_THE STORY OF NAAMAN_
2 KINGS v. 1-27
MATT. viii. 3: Θέλω, καθαρίσθητι
After these shorter anecdotes we have the longer episode of
Naaman.[83]
A part of the misery inflicted by the Syrians on Israel was caused by
the forays in which their light-armed bands, very much like the
borderers on the marches of Wales or Scotland, descended upon the
country and carried off plunder and captives before they could be
pursued.
In one of these raids they had seized a little Israelitish girl and
sold her to be a slave. She had been purchased for the household of
Naaman, the captain of the Syrian host, who had helped his king and
nation to win important victories either against Israel or against
Assyria. Ancient Jewish tradition identified him with the man who had
"drawn his bow at a venture" and slain King Ahab. But all Naaman's
valour and rank and fame, and the honour felt for him by his king,
were valueless to him, for he was suffering from the horrible
affliction of leprosy. Lepers do not seem to have been segregated in
other countries so strictly as they were in Israel, or at any rate
Naaman's leprosy was not of so severe a form as to incapacitate him
from his public functions.
But it was evident that he was a man who had won the affection of all
who knew him; and the little slave girl who waited on his wife
breathed to her a passionate wish that Naaman could visit the Man of
God in Samaria, for he would recover him from his leprosy. The saying
was repeated, and one of Naaman's friends mentioned it to the king of
Syria. Benhadad was so much struck by it that he instantly determined
to send a letter, with a truly royal gift to the king of Israel, who
could, he supposed, as a matter of course, command the services of the
prophet. The letter came to Jehoram with a stupendous present of
ingots of silver to the value of ten talents, and six thousand pieces
of gold, and ten changes of raiment.[84] After the ordinary
salutations, and a mention of the gifts, the letter continued "And
now, when this letter is come to thee, behold I have sent Naaman my
servant, that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy."
Jehoram lived in perpetual terror of his powerful and encroaching
neighbour. Nothing was said in the letter about the Man of God; and
the king rent his clothes, exclaiming that he was not God to kill and
to make alive, and that this must be a base pretext for a quarrel. It
never so much as occurred to him, as it certainly would have done to
Jehoshaphat, that the prophet, who was so widely known and honoured,
and whose mission had been so clearly attested in the invasion of
Moab, might at least help him to face this problem. Otherwise the
difficulty might indeed seem insuperable, for leprosy was universally
regarded as an incurable disease.
But Elisha was not afraid: he boldly told Jehoram to send the Syrian
captain to him. Naaman, with his horses and his chariots, in all the
splendour of a royal ambassador, drove up to the humble house of the
prophet. Being so great a man, he expected a deferential reception,
and looked for the performance of his cure in some striking and
dramatic manner. "The prophet," so he said to himself, "will come out,
and solemnly invoke the name of his God Jehovah, and wave his hand
over the leprous limbs, and so work the miracle."[85]
But the servant of the King of kings was not exultantly impressed, as
false prophets so often are, by earthly greatness. Elisha did not even
pay him the compliment of coming out of the house to meet him. He
wished to efface himself completely, and to fix the leper's thoughts
on the one truth that if healing was granted to him, it was due to the
gift of God, not to the thaumaturgy or arts of man. He simply sent out
his servant to the Syrian commander-in-chief with the brief message,
"Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and be thou clean."
Naaman, accustomed to the extreme deference of many dependants, was not
only offended, but enraged, by what he regarded as the scant courtesy
and procrastinated boon of the prophet. Why was he not received as a man
of the highest distinction? What necessity could there be for sending
him all the way to the Jordan? And why was he bidden to wash in that
wretched, useless, tortuous stream, rather than in the pure and flowing
waters of his own native Abanah and Pharpar?[86] How was he to tell that
this "Man of God" did not design to mock him by sending him on a fool's
errand, so that he would come back as a laughing-stock both to the
Israelites and to his own people? Perhaps he had not felt any great
faith in the prophet, to begin with; but whatever he once felt had now
vanished. He turned and went away in a rage.
