2 Kings 6:1–8:15

6:5–6 As the work gets under way in earnest, one of the sons of the prophets has a costly and embarrassing accident, as “his axe head fell into the water” (presumably the Jordan River). The seriousness of the incident is revealed in the fact that he cries out to Elisha, “Alas, my master! It was borrowed.” It is interesting that the man cries out to the prophet, perhaps reflecting an expectation that he might be able to do something about it. In verse 6 Elisha (now consistently called simply “the man of God”) asks him to point out where it entered the water (the same waters he parted in 2 Kings 2), and then he “cut off a stick and threw it in there and made the iron float.” Elisha then tells the man to “take it up,” and he does. The matter-of-fact style, the paucity of details, and the absence of any explanation all add to the impact of this unique event. Why is it included in the narrative? We have already seen in 2 Kings that Yahweh is acting through Elisha his prophet. In this insignificant miracle that spares one man shame and substantial expense, God makes it clear that he is working in and through both Elisha and the sons of the prophets. Despite the king and his court, Yahweh has still not abandoned his people.

6:8–10 The Israelite-Syrian conflict, which has already bubbled over into war at several points in the narrative, continues to rumble on in the background (as in 5:2). However, during one unspecified period, the king of Syria realizes he is up against something very unusual. His complaint is that every time he arrives at a specific plan, the Israelites seem to be one step ahead of him. The writer explains that this is entirely due to the insight and initiative of Elisha the prophet: “But the man of God sent word to the king of Israel, ‘Beware that you do not pass this place, for the Syrians are going down there’” (6:9). This is a semiregular occurrence.⁴

6:11–12 Not surprisingly, this is a source of some distress for the Syrian king, who is “greatly troubled because of this thing.” He jumps to the obvious conclusion that someone in his entourage must be “for the king of Israel.” A member of his court pipes up with the vital piece of information (although we are not given any inkling of how he possesses this information): “None, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom.” The fact that the servant highlights words spoken “in your bedroom” introduces a comic note to the scene—not just confidential plans but every detail of the king’s life are an open book for Yahweh and his prophet.

6:13–14 Not surprisingly, the king dispatches a task force to put an end to this, rather euphemistically commanding his people to “go and see where he is, that I may send and seize him.” The intelligence comes back that Elisha is in Dothan (about 12 mi./19 km north of Samaria), so “he sent there horses and chariots and a great army, and they came by night and surrounded the city.” This is not an attempt at an undercover rendition; the king mounts a major assault in an attempt to revitalize his flagging campaign.

6:15–17 Elisha’s servant (probably Gehazi throughout, although named so only intermittently) is confronted by the massed Syrian forces when he gets up in the morning, and he cries out, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” After Gehazi’s last appearance in the Naaman narrative, it is astonishing that he reappears at this point. No explanation is given in the text, but the reader is left to deduce that God (and Elisha) have extended grace to the previously grasping Gehazi. The focus, however, is firmly on the prophet, for this time, it seems, Elisha’s foresight has failed. But submerged axe heads and surrounding Syrians are both easily dealt with by Yahweh and his prophet, and Elisha cryptically tells Gehazi in verse 16, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Typical of both Elisha and 2 Kings, there has been nothing to prepare us for this statement. At this point, “Elisha prayed and said, ‘O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.’” The work of Yahweh is seen by the servant, who suddenly becomes aware that “the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” This is an allusion to Elisha’s own experience and exclamation in 2 Kings 2:11–12, as Elijah was taken by God.⁵

6:18–20 When the Syrians attack (perhaps prompted by the activity in the household), Elisha prays again. This time, rather than asking God to open someone’s eyes, “Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, ‘Please strike this people with blindness.’ So he struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha.” Interestingly, “prayer of Elisha” occupies the place in the sentence normally occupied by the phrase “word of the Lord.” This time, Yahweh works through the prayer of the prophet to bring about his will. The purpose of the “blindness” is clearly to confound the Syrians. Elisha himself takes the initiative, telling the bemused soldiers: “This is not the way, and this is not the city. Follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom you seek.” The scene is comical, as the likely unarmed prophet leads this dazed mini-army right into the heart of Samaria, at which point Elisha says, “O Lord, open the eyes of these men, that they may see.” Yahweh once more acts to open blind eyes, and “behold, they were in the midst of Samaria.” The narrative conveys a strong sense of Yahweh’s overpowering hapless Syrians effortlessly through his man.

