_THE SHUNAMMITE AND HAZAEL_
2 KINGS viii. 1-6, 7-15. (Circ. B.C. 886.)
"Our acts still follow with us from afar,
And what we have been makes us what we are."
GEORGE ELIOT.
The next anecdote of Elisha brings us once more into contact with the
Lady of Shunem. Famines, or dearths, were unhappily of very frequent
occurrence in a country which is so wholly dependent, as Palestine is,
upon the early and latter rain. On some former occasion Elisha had
foreseen that "Jehovah had called for a famine"; for the sword, the
famine, and the pestilence are represented as ministers who wait His
bidding.[131] He had also foreseen that it would be of long duration,
and in kindness to the Shunammite had warned her that she had better
remove for a time into a land in which there was greater plenty. It
was under similar circumstances that Elimelech and Naomi, ancestors of
David's line, had taken their sons Mahlon and Chilion, and gone to
live in the land of Moab; and, indeed, the famine which decided the
migration of Jacob and his children into Egypt had been a
turning-point in the history of the Chosen People.
The Lady of Shunem had learnt by experience the weight of Elisha's
words. Her husband is not mentioned, and was probably dead; so she
arose with her household, and went for seven years to live in the
plain of Philistia. At the end of that time the dearth had ceased, and
she returned to Shunem, but only to find that during her absence her
house and land were in possession of other owners, and had probably
escheated to the Crown. The king was the ultimate, and to a great
extent the only, source of justice in his little kingdom, and she went
to lay her claim before him and demand the restitution of her
property. By a providential circumstance she came exactly at the most
favourable moment. The king--it must have been Jehoram--was at the
very time talking to Gehazi about the great works of Elisha. As it is
unlikely that he would converse long with a leper, and as Gehazi is
still called "the servant of the man of God," the incident may here be
narrated out of order. It is pleasant to find Jehoram taking so deep
an interest in the prophet's story. Already on many occasions during
his wars with Moab and Syria, as well as on the occasion of Naaman's
visit, if that had already occurred, he had received the completest
proof of the reality of Elisha's mission, but he might be naturally
unaware of the many private incidents in which he had exhibited a
supernatural power. Among other stories Gehazi was telling him that of
the Shunammite, and how Elisha had given life to her dead son. At that
juncture she came before the king, and Gehazi said, "My lord, O king,
this is the very woman, and this is her son whom Elisha recalled to
life." In answer to Jehoram's questions she confirmed the story, and
he was so much impressed by the narrative that he not only ordered
the immediate restitution of her land, but also of the value of its
products during the seven years of her exile.
We now come to the fulfilment of the second of the commands which
Elijah had received so long before at Horeb. To complete the
retribution which was yet to fall on Israel, he had been bidden to
anoint Hazael to be king of Syria in the room of Benhadad. Hitherto
the mandate had remained unfulfilled, because no opportunity had
occurred; but the appointed time had now arrived. Elisha, for some
purpose, and during an interval of peace, visited Damascus, where the
visit of Naaman and the events of the Syrian wars had made his name
very famous. Benhadad II., grandson or great-grandson of Rezin, after
a stormy reign of some thirty years, marked by some successes, but
also by the terrible reverses already recorded, lay dangerously ill.
Hearing the news that the wonder-working prophet of Israel was in his
capital, he sent to ask of him the question, "Shall I recover?" It had
been the custom from the earliest days to propitiate the favour of
prophets by presents, without which even the humblest suppliant hardly
ventured to approach them.[132] The gift sent by Benhadad was truly
royal, for he thought perhaps that he could purchase the intercession
or the miraculous intervention of this mighty thaumaturge. He sent
Hazael with a selection "of every good thing of Damascus," and, like
an Eastern, he endeavoured to make his offering seem more
magnificent[133] by distributing it on the backs of forty camels.
At the head of this imposing procession of camels walked Hazael, the
commander of the forces, and stood in Elisha's presence with the
humble appeal, "Thy son Benhadad, King of Syria, hath sent me to thee,
saying, Shall I recover of this disease?"
