Scripture
Characters
CHAPTER II.
NAAMAN THE SYRIAN.
2 KINGS V. 13.
I. THE JOURNEY TO
SAMARIA.—II. THE PROPHET'S DIRECTION. —III. THE MIRACULOUS
CURE.—IV. THE INTERVIEW WITH THE PROPHET.
THE seasonable hint of the ingenuous Hebrew maiden, that
there was a prophet in Samaria who was able to heal him of his leprosy, has
revived in Naaman's breast the almost extinguished hope of cure, and made him
determine that he will try this one expedient more, of paying a visit to
Elisha, ere he 'shakes hands with the grave,' and yields himself up to a
loathsome and inevitable death. The consent of Ben-hadad to his journey is
easily obtained; he even writes a letter of commendation to Jehoram the king of
Israel, in order to facilitate Naaman's mission, for he is anxious to save the
life of one who has so often led his armies to victory, and has not more proved
himself a valiant leader in battle, than a wise counsellor in peace.
We
must imagine Naaman hastening with eager promptitude across the Lebanon, into
the land whither a new hope beckons him. He travels in his chariot in a style
appropriate to one who stands nearest in authority and dignity to the Syrian
throne, with a numerous retinue of attendants, with talents of silver and
pieces of gold equal in value to many thousand pounds of our money, and with
many changes of those rich festal garments which formed so much of the wealth
of the East ; and all this with the evident design, should the attempt to cure
him succeed, of bestowing upon his deliverer a princely reward. The
vine-covered hills of Samaria and the beautiful valley of the Jordan, which had
more than once been the scene of his military forays, open peacefully before
him and seem to invite him onward.
But why do his servants direct his
chariot to the palace of the king, and not at once to the humble cottage of the
prophet? He appears to have supposed with his royal master, that while Elisha
was to administer the cure, he must, like the enchanters and necromancers of
his own country, be entirely under the king's authority, and that the best way,
therefore, to secure his interposition, was first to obtain the king's favour.
It is an instance of the stupidity with which men, untaught by divine
revelation, often conceive on religious subjects. He did not know as yet, that,
in matters of a spiritual kind, Elisha acknowledged no master but God,- that
this was a province into which Jehoram must not dare to pass, and that it would
be easier and safer to go into the thunder-cloud and command the lightning
where to strike, than to intrude within the sacred circle where the prophet of
Jehovah exercised his great and awful prerogative. When the letter of the
Syrian monarch was read by his royal brother of Israel, its effect was to
awaken in him indignation, surprise, and alarm. ' Now, when this letter is come
unto thee, behold, I have therewith sent Naaman my servant to thee, that thou
mayest recover him of his leprosy.' Read with the jealous eyes of one whose
dominions had repeatedly been invaded and ravaged by this very Ben-hadad, it
seemed, in requiring him to do what was only possible for the hand of
Omnipotence, intended to provoke new quarrels that should lead to new wars and
humiliations. And so Jehoram, we are told, idolater though he was, rent his
clothes, astonished by the blasphemy and confounded by the arrogant and
overbearing unreasonableness of such a demand. 'Am I God,' he exclaimed, 'to
kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his
leprosy, wherefore consider, I pray you, and see how he seeketh a quarrel
against me.' Let us not imagine, however, that this was a useless link in the
chain of incidents that were soon to have so remarkable and blessed an issue.
We must remember, if we would interpret the whole of this history aright, that
the highest end of all that happened was to bring out before the heathen, with
irresistible demonstration, the true divinity and omnipotence of the God of
Israel,- that ' He was the God;' and that it was therefore necessary, not only
that the utter impotence of all the false gods of heathenism for effecting such
a cure as Naaman now sought should have been shown, but the equal inadequacy of
every other agency than that of the finger of God confessed and proclaimed, and
that the stage should thus be cleared of every intervening veil and
obstruction, before the prophet of the Lord stepped upon the scene.
All
this which was now transpiring in the palace of Jehoram, was not long in
becoming known to Elisha. And, before Naaman had time to give vent to his
feelings, as not only disappointed, but cruelly duped and mocked, the prophet's
servant was standing in the presence of the king and delivering a message from
his master, marked by all that simplicity and majesty which became a prophet of
God, in which he at once rebuked the needless alarms of the king, and summoned
the Syrian chief to the true place of cure. 'Wherefore hast thou rent thy
clothes ? Let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in
Israel.'
