2 Kings 6:1–8:15

Original Meaning

Mercy at the Jordan (6:1–7)

THE ACCOUNT OF the building project for the sons of the prophets at the Jordan is given in sketchy details. Nothing is said about the time of the project, the circumstances that create the need, or the reason for moving to the Jordan. The story is abruptly introduced with the notice that the meeting place is too cramped.2 It may have been inadequate from the beginning, the prophetic group may have grown, or the time may have come to build an improved building.

There must have been some advantage in moving to the Jordan, since that is not an ideal location for finding timbers. Elisha as the leader of the group is asked to join in the project and is thus present when the axhead was lost. This iron instrument no doubt was a valuable instrument and was “borrowed” (v. 5; lit., it was “begged or prayed for”), making the loss so much more distressing. The story’s focus is entirely on the miracle of recovering the axhead from the Jordan; the only connection for its being placed here in the Elisha collection of stories is that it relates another miracle of Elisha at the Jordan (cf. the Naaman story).

Military Secrets at Dothan (6:8–23)

Bridging Contexts

GOD AT WORK in human affairs. Naaman, who has been leading raids into Israel, ends up finding healing in the rivers of the Jordan. The role of the Jordan is the link to another story about the sons of the prophets attempting to expand their meeting quarters at the Jordan (6:1–7). At Dothan, Elisha frustrates the Aramean sorties into Israel with divine information as to their location (6:8–23). War with Ben-Hadad brings severe famine during a siege against Samaria (6:24–33); Elisha comes to the aid of the victimized citizens of Samaria (7:1–20). War and famine bring about the exile of the woman of Shunem to the land of the Philistines (8:1–6). Through the testimony of Gehazi, apparently because Elisha is no longer alive, the woman is able to have her property restored. Elisha has sufficiently cordial relations with the royal house of the Arameans that he is able to visit the palace in Damascus and appoint Hazael as the new king (8:7–15). Elisha as the man of God has a role in both alleviating suffering and effecting the sovereign judgment of God.

This collection of stories about Elisha shows that God’s will may done on earth even during times of apostasy, political conflict, suffering, and despair. God is at work in human kingdoms; an Aramean army is not only thwarted in its militant border raids but is brought to submission and cessation of hostilities; a prophet of Israel becomes the messenger of political change in a foreign nation. Amidst the horror and anguish of war the mercy of God can be found; a small group of faithful at the Jordan River are assisted in constructing new quarters; starving citizens of the capital city gain relief; a woman whose property has been confiscated receives justice.

The miracle of the floating axhead is a simple act of mercy; no prophetic word is fulfilled, no judgment stated, no promise given, no indictment on the decision to build new facilities. The miracle does not emphasize spectacular powers. Elisha must ask to ascertain the location of the iron. A new handle is cut to bring the iron to the surface. The sense of the word cut (qṣb) seems to be fitting to the right size and shape (cf. 1 Kings 6:25; 7:37). A new handle is required, because the miracle signals a kind of new beginning (cf. 2 Kings 2:20). The story shows how Elisha acts promptly and decisively to meet a need, as in the case of the bitter water (2:19–22) or the inedible food (4:38–41). The action itself is similar to the other occasions where Elisha comes to the aid of the prophetic band (cf. 2:21; 4:41). Elisha is shown to be a compassionate leader, but able to provide only through divine assistance in ordinary things.

Nothing is said about the occasion of the Aramean invasions (6:8). The absence of the names of the kings or the political circumstances has an important effect on the impact of the narrative. Elisha is not seen to be on either side of the conflict; he first protects the Israelite army from ambush and then prevents a massacre of the Arameans. The focus of the whole story is on vision, particularly the ability to see beyond usual perception. Elisha is able to know what the Aramean king is planning and can warn the Israelite king accordingly (6:9–10); he is able to show his servant the armies of Yahweh around Dothan, which the Aramean armies cannot see (vv. 16–17). Elisha prays again, and a blinding light overcomes the Aramean armies, so they can be led right into the capital city (vv. 18–19). Elijah prays again, and the normal vision of the Aramean soldiers is restored and they realize they are in Samaria. The story is not about military victory or political developments. It is a story about the difference between sight and vision, about being controlled by the temporal or by the transcendent. Political powers are subordinated to the sovereignty of God; Elisha completely outmaneuvers both military establishments and brings an end to the hostilities.