About the king's munificence we are told no more, but we cannot doubt
that it was refused. If Naaman's still costlier blessing had been
rejected, though he was about to receive through Elisha's ministration
an inestimable boon, it is unlikely that Elisha would accept a gift
for which he could offer no return, and which, in fact, directly or
indirectly, involved the death of the sender. But the historian does
not think it necessary to pause and tell us that Elisha sent back the
forty camels unladen of their treasures. It was not worth while to
narrate what was a matter of course. If it had been no time, a few
years earlier, to receive money and garments, and olive-yards and
vineyards, and men-servants and maid-servants, still less was it a
time to do so now. The days were darker now than they had been, and
Elisha himself stood near the Great White Throne. The protection of
these fearless prophets lay in their utter simplicity of soul. They
rose above human fears because they stood above human desires. What
Elisha possessed was more than sufficient for the needs of the plain
and humble life of one whose communing was with God. It was not
wonderful that prophets should rise to an elevation whence they could
look down with indifference upon the superfluities of the lust of the
eyes and the pride of life, when even sages of the heathen have
attained to a similar independence of earthly luxuries. One who can
climb such mountain-heights can look with silent contempt on gold.
But there is a serious difficulty about Elisha's answer to the
embassage. "Go, say unto him"--so it is rendered in our Authorised
Version--"Thou mayest certainly recover: howbeit the Lord hath showed
me that he shall surely die."
It is evident that the translators of 1611 meant the emphasis to be
laid on the "_mayest_," and understood the answer of Elisha to mean,
"Thy recovery is quite possible; and yet"--he adds to Hazael, and not
as part of his answer to the king--"Jehovah has shown me that dying he
shall die,"--not indeed of this disease, but by other means before he
has recovered from it.
Unfortunately, however, the Hebrew will not bear this meaning. Elisha
bids Hazael to go back with the distinct message, "Thou shalt surely
recover," as it is rightly rendered in the Revised Version.
This, however, is the rendering, not of the _written_ text as it stands,
but of the margin. Every one knows that in the Masoretic original the
text itself is called the K'thîb, or "what is written," whereas the
margin is called _Q'rî_, "read." Now, our translators, both those of
1611 and those of the Revision Committee, all but invariably follow the
Kethîb as the most authentic reading. In this instance, however, they
abandon the rule and translate the marginal reading.
What, then, is the written text?
It is the reverse of the marginal reading, for it has: "Go, say, Thou
shalt _not_ recover."
The reader may naturally ask the cause of this startling discrepancy.
It seems to be twofold.
(I.) Both the Hebrew word _lo_, "not" (לֹא), and the word _lo_, "to
him" (לוֹ), have precisely the same pronunciation. Hence this text
might mean either "Go, say _to him_, Thou shalt certainly recover," or
"Go, say, Thou shalt _not_ recover." The same identity of the
negative and the dative of the preposition has made nonsense of
another passage of the Authorised Version, where "Thou hast multiplied
the nation, and _not_ increased the joy: they joy before Thee
according to the joy of harvest," should be "Thou hast multiplied the
nation, and increased _its_ joy." So, too, the verse "It is He that
hath made us, and _not_ we ourselves," may mean "It is He that hath
made us, and _to Him_ we belong." In the present case the adoption of
the negative (which would have conveyed to Benhadad the exact truth)
is not possible; for it makes the next clause and its introduction by
the word "Howbeit" entirely meaningless.
But (II.) this confusion in the text might not have arisen in the
present instance but for the difficulty of Elisha's appearing to send
a deliberately false message to Benhadad, and a message which he tells
Hazael at the time is false.
Can this be deemed impossible?
With the views prevalent in "those times of ignorance," I think not.
Abraham and Isaac, saints and patriarchs as they were, both told
practical falsehoods about their wives. They, indeed, were reproved
for this, though not severely; but, on the other hand, Jael is not
reproved for her treachery to Sisera; and Samuel, under the semblance
of a Divine permission, used a diplomatic ruse when he visited the
household of Jesse; and in the apologue of Micaiah a lying spirit is
represented as sent forth to do service to Jehovah; and Elisha himself
tells a deliberate falsehood to the Syrians at Dothan. The
sensitiveness to the duty of always speaking the exact truth is not
felt in the East with anything like the intensity that it is in
Christian lands; and reluctant as we should be to find in the message
of Elisha another instance of that _falsitas dispensativa_ which has
been so fatally patronised by some of the Fathers and by many Romish
theologians, the love of truth itself would compel us to accept this
view of the case, if there were no other possible interpretation.