The words may, without strain or violence, be imagined by us
to have been spoken by the gospel of Christ, when in the ministry of our Lord
and His apostles, it appeared in its full might and glory on the earth. Naaman
the Syrian represents our fallen race, leprous and wretched through sin and its
woeful fruits. Science, and human philosophy, and literature, and government,
and the arts, had all done their utmost for ages to make the poor leper better.
But his worst wounds remained unbound and the seat of the malady unreached; and
when all the experiments had failed, and all these human agents were at their
wits' end, Christianity came with its heavenly medicines, having the power of
God hidden in them, and said, with a confidence which the history of the
evangelized portion of our race has amply justified, ' Bring the leper hither
to me.'
It is natural to suppose that Naaman would now return to his
chariot, and resume his journey with more of buoyant expectation than ever; for
he must have noticed, that the prophet's words not only contained an invitation
to come to him, but seemed to hold out no uncertain promise of a cure. There
was evidently, however, not a little in the state of his mind, as well as of
his body, that needed to be corrected and healed. He counted much on the
influence of the rewards which he brought with him, and still more perhaps on
the imposing effect of his rank, and style, and retinue, and expected that, as
he came up ' with his horses and with his chariot' to the humble gate of the
prophet, he, the great Syrian lord, would be welcomed with no small show of
deference.
What a contradiction, then, must it have been to his
expectation, what a mortification to his pride, what a revulsion to everything
that was heathen and even human within him, when, there was no flutter or
excitement whatever at his approach - no attempt to meet his 'pomp and
circumstance' after its own fashion - when even the prophet himself did not
come forth to receive him, but, remaining within the recesses of his chamber,
sent out a solitary messenger to him with this strange message, 'Go and wash in
Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be
clean!'
II. To get at the explanation of Elisha's behaviour at
this juncture, to see at once its wisdom and its kindness, we must have before
our mind the fact, that something more and higher was aimed at than Naaman's
cure, even his deliverance from idolatry as well as from leprosy - not only the
restoration of his health, but his introduction into the true faith and kingdom
of God. There was an unconscious but real and rapid moral education of this
interesting man sought by Elisha, in all that he now did or abstained from
doing, which was intended to secure that he should derive effectual and
permanent religious benefit from his miraculous cure when it was
wrought.
Moreover, if we would catch the true spirit of the scene, and
look upon it from the loftiest point of observation, we must ever be recurring
to the fact, that the omnipotence of the God of Israel, the only living and
true God, was meant, by the manner and shape of the incidents, to be placed in
as impressive contrast with the impotence of the false gods of heathenism, as
in that sublime trial-scene which had been conducted by Elisha's great
predecessor on Mount Carmel.
When these principles are kept steadily
before our minds, they shed most instructive light upon every part of Elisha's
dealings with this Syrian chief. Naaman had counted on deference being shown
him because of his rank, and wealth, and renown; he had expected to be cured,
not simply as a poor leper, but as the great military commander, the hero of a
hundred fights; and he must therefore be taught that all men stand on an
equality, as dependants on Heaven's mercy - that 'rich and poor meet together'
here, and that ' there is no respect of persons with God.'
Moreover, had
the cure been performed in the manner in which Naaman anticipated that it would
be done, by the prophet's coming out to him, and with many mystic signs and
incantations, and the moving of his hands up and down over the more diseased
parts of his body after the manner of the magicians of his own country, he
would have been in some danger of regarding Elisha as only a more skilful and
dexterous magician than they, and the simple working of the power of God,
without any interpbsing sign or human manipulation, would not have been made to
stand out in such distinct prominence.