But in this crisis the affection of his friends and servants stood him
in good stead. Addressing him, in their love and pity, by the unusual
term of honour "my father," they urged upon him that, as he certainly
would not have refused some _great_ test, there was no reason why he
should refuse this simple and humble one.
He was won over by their reasonings, and descending the hot steep valley
of the Jordan, bathed himself in the river seven times. God healed him,
and, as Elisha had promised, "his flesh," corroded by leprosy, "came
again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean."
This healing of Naaman is alluded to by our Lord to illustrate the truth
that the love of God extended farther than the limits of the chosen
race; that His Fatherhood is co-extensive with the whole family of man.
It is difficult to conceive the transport of a man cured of this most
loathsome and humiliating of all earthly afflictions. Naaman, who seems
to have possessed "a mind naturally Christian," was filled with
gratitude. Unlike the thankless Jewish lepers whom Christ cured as He
left Engannim, this alien returned to give glory to God. Once more the
whole imposing cavalcade rode through the streets of Samaria, and
stopped at Elisha's door. This time Naaman was admitted into his
presence. He saw, and no doubt Elisha had strongly impressed on him the
truth, that his healing was the work not of man but of God; and as he
had found no help in the deities of Syria, he confessed that the God of
Israel was the only true God among those of the nations. In token of his
thankfulness he presses Elisha, as God's instrument in the unspeakable
mercy which has been granted to him, to accept "a blessing" (_i.e._, a
present) from him--"from thy servant," as he humbly styled himself.
Elisha was no greedy Balaam. It was essential that Naaman and the
Syrians should not look on him as on some vulgar sorcerer who wrought
wonders for "the rewards of divination." His wants were so simple that
he stood above temptation. His desires and treasures were not on
earth. To put an end to all importunity, he appealed to Jehovah with
his usual solemn formula--"As the Lord liveth before whom I stand, I
will receive no present."[87]
Still more deeply impressed by the prophet's incorruptible superiority
to so much as a suspicion of low motives, Naaman asked that he might
receive two mules' burden of earth wherewith to build an altar to the
God of Israel of His own sacred soil.[88] The very soil ruled by such
a God must, he thought, be holier than other soil; and he wished to
take it back to Syria, just as the people of Pisa rejoiced to fill
their Campo Santo with mould from the Holy Land, and just as mothers
like to baptize their children in water brought home from the Jordan.
Henceforth, said Naaman, I will offer burnt-offering and sacrifice to
no God but unto Jehovah. Yet there was one difficulty in the way. When
the King of Syria went to worship in the temple of his god Rimmon it
was the duty of Naaman to accompany him.[89] The king leaned on his
hand, and when he bowed before the idol it was Naaman's duty to bow
also. He begged that for this concession God would pardon him.
Elisha's answer was perhaps different from what Elijah might have given.
He practically allowed Naaman to give this sign of outward compliance
with idolatry, by saying to him, "Go in peace." It is from this
circumstance that the phrase "to bow in the house of Rimmon" has become
proverbial to indicate a dangerous and dishonest compromise. But
Elisha's permission must not be misunderstood. He did but hand over this
semi-heathen convert to the grace of God. It must be remembered that he
lived in days long preceding the conviction that proselytism is a part
of true religion; in days when the thought of missions to heathen lands
was utterly unknown. The position of Naaman was wholly different from
that of any Israelite. He was only the convert, or the half-convert of
a day, and though he acknowledged the supremacy of Jehovah as alone
worthy of his worship, he probably shared in the belief--common even in
Israel--that there were other gods, local gods, gods of the nations, to
whom Jehovah might have divided the limits of their power.[90] To demand
of one who, like Naaman, had been an idolater all his days, the sudden
abandonment of every custom and tradition of his life, would have been
to demand from him an unreasonable, and, in his circumstances, useless
and all but impossible self-sacrifice. The best way was to let him feel
and see for himself the futility of Rimmon-worship. If he were not
frightened back from his sudden faith in Jehovah, the scruple of
conscience which he already felt in making his request might naturally
grow within him and lead him to all that was best and highest. The
temporary condonation of an imperfection might be a wise step towards