Covenant consequences. In keeping with Deuteronomistic theology, these stories show that there is no escape from the conditions of the covenant. The apostasy of Israel brings the judgment of war but not the absence of the divine warrior. In the Aramean raids, God is the informant frustrating the schemes of the Aramean king repeatedly, to the point where he becomes completely enraged (6:11). In the siege of Samaria, the army is put to flight because of the plight of starving citizens. In neither case does this result in the actual defeat of the enemy army. The divine warrior is at work in acts of mercy to the victims of war, but the judgment of war is a consequence from which there is no escape. The curses of the covenant are clearly stated and well known.

Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For she intends to eat them secretly during the siege and in the distress that your enemy will inflict on you in your cities. (Deut. 28:54–57)

This gruesome description of the curse of the covenant is not a vengeful punishment of an insulted God. This description is the inescapable reality of war and the dreadful consequences of the anarchy that war perpetuates. Failure to honor the divine order of the covenant leaves the people at the mercy of the nations. They suffer in the ways of all other nations. The vassal treaties of Esarhaddon not only mention eating the flesh of one’s children but also adults eating one another and mothers barring their doors to their daughters.24 The curses of Deuteronomy, exemplified in these stories of Elisha, describe a society outside of the order that God has designed. This is not what God has chosen for his people; the house of Omri chose the ways of the nations for themselves.

Disobedience to the covenant and the experience of the covenant curse does not imply God has abdicated his people or his promises. The divine warrior is still present, as is evident in these stories. At the same time the role of the divine warrior is not the way it was experienced in the days when God acted as the Redeemer of his people to make them a peculiar people. In the ideal, God acting as warrior took place in three stages: preparations for the war, the battle, and the sequel to victory.25

Preparation required knowing God’s will and being spiritually ready; in the conquest of Jericho the people were required to consecrate themselves for the day of battle (Josh. 3:5) and to renew the covenant commitment through circumcision of the new generation (5:2–8). This obviously was not usual military strategy; the battle itself was won by the power of God. Jericho, a mighty fortified city, was conquered when the Israelites marched around it in ceremony, led by the ark, accompanied with the blowing of horns; the walls came down with a shout (6:20). Since the battle belonged to Yahweh, praise followed victory (e.g., Ps. 144:9–10). The spoils of war belonged to Yahweh; in the case of Jericho, it was everything in the city (Josh. 6:17–19). None of the classic signs of the divine warrior are present in these battles with the Arameans. At the same time God is at work through the prophet Elisha.

The power of the prophetic word. These stories about Elisha and the Arameans are more about the power of the prophetic word than about God as the victor in war. However the power of the prophetic word requires the presence of God as the warrior. Gone is the expectation that Yahweh will provide the incomprehensible ingredient of success. DeVries describes this as a more sophisticated situation, where Israel’s faith has grown more supernaturalistic, ascribing victory to mysterious forces of twilight, without human effort.26 The real difference is the apostasy of the nation; the prophet announces the day of relief, not as a reward of faithfulness but as the transcendent negation of complete despair. The problem is the faithlessness of Israel, as expressed by the king and his captain, rather than the absence of God from history.

The power of the divine warrior is released in the words of the prophet. When the servant of Elisha awakes to find Dothan surrounded by the Aramean army, he is paralyzed with fear (6:15). The response of Elisha is that one with Yahweh is more than a mighty military (v. 16). Rofé thinks that the phrase “Elisha prayed” begins a parenthetical explanation, much like that of later rabbinic technique, in which the figurative is explained by the literal.27 Elisha has simply stated that God is more powerful than the Arameans, but the explanation shows visually how the forces of God around Elisha are more numerous than the Aramean army (v. 17). Rofé thinks that the explanation ends with the resumptive phrase when Elisha prays again (v. 18a), after the army descends. This would specify that the army that came down to Elisha is not the enemy Arameans (NIV), but the divine army. The power of God protects Elisha and strikes the Arameans with a blinding light so the prophet is saved and the army led away.