I conceive that the ends
contemplated by the prophet were further served, by the fact that Naaman was
directed to 'go and wash in Jordan.' For unquestionably it was true that Abana
and Pharpar, those beautiful streams flowing from the northern sides of Hermon,
which irrigated the orchards and gardens of Damascus, were in themselves far
more pure and salubrious than the Jordan; and when its waters were turned into
the sign and instrument of healing, it would induce him all the more readily to
connect the cure with no particular medicinal virtue in itself, but with the
power of God working in it. How very much those improper feelings, to which I
have now referred, were at work in Naaman's bosom, and needed to be rebuked and
corrected by the treatment which was adopted by the prophet, appears from the
effect which the message, at its first announcement, produced on him. It seemed
to his still unsubdued and untaught mind, as if there were nothing but
meditated slight and insult in this command of Elisha. Every part of it was so
contrary to his natural feelings, so opposite to all his preconceived notions,
that it sounded to him like mockery at his fatal malady. What! had he come all
the way from Damascus to Samaria only to be told to do this? He thought that
the prophet would have bid him do some great thing.' If he had been
disappointed and chagrined at some of the earlier stages of his visit, he was
utterly enraged now. And while the prophet still kept silent and invisible in
his chamber, and even to all appearance indifferent whether the chafed Syrian
obeyed his directions or not, Naaman had already commanded his chariot away
from before his gate, was hurrying back on the road to Damascus, and all his
fond hopes of cure seemed on the point of being wrecked and given to the
winds.
It was well for him that, at such a crisis, he had servants who,
looking at the whole matter more calmly, saw it in its true light, and who
loved him so well and served him so faithfully, as not to fall in with his
foolish humour or to flatter it, but respectfully to reason with him and
persuade him to comply with the direction of the man of God. And it was better
still that, after the first outbreak of his foolish anger was over, he began to
see the wisdom of their words, and yielded to their faithful remonstrance: My
father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have
done it ? how much rather then when he saith to thee, Wash, and be
clean?'
But it is impossible not to see, in all this unreasoning and
resentful dislike of Naaman to the cure prescribed for him by Elisha, a vivid
representation of the opposition of the natural mind to the divine method of
deliverance from the guilt and dominion of sin. And it is all the more proper
that we should trace this resemblance, since leprosy under the Old Testament
was avowedly typical of the disease of sin and of its consequences. How averse
are men to believe in the simplicity and absolute freeness of the divine plan
for recovering sinners to God! It so humbles their pride and contradicts all
their preconceived notions of what should have been. This 'offence of the
cross' has never ceased. Men would prefer some royal road to heaven, in which
they should not be regarded and treated simply as sinners, but which should
leave them somewhat still in which to glory. That rebellious and presumptuous
'I thought,' the very germ of all rationalism, which would always be telling
God in what manner He is to save men, is the resisting power that has shut the
gate of heaven against countless thousands. It may be said indeed, however much
the saying may have the look of paradox, that nothing is at once so easy and so
difficult as the gospel method of human salvation. We shall make the one or the
other of these affirmations regarding it, according as we look outward from the
sinner, or look into him. Thus, so far as the removal of all legal obstructions
out of the way of his pardon is concerned, and the making of a full, complete,
and infinitely meritorious satisfaction for his sins, this has all been, done
long since in the atonement of the Son of God. The door of mercy stands wide
open - the banquet of heavenly and spiritual blessings is spread - all things
are now ready, and the invitation and the welcome are addressed to every
inhabitant of the earth.
But then, how reluctant is the heart of man to
acquiesce in this method of deliverance, just because it is so strangely
gratuitous and divinely free! We are always waiting for something more
elaborate and more human than 'Heaven's easy, artless, unencumbered plan.' We
would prefer washing in our own Abanas and Pharpars. We imagine that we must
surely have some great work to do, instead of simply resting with childlike
trust in the great work which Christ has done for us. A thousand excuses and
delays, with which men keep away from the reception of the gospel, are just so
many disguised forms of aversion to it, because it tells them that 'eternal
life is the free gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' We would have
preferred penances and pilgrimages, laborious outward services, and costly
sacrifices - something that would have appeared to give us a personal claim
upon God, and have been a price in our right hand, rather than to have been
saved as unworthy.
'But Christ as soon would abdicate His own,
As stoop
from heaven to sell the proud a throne.'
Then measuring the amount of
the divine benevolence by the standard of our own - which is like imagining
that there are no more waters in the ocean than we are able to carry in the
hollow of our hands - we are slow to believe what the gospel declares of it.
The very extent and exuberance of the love, the divine graciousness with which
it comes and lays down its gifts at our very feet, makes us question its
reality. And yet, if the Lord had bidden us do some great thing, would we not
have done it? How much rather then when He says to us, Wash, and be clean?
Believe, and live ?