the ultimate realisation of a truth. We cannot at all blame Elisha, if,
with such knowledge as he then possessed, he took a mercifully tolerant
view of the exigencies of Naaman's position. The bowing in the house of
Rimmon under such conditions probably seemed to him no more than an act
of outward respect to the king and to the national religion in a case
where no evil results could follow from Naaman's example.[91]
But the general principle that _we_ must _not_ bow in the house of
Rimmon remains unchanged. The light and knowledge vouchsafed to us far
transcend those which existed in times when men had not seen the days of
the Son of Man. The only rule which sincere Christians can follow is to
have no truce with Canaan, no halting between two opinions, no
tampering, no compliance, no connivance, no complicity with evil,--even
no tolerance of evil as far as their own conduct is concerned. No good
man, in the light of the Gospel dispensation, could condone himself in
seeming to sanction--still less in doing--anything which in his opinion
ought not to be done, or in saying anything which implied his own
acquiescence in things which he knows to be evil. "Sir," said a
parishioner to one of the non-juring clergy: "there is many a man who
has made a great gash in his conscience; cannot you make a little nick
in yours?" No! a _little_ nick is, in one sense, as fatal as a great
gash. It is an abandonment of _the principle_; it is a violation of the
Law. The wrong of it consists in this--that all evil begins, not in the
commission of great crimes, but in the slight divergence from right
rules. The angle made by two lines may be infinitesimally small, but
produce the lines and it may require infinitude to span the separation
between the lines which inclose so tiny an angle. The wise man gave the
only true rule about wrong-doing, when he said, "Enter not into the path
of the wicked and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by
it, turn from it and pass away."[92] And the reason for his rule is
that the beginning of sin--like the beginning of strife--"is as when one
letteth out water."[93]
The proper answer to all abuses of any supposed concession to the
lawfulness of bowing in the house of Rimmon--if that be interpreted to
mean the doing of anything which our consciences cannot wholly
approve--is _Obsta principiis_--avoid the beginnings of evil.
"We are not worst at once; the course of evil
Begins so slowly, and from such slight source,
An infant's hand might stem the breach with clay;
But let the stream grow wider, and philosophy,
Age, and religion too, may strive in vain
To stem the headstrong current."
The mean cupidity of Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, gives a deplorable
sequel to the story of the prophet's magnanimity. This man's wretched
greed did its utmost to nullify the good influence of his master's
example. There may be more wicked acts recorded in Scripture than that
of Gehazi, but there is scarcely one which shows so paltry a
disposition.
He had heard the conversation between his master and the Syrian
marshal, and his cunning heart despised as a futile sentimentality the
magnanimity which had refused an eagerly proffered reward. Naaman was
rich: he had received a priceless boon; it would be rather a pleasure
to him than otherwise to return for it some acknowledgment which he
would not miss. Had he not even seemed a little hurt by Elisha's
refusal to receive it? What possible harm could there be in taking
what he was anxious to give? And how useful those magnificent presents
would be, and to what excellent uses could they be put! He could not
approve of the fantastic and unpractical scrupulosity which had led
Elisha to refuse the "blessing" which he had so richly earned. Such
attitudes of unworldliness seemed entirely foolish to Gehazi.
So pleaded the Judas-spirit within the man. By such specious delusions
he inflamed his own covetousness, and fostered the evil temptation
which had taken sudden and powerful hold upon his heart, until it took
shape in a wicked resolve.
The mischief of Elisha's quixotic refusal was done, but it could be
speedily undone, and no one would be the worse. The evil spirit was
whispering to Gehazi:--
"Be mine and Sin's for one short hour; and then
Be all thy life the happiest man of men."
"Behold," he said, with some contempt both for Elisha and for Naaman,
"my master hath let off this Naaman the Syrian; but as the Lord liveth
I will run after him, and take somewhat of him."
"As the Lord liveth!" It had been a favourite appeal of Elijah and
Elisha, and the use of it by Gehazi shows how utterly meaningless and
how very dangerous such solemn words become when they are degraded
into formulæ.[94] It is thus that the habit of swearing begins. The
light use of holy words very soon leads to their utter degradation.