6:21–23 Not surprisingly, when “the king of Israel [sees] them,” he eagerly seeks Elisha’s permission to kill them: “My father, shall I strike them down? Shall I strike them down?” The almost childish glee with which he speaks, coupled with the surprisingly positive description of Elisha as “my father,” gives a strong sense that Elisha is in control and that the king of Israel is hardly fit for the title, let alone the role of leading God’s people. Elisha’s answer is full of grace: “Would you strike down those whom you have taken captive with your sword and with your bow?” (cf. Deut. 20:10–11).

Elisha then further confounds the Syrian troops by displaying exactly the kind of nature of the God they are dealing with by showing them grace. Instead of taking revenge, Israel is to give them food and water and return them to Syria. The king of Israel complies, seemingly without a word: “So he prepared for them a great feast, and when they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master.” This divinely commanded act of grace solves the problem of the raiding Syrians, who “did not come again on raids into the land of Israel.” For this group of Syrian assassins, their encounter with the grace and power of God has a lasting impact. Their king, however, is not so quick on the uptake. Verse 23 proves only to be a brief cease-fire!

6:24–29 While the Syrian raids may have stopped, the long-term issue of Syrian aggression persists. In verse 24 we discover that “Ben-hadad king of Syria mustered his entire army and went up and besieged Samaria.” His strategy is highly effective, and soon the city of Samaria is in dire straits. The blunt statement that “there was a great famine in Samaria, as they besieged it” raises the question of whether this is a further expression of Yahweh’s displeasure. Whether or not that is the case, the fact that “a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver” speaks of real deprivation and even desperation. Any thoughts of clean or unclean food are long gone (cf. Lev. 11:1–8; Deut. 14:3–8). The people of Israel are desperate—desperate enough to either (a) eat pigeon dung, (b) eat something that looked and tasted like pigeon dung, or (c) pay an exorbitant amount to cook with a ridiculously small amount of pigeon dung. Whatever verse 25 is referring to, the situation is clearly not good! Yet again, God’s people are feeling the forces of the curses of the covenant (not that it seems to be having much effect on them!). As much is made clear in verses 26–29, for this is not simply heartbreaking; once more, this is covenant-curse country (cf. Deut. 28:52–57).

In verses 26–29, a little cameo reveals just how critical the situation is. As the king of Israel is reviewing the situation from the city walls, a woman cries out, “Help, my lord, O king!” Unlike Elisha, who is able to respond to such cries earlier in the chapter, the king is helpless, as he himself states in verse 27: “If the Lord will not help you, how shall I help you?” His assumption is that she is asking for food—hence his comment “from the threshing floor, or from the winepress?” In effect he is saying, “Shall I just pop down to the store and get what you need?” The question is heightened by the fact that the “threshing floor and winepress” often speak together of Yahweh’s abundant provision (Num. 18:27; Deut. 15:14; 16:13).

Belatedly, he asks her the specifics of her situation, and her answer is both surprising and shocking: “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ So we boiled my son and ate him. And on the next day I said to her, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him.’ But she has hidden her son.” At every level, this speaks of the breakdown of Israelite society. Cannibalism is matched by betrayal.⁶ It is hard to see how the people of God can sink any lower. This is horrible stuff. No wonder Jehoram finds this hard to cope with.

6:30–33 One has some sympathy with the king. He tears his clothes, and, because of his high vantage point on the walls, “the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth beneath on his body.” The king is already in mourning, though presumably maintaining some kind of royal dignity for the sake of dwindling morale.⁷ His response to this latest outrage is to attack God’s prophet: “May God do so to me and more also, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today.” There is a strange sense in which this outburst is vaguely encouraging, even if deeply theologically misguided. He is right to be distressed, but wrong to blame Elisha. Such is the state of Israel that even blaming Yahweh is a distinct improvement on ignoring him and running to other gods. But the astonishing thing is that even though God’s people are under his covenant curse, God has not abandoned them!

It seems that Elisha is within the city walls, experiencing the hardship of the siege along with everyone else, as he is “sitting in his house, and the elders [are] sitting with” him, anticipating this emissary from the king.⁸ Even “before the messenger arrived Elisha said to the elders, ‘Do you see how this murderer has sent to take off my head?’” Any positive changes in the relationship between prophet and king seem to have been short-lived. Elisha’s instructions are simple but effective: “Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold the door fast against him.” The reason for excluding him is that it is very clear on whose authority he comes (“Is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him?”). Sure enough, as he is speaking, either the messenger arrives with a word from the king or the king himself shows up: “This trouble is from the Lord! Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?” At one level, the king is right: none of this is beyond Yahweh’s control. But in answer to his question, because Yahweh is the faithful God who orders all of history for his glory and the good of his people, he teaches a lesson that seems to have escaped all of the kings of Israel.