In the siege of Samaria, the apostate king views Elisha as a prophet with unlimited power from God. The woman’s cry for justice against the greed of her neighbor over the corpse of a child so shocks the king that he calls for Elisha’s head. The rights of the case are so contorted that justice is not even conceivable. Believing it is impossible for God to allow such heinous acts to occur, acts so contrary to human nature, he can only expect that the man of God should have prevented such calamity. Elisha again remains unperturbed at the ranting of the king. He simply requires his servants to block the executioner at the door until the king arrives (6:32). When the king arrives, Elisha calmly announces that there will be sufficient food the next day.

Such a promise is incomprehensible to the king’s captain. However, the armies of Yahweh again rout the Arameans (7:6–7), just as the prophet said, abandoning sufficient provisions so that the famine is broken. The work of the divine warrior, through the word of the prophet, is evident both in the provision of food and the trampling of the skeptical captain.

The path of wisdom. The path of wisdom is to follow consistently the right choice of values. In actual life situations this may not be possible. The story of Solomon and the two prostitutes quarreling over the life of a child (1 Kings 3:16–27) is often compared with the account of two women quarreling over the life of a child for food (2 Kings 6:24–31). Conditions of severe famine created by war bring about conditions in which normal values of motherhood are subordinated to the need for survival. Injustice is created by a refusal to give up the life of a child. War creates an ambiguity about wisdom and justice, folly and wickedness.28

In the instance of the two prostitutes, maternal instincts become the means by which Solomon determines the true mother of the living child. However in that story it is also true that one of the women has subordinated those instincts and is willing to sacrifice the life of a child; Solomon, apparently, would have been willing to allow that to take place. In the second story the conflict is over a sense of justice, which is present even in the revolting conditions of war, and the protection of the life of a child, a maternal love, which prevails even in the face of famine. Faced with such a dilemma and the inhumanity of the woman pleading for justice, the wicked king simply admits his impotence and tears his garments, revealing the fact that he is wearing the clothing of a penitent. Only God has the power to bring deliverance in such a situation (6:27). No amount of wisdom can prevail in such a circumstance.

The story of Solomon’s receiving divine wisdom is meant to teach us that God honors the right choice of values so that our choices can work out for good. The story of the two women during the Syrian siege is not intended to compromise the significance of the gift of wisdom Solomon received.29 War is truly a dread in which no amount of wisdom can bring about justice, but this does not undermine the possibility of a good and just king, of goodness and justice in society derived from the benefit of wisdom in learning to live together. This wisdom is a divine gift in that it is revealed to us through instruction that comes from God and is made available to us through his presence in particular circumstances. Wisdom is to trust God in situations beyond the ability of human intelligence to judge or human power to change. God honors choices made in submission to the truths of wisdom.

Contemporary Significance

TOOLS OF OUR WARFARE. The Israelites experience the activity of the divine warrior in many different ways, depending on their situation, but the presence and activity of God is at work through his prophets. The rule of God is demonstrated through Elisha the man of God rather than the king. Protecting the poor, bringing life and justice, leading armies, and acting as a covenant champion are all part of the ideal royal profile.

The apostle Paul reminds the Ephesians that the situation is no different for them (Eph. 6:10–13). They need to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might; they must put on the whole armor of God so that they can take their stand against the wiles of the devil. They are not struggling with an enemy of flesh and blood, but against rulers, authorities, and mighty forces of this dark world, against spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places. Behind the evil forces at work in the world are transworldly forces that put Paul into prison. Equipped with the spiritual armor of God it is possible for Christians in this world to stand against such forces. This spiritual armor is nothing other than faith in the truth of the gospel (6:14–17); above all it is prayer to the divine warrior (v. 18), and steadfast prayer at all times for all the saints.