How keen is the satire in Cowper's little story:--
"A Persian, humble servant of the sun,
Who, though devout, yet bigotry had none,
Hearing a lawyer, grave in his address,
With adjurations every word impress,--
Supposed the man a bishop, or, at least,
God's Name so often on his lips--a priest.
Bowed at the close with all his gracious airs,
And begged an interest in his frequent prayers!"
Had Gehazi felt their true meaning--had he realised that on Elisha's
lips they meant something infinitely more real than on his own, he
would not have forgotten that in Elisha's answer to Naaman they had
all the validity of an oath, and that he was inflicting on his master
a shameful wrong, when he led Naaman to believe that, after so sacred
an adjuration, the prophet had frivolously changed his mind.
Gehazi had not very far to run,[95] for in a country full of hills,
and of which the roads are rough, horses and chariots advance but
slowly. Naaman, chancing to glance backwards, saw the prophet's
attendant running after him. Anticipating that he must be the bearer
of some message from Elisha, he not only halted the cavalcade, but
sprang down from his chariot,[96] and went to meet him with the
anxious question, "Is all well?"
"Well," answered Gehazi; and then had ready his cunning lie. "Two
youths," he said, "of the prophetic schools had just unexpectedly come
to his master from the hill country of Ephraim; and though he would
accept nothing for himself, Elisha would be glad if Naaman would spare
him two changes of garments, and one talent of silver for these poor
members of a sacred calling."[97]
Naaman must have been a little more or a little less than human if he
did not feel a touch of disappointment on hearing this message. The gift
was nothing to him. It was a delight to him to give it, if only to
lighten a little the burden of gratitude which he felt towards his
benefactor. But if he had felt elevated by the magnanimous example of
Elisha's disinterestedness, he must have thought that this hasty request
pointed to a little regret on the prophet's part for his noble
self-denial. After all, then, even prophets were but men, and gold after
all was gold! The change of mind about the gift brought Elisha a little
nearer the ordinary level of humanity, and, so far, it acted as a sort
of disenchantment from the high ideal exhibited by his former refusal.
And so Naaman said, with alacrity, "Be content: take two talents."
The fact that Gehazi's conduct thus inevitably compromised his master,
and undid the effects of his example, is part of the measure of the
man's apostacy. It showed how false and hypocritical was his position,
how unworthy he was to be the ministering servant of a prophet. Elisha
was evidently deceived in the man altogether. The heinousness of his
guilt lies in the words _Corruptio optimi pessima_. When religion is
used for a cloak of covetousness, of usurping ambition, of secret
immorality, it becomes deadlier than infidelity. Men raze the
sanctuary, and build their idol temples on the hallowed ground. They
cover their base encroachments and impure designs with the "cloke of
profession, doubly lined with the fox-fur of hypocrisy," and hide the
leprosy which is breaking out upon their foreheads with the golden
_petalon_ on which is inscribed the title of "holiness to the Lord."
At first Gehazi did not like to take so large a sum as two talents;
but the crime was already committed, and there was not much more harm
done in taking two talents than in taking one. Naaman urged him, and
it is very improbable that, unless the chances of detection weighed
with him, he needed much urging. So the Syrian weighed out silver
ingots to the amount of two talents, and putting them in two satchels
laid them on two of his servants and told them to carry the money
before Gehazi to Elisha's house. But Gehazi had to keep a look-out
lest his nefarious dealings should be observed, and when they came to
Ophel--the word means the foot of the hill of Samaria, or some part of
the fortifications[98]--he took the bags from the two Syrians,
dismissed them, and carried the money to some place where he could
conceal it in the house. Then, as though nothing had happened, with
his usual smooth face of sanctimonious integrity, the pious Jesuit
went and stood before his master.
He had not been unnoticed! His heart must have sunk within him when
there smote upon his ear Elisha's question,--
"Whence comest thou, Gehazi?"
But one lie is as easy as another, and Gehazi was doubtless an adept
at lying.
"Thy servant went no whither," he replied, with an air of innocent
surprise.