It is worth pausing briefly to point out that Elisha attracts rather a lot of attention in this section. When the king of Syria finds out what his servants, if not the dogs on the streets, know—that Elisha is the supernatural source of the intelligence frustrating his forays into Israel—he attacks Elisha. Later in the chapter, when the king of Samaria finally faces up to the horrendous situation in his starving city, he first gets angry with Yahweh (v. 27), and then focuses that anger on Elisha. Elisha is surrounded by an army with no way out. And what happens? God protects his spokesman. In the first incident, Elisha prays that his servant will start to see spiritual reality—and he does (vv. 16–17). The language here reflects that used back in 2 Kings 2, when Elijah is taken up to God. It may well imply that like Elijah, Elisha himself is part of Yahweh’s army, but either way, there is clearly no need to be afraid, for God will not leave Elisha on his own. Throughout this passage, Yahweh protects his prophet. The great news is that this God Yahweh, our God, does not abandon his people. God will not abandon those who serve him—as Moses says so graphically, “underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deut. 33:27).

7:3–5 The scene changes in verse 3 to introduce us to four unnamed lepers sitting in no-man’s land between the city and the Syrian forces hemming them in. They say, not unreasonably, “Why are we sitting here until we die?” They are caught between two equally unattractive options: (a) enter the city (from which they had formerly been excluded), even though they know that “the famine is in the city, and we shall die there. And if we sit here, we die also”; or (b) approach the besieging army, who may well kill them. If there is one thing worse than being a leper, it is being a very hungry leper! So, because they cannot go into the city to look for food there, they decide to take their chances with the Syrian army: “They arose at twilight to go to the camp of the Syrians.” What they find is completely unanticipated: “But when they came to the edge of the camp of the Syrians, behold, there was no one there.” Unknown to the Israelites, the siege has been broken, and the Syrian forces have fled.

7:6–7 The writer then explains what lies behind this rapid departure. Having previously shown Elisha and his servant his forces and blinded the Syrians, this time “the Lord had made the army of the Syrians hear the sound of chariots and of horses, the sound of a great army.” The mistaken conclusion drawn by the Syrians was that “the king of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to come against us.”¹¹ As a result, they “fled away in the twilight,” leaving everything in the camp exactly as it was as they “fled for their lives.” It seems that only minutes had passed when the lepers wandered into the camp.

7:8–10 The starving lepers can hardly believe their blessing, and “they went into a tent and ate and drank, and they carried off silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them.” Yahweh has defeated the Syrians without lifting his proverbial little finger! The Syrians are defeated by some divine sound effects.

The lepers are in the process of making a return trip when their consciences, presumably pricked by the deprivation just hundreds of yards away, kick in, and they say to one another, “We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news.” They also realize that “if we are silent and wait until the morning light, punishment will overtake us.” They (probably rightly) assume that the king would take a dim view of any delay in conveying such momentous news, particularly if it came to light that they had also been doing a little personal looting in the meantime. So they resolve to return to the city gates and pass on the message to the king that “behold, there was no one to be seen or heard there, nothing but the horses tied and the donkeys tied and the tents as they were.” Given the fact that donkey heads have become a relative delicacy, even the fact that they left their animals has a particular resonance!

7:11–15 Given the harsh realities of the siege, and the king’s previous dealings with Syria, it is not surprising that he fears a trap: “They know that we are hungry. Therefore they have gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the open country, thinking, ‘When they come out of the city, we shall take them alive and get into the city.’” In the absence of any thought of Yahweh, one of the royal court makes a sensible suggestion to send out five men on horseback to check out the story. The fact that “those who are left here will fare like the whole multitude of Israel who have already perished” implies that this really is the last roll of the dice for Israel. The king seems to think that five is too many and sends two instead, with the simple instructions “Go and see.” Their mission confirms what the lepers said: “Behold, all the way [to the Jordan] was littered with garments and equipment that the Syrians had thrown away in their haste.” And word is taken to the king.

7:16–20 The siege being over, “the people went out and plundered the camp of the Syrians.” There is no mention of any acknowledgment of the role of Yahweh or his prophet in any of this, but the writer is very quick to make the connection, taking us back to verses 1–2: “So a seah of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the Lord.” If one needed any confirmation that this was yet another dramatic rescue by God of his people, it is provided in verse 17, as the fate of the soldier who had doubted the word of Yahweh is recorded: the king appointed him to look after crowd control at the gate, but “the people trampled him in the gate, so that he died, as the man of God had said when the king came down to him.” Verses 18–20 then repeat both the prophecy and the fulfillment virtually word for word. This has the effect of underlining once more the fact that these events unfold according to the word of God through his prophet. The message is clear: both individuals and nations ignore the word of God at their peril.