In the essentials of spiritual warfare, the present world is no different from the tortured topsy-turvy world of Elisha. Christians in many different places are ravaged by the turbulence of war, just as the faithful in the days of Elisha. Where actual physical warfare is not present, Christians struggle against ideologies and social forces designed to undermine the rule of God in this world, the way of life God has ordained through his Word for those created to represent him as his image. Everywhere the faithful are called to be like Elisha and his followers; they must resist evil and show mercy, as they are able. As with Elisha, their weapon is prayer, and their assurance is that the divine warrior will act on their behalf even as he did in the distressing days of Omride apostasy.

The community in oppressive times. The account of the floating axhead (2 Kings 6:1–7) is an example of the function of community in oppressive times. Of immediate significance is the fact of community and its importance. The faithful are not only in need of each other, but they are in need of adequate facilities so they can meet with the prophet and with each other. Henton Davies observes that the community represents freedom for the followers of Elisha; freedom works through restraint, through consideration of the needs of the group.30

Freedom is not uninhibited liberty to follow an individual course of action; such individuals are not free but forced to work within the orbit of their own narrow personality and opinions. Freedom comes with the enablement of the community, the mutual support of others in the faith. Such freedom has a price. The leader of such a community might be regarded as “a very irascible and bald-headed old gentleman who didn’t mind delivering children to bears, let alone theological students to their proper place.”31 The result of sharing might be that a valuable item is lost, buried beneath the water. The point of the floating axhead was not simply to show that Elisha is a wonder worker, for Elisha displays many of his own limits in the situation. A new handle is prepared and cast where the iron has fallen, signifying a new beginning for one who has failed and the power for the community to continue.

The brutality of human government. The brutality of governments toward their own people is ever present. In that cruelty it is frequent that famine is used as a murder weapon. As stated recently by Edgar Chen and David Marcus, famine endures only because the international community and governments continue to perceive it as an act of nature and not a human rights disaster.32 They quote Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen to say that “famine is, after all, so easy to prevent that it is amazing that it is allowed to occur at all.” Histories prove that people often starve because it is politically advantageous.

Stalin engineered an apocalyptic famine in the 1930s to exterminate millions of politically suspect Ukrainians. Mao pursued the “Great Leap Forward” with deliberate disregard for the misery it wrought, starving at least 20 million Chinese to death. Dubbing his strategy “emptying the sea to catch the fish,” Mengistu Haile Mariam targeted the infamous 1984–85 famine in Ethiopia against civil insurgents.33

The world continues to perpetuate such atrocities. At the time of writing, Mugabe in Zimbabwe has followed the same policy, bringing the one-time breadbasket of Africa to the precipice of famine. Ironically, Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe to escape indictment for genocide in Ethiopia.

The ancient practice of siege warfare creating temporary famine within a city is a modest crime by modern standards. Whatever the size of the monstrosity of famine, it does not change the horror for the individual victims or the helplessness of individuals who might seek to intervene. In the siege of Samaria, even the king is presented as sympathetic, utterly powerless, and revolted by the plea of his own citizen over the refusal of an agreement to share a corpse. In such desperate situations, the determination of right and wrong can be confused and uncertain.

The king appears as a somewhat ambiguous figure in the famine of Samaria. In the larger theology of the Deuteronomistic History, the Omride kings were responsible when the wars of judgment came against Israel. In this story the king appears genuinely remorseful as he surveys the wall, wearing sackcloth under his clothes (6:30). When a woman calls out to him for justice because a cannibalistic agreement has been denied, he is genuinely appalled. The reader identifies with his feeling of outrage; how can there be a concern for the injustice of not sharing such grizzly fare, when the real outrage is the war that has driven these poor victims to such extremes? The king responds by demanding the life of Elisha, since he is seen as responsible for this situation in his pronouncements of judgments against Israel. Before the executioner can carry out the task, the king has come to some sense; there is no use blaming the messenger for the bad news. The question is rather how Yahweh can act in this manner (17:33).

This might lead to the conclusion that this story is told to challenge the justice of God.34 Though this is a legitimate question, the context presents other concerns. Israel as a nation has come to be as other nations. War is a part of the human condition; war is created entirely by humans, they must accept responsibility for its atrocities. God and the prophet are directly involved only to the extent that this particular war is a judgment against Israel. War creates a perversion of values so that good and evil in particular circumstances become entirely blurred.