I think, however, that another view is possible. I think that Elisha
may have said to Hazael, "Go, say unto him, Thou shalt surely
recover," with the same accent of irony in which Micaiah said at first
to the two kings, "Go up to Ramoth-Gilead, and prosper; for the Lord
shall deliver it into the hand of the king." I think that his whole
manner and the tone of his voice may have shown to Hazael, and may
have been meant to show him, that this was not Elisha's real message
to Benhadad. Or, to adopt the same line of explanation with an
unimportant difference, Elisha may have meant to imply, "Go, follow
the bent which I know you _will_ follow; go, carry back to your master
the lying message that I said he would recover. But that is not _my_
message. My message, whether it suits your courtier instincts or not,
is that Jehovah has warned me that he shall surely die."
That some such meaning as this attaches to the verse seems to be shown
by the context. For not only was some reproof involved in Elisha's
words, but he showed his grief still more by his manner. It was as
though he had said, "Take back what message you choose, but Benhadad
will certainly die"; and then he fastened his steady gaze on the
soldier's countenance, till Hazael blushed and became uneasy. Only
when he noted that Hazael's conscience was troubled by the glittering
eyes which seemed to read the inmost secrets of his heart did Elisha
drop his glance, and burst into tears. "Why weepeth, my lord?" asked
Hazael, in still deeper uneasiness. Whereupon Elisha revealed to him
the future. "I weep," he said, "because I see in thee the curse and
the avenger of the sins of my native land. Thou wilt become to them a
sword of God; thou wilt set their fortresses on fire; thou wilt
slaughter their youths; thou wilt dash their little ones to pieces
against the stones; thou wilt rip up their women with child." That he
actually inflicted these savageries of warfare on the miserable
Israelites we are not told, but we are told that he smote them in all
their coasts; that Jehovah delivered them into his hands; that he
oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz.[134] That being so, there
can be no question that he carried out the same laws of atrocious
warfare which belonged to those times and continued long afterwards.
Such atrocities were not only inflicted on the Israelites again and
again by the Assyrians and others,[135] but they themselves had often
inflicted them, and inflicted them with what they believed to be
Divine approval, on their own enemies.[136] Centuries after, one of
their own poets accounted it a beatitude to him who should dash the
children of the Babylonians against the stones.[137]
As the answer of Hazael is usually read and interpreted, we are taught
to regard it as an indignant declaration that he could never be guilty
of such vile deeds. It is regarded as though it were "an abhorrent
repudiation of his future self." The lesson often drawn from it in
sermons is that a man may live to do, and to delight in, crimes which
he once hated and deemed it impossible that he should ever commit.
The lesson is a most true one, and is capable of a thousand
illustrations. It conveys the deeply needed warning that those who,
even in thought, dabble with wrong courses, which they only regard as
venial peccadilloes, may live to commit, without any sense of horror,
the most enormous offences. It is the explanation of the terrible fact
that youths who once seemed innocent and holy-minded may grow up, step
by step, into colossal criminals. "Men," says Scherer, "advance
unconsciously from errors to faults, and from faults to crimes, till
sensibility is destroyed by the habitual spectacle of guilt, and the
most savage atrocities come to be dignified by the name of State
policy."
"Lui-même à son portrait forcé de rendre hommage,
Il frémira d'horreur devant sa propre image."
But true and needful as these lessons are, they are entirely beside the
mark as deduced from the story of Hazael. What he said was not, as in
our Authorised Version, "But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should
do this great thing?" nor by "great thing" does he mean "so deadly a
crime." His words, more accurately rendered in our Revision, are, "But
what is thy servant, which is but a dog, that he should do this great
thing?" or, "But what is the dog, thy servant?" It was a hypocritic
deprecation of the future importance and eminence which Elisha had
prophesied for him. There is not the least sense of horror either in his
words or in his thoughts. He merely means "A mere dog, such as I am, can
never accomplish such great designs." A dog in the East is utterly
despised;[138] and Hazael, with Oriental irony, calls himself a dog,
though he was the Syrian Commander-in-chief--just as a Chinaman, in
speaking of himself, adopts the periphrasis "this little thief."
Elisha did not notice his sham humility, but told him, "The Lord hath
showed me that thou shalt be King over Syria." The date of the event
was B.C. 886.
The scene has sometimes been misrepresented to Elisha's discredit, as
though he suggested to the general the crimes of murder and rebellion.