"_Went not_ my beloved one?"[99] said Elisha--and he must have said it
with a groan, as he thought how utterly unworthy the youth, whom he
thus called "my loving heart" or "my dear friend,"--"when the man
turned from his chariot to meet thee?" It may be that from the hill
of Samaria Elisha had seen it all, or that he had been told by one who
had seen it. If not, he had been rightly led to read the secret of his
servant's guilt. "Is it a time," he asked, "to act thus?" Did not my
example show thee that there was a high object in refusing this
Syrian's gifts, and in leading him to feel that the servants of
Jehovah do His bidding with no afterthought of sordid considerations?
Are there not enough troubles about us actual and impending, to show
that this is no time for the accumulation of earthly treasures? Is it
a time to receive money--and all that money will procure? to receive
garments, and olive-yards and vineyards, and oxen, and men-servants
and maid-servants? Has a prophet no higher aim than the accumulation
of earthly goods, and are his needs such as earthly goods can supply?
And hast thou, the daily friend and attendant of a prophet, learnt so
little from his precepts and his example?
Then followed the tremendous penalty for so grievous a
transgression--a transgression made up of meanness, irreverence,
greed, cheating, treachery, and lies.
"The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy
seed for ever!" "Oh heavy talents of Gehazi!" exclaims Bishop Hall:
"Oh the horror of the one unchangeable suit! How much better had been
a light purse and a homely coat, with a sound body and a clean soul!"
"And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow."[100]
It is the characteristic of the leprous taint in the system to be thus
suddenly developed, and apparently in crises of sudden and
overpowering emotion it might affect the whole blood. And one of the
many morals which lie in Gehazi's story is again that moral to which
the world's whole experience sets its seal--that though the guilty
soul may sell itself for a desired price, the sum-total of that price
is nought. It is Achan's ingots buried under the sod on which stood
his tent. It is Naboth's vineyard made abhorrent to Ahab on the day he
entered it. It is the thirty pieces of silver which Judas dashed with
a shriek upon the Temple floor. It is Gehazi's leprosy for which no
silver talents or changes of raiment could atone.
The story of Gehazi--of the son of the prophets who would naturally
have succeeded Elisha as Elisha had succeeded Elijah--must have had a
tremendous significance to warn the members of the prophetic schools
from the peril of covetousness. That peril, as all history proves to
us, is one from which popes and priests, monks, and even nominally
ascetic and nominally pauper communities, have never been exempt;--to
which, it may even be said, that they have been peculiarly liable.
Mercenariness and falsity, displayed under the pretence of religion,
were never more overwhelmingly rebuked. Yet, as the Rabbis said, it
would have been better if Elisha, in repelling with the left hand, had
also drawn with the right.[101]
* * * * *
The fine story of Elisha and Naaman, and the fall and punishment of
Gehazi, is followed by one of the anecdotes of the prophet's life
which appears to our unsophisticated, perhaps to our imperfectly
enlightened judgment, to rise but little above the ecclesiastical
portents related in mediæval hagiologies.
At some unnamed place--perhaps Jericho--the house of the Sons of the
Prophets had become too small for their numbers and requirements, and
they asked Elisha's leave to go down to the Jordan and cut beams to make
a new residence. Elisha gave them leave, and at their request consented
to go with them. While they were hewing, the axe-head of one of them
fell into the water, and he cried out, "Alas! master, it was borrowed!"
Elisha ascertained where it had fallen. He then cut down a stick,[102]
and cast it on the spot, and the iron swam and the man recovered it.
The story is perhaps an imaginative reproduction of some unwonted
incident. At any rate, we have no sufficient evidence to prove that it
may not be so. It is wholly unlike the economy invariably shown in the
Scripture narratives which tell us of the exercise of supernatural
power. All the eternal laws of nature are here superseded at a word, as
though it were an every-day matter, without even any recorded invocation
of Jehovah, to restore an axe-head, which could obviously have been
recovered or resupplied in some much less stupendous way than by making
iron swim on the surface of a swift-flowing river. It is easy to invent
conventional and _à priori_ apologies to show that religion demands the
unquestioning acceptance of this prodigy, and that a man must be
shockingly wicked who does not feel certain that it happened exactly in
the literal sense; but whether the doubt or the defence be morally
worthier, is a thing which God alone can judge.[103]
FOOTNOTES:
[83] It is curiously omitted by Josephus, though he mentions him
(Ἄμανος) as the slayer of Ahab (_Antt._, VIII. xv. 5). The name is an
old Hebrew name (Num. xxvi. 40).