8:3–6 According to verse 3, the woman has returned to discover that she has been dispossessed. The text is silent on whether this is the result of the actions of opportunistic family members, royal exploitation, or simple theft. However, it is clear that there is little concern among the Israelites to take seriously God’s ultimate ownership of the land, or the fact that every Israelite received their portion as a gift from God himself. The moral and spiritual temperature in Israel continues to fall.

On returning to Israel to discover this situation, the woman goes “to appeal to the king for her house and her land.” She no longer has the home in Israel of which she spoke in 4:13. No explanation is given of why “the king was talking with Gehazi the servant of the man of God, saying, ‘Tell me all the great things that Elisha has done.’” The king’s interest, Gehazi’s rehabilitation, and how he has ended up in the royal court holding this conversation are all left tantalizing unclear! In God’s timing, however, the presumably repentant Gehazi has just reached the part of the narrative where “Elisha had restored the dead to life” when the Shunammite appears to make her petition. Not surprisingly, Gehazi exclaims, “My lord, O king, here is the woman, and here is her son whom Elisha restored to life.”

The end result is that the king ensures that justice is done, as he “appointed an official for her, saying, ‘Restore all that was hers, together with all the produce of the fields from the day that she left the land until now.’” It seems that, given all of the space devoted to macro-level issues, the writer wants to reassure his readers that in all this, Yahweh has not lost sight of either the needs of his people nor the promises he has made, which leads neatly to the concluding panel of this section.

8:7–10 Again unexpectedly, in verse 7 “Elisha came to Damascus,” where “Ben-hadad the king of Syria was sick.” The visit of a prophet to a foreign capital is both unexplained and unprecedented, as is the approach to Yahweh from a foreign king, as Ben-hadad tells his servant Hazael to “take a present with you and go to meet the man of God, and inquire of the Lord through him, saying, ‘Shall I recover from this sickness?’” Once more, this is reminiscent of Ahaziah’s approach to Baal, as this time the Syrian king puts an Israelite to shame. In verse 9, Hazael approaches Elisha as Naaman had in 2 Kings 5, laden with “all kinds of goods of Damascus, forty camels’ loads.”¹² The encounter appears to be straightforward, with Elisha responding instantly, “Go, say to him, ‘You shall certainly recover.’” However, the man of God continues, “the Lord has shown me that he shall certainly die.”

The easily forgotten background to these events is found in 1 Kings 19:15–17:

The Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus. And when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. And Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint to be king over Israel, and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah you shall anoint to be prophet in your place. And the one who escapes from the sword of Hazael shall Jehu put to death, and the one who escapes from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha put to death.”

It is a puzzle of Elijah’s ministry that he seems to have made no effort (and given no thought) to fulfill these commands, beyond “anointing” Elisha, which he does metaphorically rather than literally. However, Elijah (and Elisha?) may have forgotten about this, or chosen to leave it to his successor, but Yahweh has not forgotten. Now is the moment when this will begin to be fulfilled.

8:11–15 Elisha knows precisely what he is commissioning Hazael for, and so “he fixed his gaze and stared at him, until he was embarrassed. And the man of God wept.” What is about to happen is the horrible outworking of the judgment of God in real time in both Syria and Israel. Hazael quite reasonably asks, “Why does my lord weep?” Elisha’s response details the reality of the rule of Hazael: “Because I know the evil that you will do to the people of Israel.” In terms of his own political ambitions, Hazael will act against Ben-hadad, but the consequences for God’s people will be terrible: “You will set on fire their fortresses, and you will kill their young men with the sword and dash in pieces their little ones and rip open their pregnant women.”

Hazael’s response in verse 13 is a measure of the man: “What is your servant, who is but a dog, that he should do this great thing?” Brutality is about to be taken to a whole new level. At this stage, Elisha confirms what we already knew from 1 Kings 19: “The Lord has shown me that you are to be king over Syria.” The unit draws to a close with Hazael misleading Ben-hadad, as Elisha anticipated, and then “the next day he took the bed cloth and dipped it in water and spread it over his face, till he died. And Hazael became king in his place.” Yahweh’s will, in both salvation and judgment, will be done, through both those who love and follow him and those whose only interest is power.