The accusation is entirely untenable. Elisha was, indeed, in one
sense, commissioned to anoint Hazael King of Syria, because the cruel
soldier had been predestined by God to that position; but, in another
sense, he had no power whatever to give to Hazael the mighty kingdom
of Aram, nor to wrest it from the dynasty which had now held it for
many generations. All this was brought about by the Divine purpose, in
a course of events entirely out of the sphere of the humble man of
God. In the transferring of this crown he was in no sense the agent or
the suggester. The thought of usurpation must, without doubt, have
been already in Hazael's mind. Benhadad, as far as we know, was
childless. At any rate he had no natural heirs, and seems to have been
a drunken king, whose reckless undertakings and immense failures had
so completely alienated the affections of his subjects from himself
and his dynasty, that he died undesired and unlamented, and no hand
was uplifted to strike a blow in his defence. It hardly needed a
prophet to foresee that the sceptre would be snatched by so strong a
hand as that of Hazael from a grasp so feeble as that of Benhadad II.
The utmost that Elisha had done was, under Divine guidance, to read
his character and his designs, and to tell him that the accomplishment
of these designs was near at hand.
So Hazael went back to Benhadad, and in answer to the eager inquiry,
"What said Elisha to thee?" he gave the answer which Elisha had
foreseen that he meant to give, and which was in any case a falsehood,
for it suppressed half of what Elisha had really said. "He told me,"
said Hazael, "that thou shouldest surely recover."
Was the sequel of the interview the murder of Benhadad by Hazael?
The story has usually been so read, but Elisha had neither prophesied
this nor suggested it. The sequel is thus described. "And it came to
pass on the morrow, that _he_ took the coverlet,[139] and dipped it in
water, and spread it on his face, so that he died: and Hazael reigned
in his stead." The repetition of the name Hazael in the last clause is
superfluous if he was the subject of the previous clause, and it has
been consequently conjectured that "he took" is merely the impersonal
idiom "one took." Some suppose that, as Benhadad was in the bath, his
servant took the bath-cloth, wetted it, and laid its thick folds over
the mouth of the helpless king; others, that he soaked the thick
quilt, which the king was too weak to lift away.[140] In either case
it is hardly likely that a great officer like Hazael would have been
in the bath-room or the bed-room of the dying king. Yet we must
remember that the Prætorian Præfect Macro is said to have suffocated
Tiberius with his bed-clothes. Josephus says that Hazael strangled his
master with a net; and, indeed, he has generally been held guilty of
the perpetration of the murder. But it is fair to give him the benefit
of the doubt. Be that as it may, he seems to have reigned for some
forty-six years (B.C. 886-840), and to have bequeathed the sceptre to
a son on whom he had bestowed the old dynastic name of Benhadad.
FOOTNOTES:
[131] Jer. xxv. 29; Ezek. xxxviii. 21.
[132] See the cases of Samuel (1 Sam. ix. 7), of Ahijah (1 Kings xiv.
3), and of Elisha himself (2 Kings iv. 42).
[133] As Jacob did in sending forward his present to Esau. Comp.
Chardin, _Voyages_, iii. 217.
[134] 2 Kings x. 32, xiii. 3, 22.
[135] Isa. xiii. 15, 16; Hos. x. 14, xiii. 16; Nah. iii. 10.
[136] See Josh. vi. 17, 21; 1 Sam. xv. 3; Lev. xxvii. 28, 29.
[137] Psalm cxxxvii. 9.
[138] 1 Sam. xxiv. 14; 2 Sam. ix. 8.
[139] מַכְבֵּר Jos., _Antt._, IX. iv. 6, δίκτυον διάβροχον. Aquila,
Symmachus, τὸ στρῶμα. Michaelis supposed it to be the mosquito-net
(κωνωπεῖον). Comp. 1 Sam. xix. 13. Ewald suggested "bath-mattress"
(iii. 523). Sir G. Grove (_s.v._ "Elisha," _Bibl. Dict._, ii. 923)
mentions that Abbas Pasha is said to have been murdered in the same
manner. Some, however, think that the measure was taken by way of cure
(Bruce, _Travels_, iii. 33. Klostermann, _ad loc._, alters the text at
his pleasure).
[140] 2 Kings viii. 15; LXX., τὸ μαχβάρ; Vulg., _stragulum_; lit.,
"woven cloth."