[84] The word _l'boosh_ means a gala dress. Comp. v. 5; Gen. xlv. 22.
χιτῶνες ἐπημοιβοί (Hom., _Od._, xiv. 514). Comp. viii. 249.
[85] Elisha would not be likely to _touch_ the place.
[86] Now the _Burâda_ ("cold") and the Nahr-el-Awâj.
[87] Compare the answer of Abraham to the King of Sodom (Gen. xiv. 23).
[88] The feeling which influenced Naaman is the same which led the
Jews to build Nahardea in Persia of stones from Jerusalem. Altars were
to be of earth (Exod. xx. 24), but no altar is mentioned in 2 Kings v.
17, and the LXX. does not even specify _earth_ (γόμος ζεῦγος ἡμιόνων).
[89] This is the only place in Scripture where Rimmon is mentioned,
though we have the name Tab-Rimmon ("Rimmon is good"), 1 Kings xv. 18,
and Hadad-Rimmon (Zech. xii. 11). He was the god of the thunder. The
word means "pomegranate," and some have fancied that this was one of
his symbols. But the resemblance may be accidental, and the name was
properly _Ramman_.
[90] See Deut. xxxii. 8, where the LXX. has κατὰ ἀριθμὸν ἀγγέλων.
[91] The moral difficulty must have been early felt, for the
Alexandrian LXX. reads καὶ προσκυνήσω ἄμα αὐτῷ ἐγὼ Κυρίῳ τῷ Θεῷ μου.
But he would still be bowing in the House of Rimmon, though he might
in his heart worship God. "Elisha, like Elijah" (says Dean Stanley),
"made no effort to set right what had gone so wrong. Their mission was
to make the best of what they found; not to bring back a rule of
religion which had passed away, but to dwell on the Moral Law which
could be fulfilled everywhere, not on the Ceremonial Law which
circumstances seemed to have put out of their reach: 'not sending the
Shunammite to Jerusalem' (says Cardinal Newman), 'not eager for a
proselyte in Naaman, yet making the heathen fear the Name of God, and
proving to them that there was a prophet in Israel'" (Stanley,
_Lectures_, ii. 377; Newman, _Sermons_, viii. 415).
[92] Prov. iv. 14, 15.
[93] Prov. xvii. 14.
[94] On Gehazi's lips it meant no more than the incessant _Wallah_,
"by God," of Mohammedans.
[95] 2 Kings v. 19. Heb., _kib'rath aretz_, "a little way"--literally,
"a space of country." (The Vatican LXX. follows another reading, εἰς
Δεβραθὰ τῆς γῆς; Vulg., _electo terræ tempore_[?].)
[96] LXX., κατεπήδησεν.
[97] A talent of silver was worth about £400--an enormous sum for two
half-naked youths.
[98] 2 Kings v. 24. The LXX. (εἰς τὸ σκοτεινὸν) seems to have read
אֹפֵל (_ophel_); "darkness," a treasury or secret place, for צַֹפֶל,
and so the Vulgate _jam vesperi_.
[99] 2 Kings v. 26. The verse is so interpreted by some critics,
especially Ewald, followed by Stanley. Margin, R.V.: "Mine heart went
not from me, when" etc.
[100] Exod. iv. 6; Num. xii. 10.
[101] The later Rabbis thought that Elisha was too severe with Gehazi,
and was punished with sickness because "he repelled him with both his
hands" (_Bava-Metsia_, f. 87, 1, and _Yalkut Jeremiah_).
[102] The Hebrew word for "cut off" (_qatsab_) is very rare. LXX.,
ἀπέκνισε ξύλον; Vulg., _præcidit lignum_.
[103] It must be further borne in mind that "the iron did swim" (A.V.)
is less accurate than "made the iron to swim" (R.V.). The LXX. has
ἐπεπόλασε, "brought to the surface." Von Gerlach says, "He thrust the
stick into the water, and raised the iron to the surface."