in the
birth hour. The awful and the blessed possibilities are there, and
which shall get the uppermost depends first on God, and then upon
ourselves.