It is important that the plight of individuals in circumstances such as these not be lost and that judgment not be passed against them. Hens-Piazza appropriately provides an example of this danger:

A graphic photo of a dying four-year-old Tutsi child lying in the remains of a deserted refugee camp in Burundi, his grieving mother slumped over him, accompanied the headline “Burundi Steps Up Expulsions of Rwandans.” The article reviewed the history of the controversy and offered an update of the battle between leaders and the warring factions of the two ethnic groups. The responses of other nations and the UN’s gestures were also sketched. Nowhere did the report refer to the mother and child or describe what happened to them. In fact, the impact of the report served to distract and nullify any feeling that might be evoked in the reader response to the photo.35

Powerful governing bodies, stymied by forces outside their control, become the total focus of attention. The miserable victims of these forces of evil are only used as decoys to call attention to what is regarded as the real story, the story about political power and the apparent means to address the problem.

Divine intervention. The story about the two cannibal mothers in the siege of Samaria does call attention to divine intervention for suffering individuals. Only God can intervene in such calamity, as the king himself acknowledges in his despair. Divine deliverance is one of the topoi of this story.36 The “windows of heaven” (7:2) are mentioned in the account of the Flood to restrain or release water (Gen. 7:11; 8:2); the other occurrence is found when the prophet Malachi uses the term to describe divine abundance for those who tithe (Mal. 3:10). The windows of heaven become a metaphor for divine prosperity.

A similar motif is found in the Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite while describing the siege of Amid during the Seleucid era.37 The report details cannibalism but describes a plentiful state of “blessings sent down abundantly from heaven upon all men … and the rain was falling and the fruits of the earth were growing in their seasons.” A repetition of the prophet’s words and those of the captain close the account at Samaria (2 Kings 7:18–19), emphasizing the divine response to human cynicism.

Christians in acts of mercy. Rather than a challenge to the justice of Yahweh, these stories of Elisha are an example of his mercy in outrageous times. Yahweh alone provides relief during the cruelties of the Aramean wars. The intervention of the king for the Shunammite after she lost her land is not coincidence but a divine provision as the king is consulting Gehazi about the death-defying feats of Elisha (8:1–6). Humans are treacherous even to their own masters, as Hazael against Ben-Hadad, perhaps even to their own astonishment (8:11). What they consider to be great things in their own conquests are often great judgment and affliction on innocent victims (v. 13). In all of this the faithful are called to show mercy as they can and to know that the sovereignty of God will prevail over the great powers of the world.

As in the days of Elijah, Christians continue to be known for their acts of humanity in the most horrible of human situations. This was the substance of a convocation address by journalist Brian Stewart.38 What surprised him in over forty years of journalism was the force of Christianity in the drive to serve and help others, a force present from the beginning of Christianity that mysteriously never seems to weaken or grow weary. From the “ringside” seat of a reporter he has found there is no movement closer to the raw truth of war, famines, or crisis and the vast human predicament than organized Christianity in action. There is no alliance more determined and dogged in action than church workers mobilized for common good. They are involved in a vast front stretching from the most impoverished reaches of the developing world to the hectic struggle to preserve caring values in towns and cities of North America. As a journalist he has never reached these front lines without finding Christians already in the thick of it, mobilizing congregations that care, being a faithful witness to truth, the primary light in the darkness, and often the only light.

Stewart came to this admiring view slowly and reluctantly. At the start of his career he had abandoned religion, regarding the church as a tiresome irrelevance. What ultimately persuaded him otherwise was the reality of Christianity’s mission, physically and in spirit, before his very eyes. He was moved by quiet individual moments of character, a courage that seemed anchored to some deep core within Christianity.

Stewart recalled a stairwell in Gdansk, Poland. The first unbelievable crack in the mighty Communist empire, which had so often proclaimed triumph over religion, occurred in Poland in the early 1980s, when the Solidarity Movement, supported by the Roman Catholic Church, rose to challenge tyranny, under the leadership of a most unlikely little shipyard electrician Lech Walensa, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize and become president of Poland. When Stewart met him, Walensa had been jailed and was isolated, and his life was so threatened he seemed to be a “dead man walking.” Reporters assumed security forces were arranging one of those convenient “accidents” that so frequently happen in the climate of oppression.

A few reporters met him alone on this stairwell as he slipped out to mass. One of them asked if he was frightened. He stopped and looked surprised at the thought. Then he answered in a voice of steel: “No, I am afraid of no one, nothing, only God.” With that he walked out into the night; in that dingy stairwell was the purest courage and conscience backed by Christian faith that no force of empire or terror could ever extinguish. Years later in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Romania, Stewart watched the mighty empire crumble away before civil rights movements that often began in equally dingy little church halls and basements—early gatherings the world knew nothing about and would not have taken seriously if it had.

There have been other movements. Bishop Tutu in Soweto in South Africa in the Apartheid era counseled Christians of all races how to mobilize against injustice without losing their humanity. Martin Luther King Jr. began his movement against segregation in some Birmingham church halls. Stewart testifies to many such efforts: saving children in Mozambique from life on garbage dumps, schools for ex-field hands in the fovea-slums of Brazil, the quiet comforting of runaways and addicts in a thousand asphalt city jungles, and small groups of Christians visiting the lonely and mentally fragile in low-income boarding house flats.

Stewart recalls one particular incident in the murderous civil war in El Salvador in the early 1980s, a war of almost casual massacres, when reporters came to quake before the term “Right Wing Death Squads.” These death squads would kill anyone from landless peasants to Archbishop Romero in his own cathedral. The policy of journalists was to be in the capital before dark, as it was suicide to be on the roads at night. One afternoon they misjudged the time when interviewing a small group of landless refugees to the north. As the night began to thicken, jungle sounds seemed to grow heavy with menace. As they were packing, a delegation of refugee elders begged them to spend the night because the death squads were active and the presence of journalists might prevent the abduction of all the men or a massacre.

That day Stewart cursed the day he became a foreign correspondent. They too were targets; they rationalized—a satellite feed was waiting, jobs were on the line, what good would it do if they too were killed. As they debated, an old station wagon raced into the camp in a cloud of dust. Out stepped three Christian aid workers waving a Red Cross flag. They insisted the journalists return; it was critical they get the word out. All over that awful war there were small groups of Christians trying to stave off the killings. The journalists left, in great relief. The protection that night by the good Samaritans worked. What if the station wagon had not come?

Stewart is perhaps best known for his famous picture of “the face of famine” in Ethiopia. He was in a Catholic refugee camp when an infant girl brought by her parents was given up for dead. Her grave had already been dug. The infant was given what treatment was available and miraculously lived. In time her father came and took her back home. Years later Stewart was able to successfully find the young woman, now herself a mother, to complete the story of how relief saves lives. It was 1984 when Stewart, along with Michael Buerk of BBC fame, first carried the story of the Great Ethiopian Famine on television. The world responded to their story, but they were not the first. They went because, for months, church aid groups on the ground had seen famine coming and urged the world to take notice.

When they did get in, against considerable Ethiopian resistance, these groups showed them where to go. Once when flying to a disaster story their twin engine plane had to make an emergency landing at a deserted landing strip in the dense jungle in central Africa. They stepped into the middle of nowhere, only to be greeted by a cheerful Dutch Reformed minister offering tea. A veteran cameraman named Mike Sweeny later sighed in exasperation, “Do you think you could ever get us to a story, somewhere, anywhere where those Christians aren’t there first!!” It never happened.

Stewart summarized his experience with the following words:

I’m often asked if I lost belief in God covering events like Ethiopia, then called “the worst Hell on Earth.” Actually, like others before me, it was precisely in such hells that I rediscovered religion. I saw so many countless acts of human love and charity, total respect for the most forsaken, for ALL life. I was confronted by the miracle of our Humanity. And I felt again the “Good Infection” of Christian volunteers … and heard again those words tolling “Even Here … Even Here.”39

The Christian witness, of which Stewart speaks, is no less significant than the great works of Elisha during the terrible days of the Syrian wars. The human disasters and pain are not any different in the contemporary world, nor is the power of God through his people in bringing mercy to desperate situations.