'I say to thee - do thou repeat
To the first man
thou mayest meet,
In lane, highway, or open street,
That he, and we,
and all men move
Under a canopy of love,
As broad as the blue sky
above.'
III. Naaman is at length brought to a sense of his true
position as a helpless leper, and we now follow him to the banks of the Jordan
to be the delighted witnesses of his cure. And when we call up the whole scene
before our imagination, we shall not fail to see that the prescribed measure,
easy though it seemed and was, was admirably fitted to put to the test the
simple trust of Naaman in the word of the man of God.
In all likelihood,
he expected that his recovery would be gradual, and that he would be made
gratefully conscious of its progress, as he plunged on the seven appointed
times into the surging waves. But on six occasions he has already complied with
the prophet's words, and each time has risen to the surface before his anxious
and breathless attendants on the river's brink, sadly conscious that as yet
there is no change, and with his leprosy still clinging to him like a Nessus
robe. With palpitating heart, he goes down the seventh time and is covered with
the waters, and now he feels the sudden passage of a new life through his whole
frame. He is 'changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,' 'his flesh
comes again to him like the flesh of a little child,' and he leaps forth upon
the green sward with more than the glad buoyancy of youth, a leper no more! Had
he known the Hebrew psalms, as we may believe he knew them afterwards, we might
imagine him singing with his attendants on the bank of the Jordan, those words
of one of the grandest of inspired poems: ' Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all
that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget
not all His benefits.'
His body had not alone been the subject of a
blessed change ; he had, almost at the same moment, parted for ever with his
idolatry. It is astonishing how rapidly the mind works at certain great crises
of its history. We live an age in an hour. What a complete and sudden
revolution took place in the mind of the Samaritan woman during the brief
period of her interview with Jesus at the well of Jacob! From light to darkness
- from the love of sin to holy service and discipleship - 'from vile to pure,
from earthly to divine,' the experience of that brief hour was like passing
from one world into another. There was something similar to this in the working
of Naaman's mind now. He compared the utter impotence of the false gods with
the omnipotence of the God of Israel, as it had now been so signally put forth
in his behalf; he thought with glowing gratitude of the free, unbought,
sovereign mercy of this God, which had visited him, a stranger and an idolater,
with so great a deliverance; and he returned from the river's bank to the
prophet's gate the rejoicing subject of two blessed transformations, to declare
his eternal and unqualified renunciation of all the 'lying vanities' of
heathenism, to avow his belief that the God of Israel was the only living and,
true God who made the heavens and the earth, and to bind himself by the most
solemn vows to His service and worship for ever!
IV. This brings
us to notice the incidents of Naaman's subsequent interview with Elisha. I
regard his words, ' Behold, now, I know that there is no God in all the earth
but in Israel,' as expressing at once his casting off of all subjection and
allegiance to the idols of his own Syria and of all other lands, his conviction
that Jehovah was the one only true God and his immovable purpose that He should
henceforth be his God. But there is more than this in his language. He means to
say that the matter had just been brought to the test of experiment in his own
person, and that the issue had been such as to warrant both parts of his
conclusion. 'I know it,' says he. He had now 'the testimony in himself. In like
manner, the evidence which is afforded to a true Christian of the divinity of
his religion, through its divine effects upon himself, is the most valuable and
home-coming of all evidences. It effectually ' garrisons him,' as Owen has
said, ' against all the assaults of unbelief.' It is , always near him, and
grows with the increase of his own piety. 'Do you demand miracles?' he can
reply to his subtle questioner and tempter - I am myself 'a miracle. Do you
call for evidences? -I have a whole volume of them in my own heart. Now, I
know!
While the Syrian's lips are thus full of praise to Jehovah as the
true God and his compassionate deliverer, his hands are full of gifts to Elisha
as Jehovah's servant. 'Now, I pray thee, take a blessing,' or thankoffering, '
of thy servant;' and as he said the words, his attendants were ready to unload
the precious treasures from his chariot, and to lay them at the prophet's feet.
But Elisha solemnly declines the offer, though repeated and urged again and
again. ' As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand, I will receive none.' Why so
stern a refusal, when Naaman was rich and grateful, and the prophet needy ; and
when it would even have relieved the burden of the Syrian's thankful heart to
have been permitted to give ? He had not thus declined the use of the little
chamber with the bed, and the table, and the stool, and the candlestick, in the
dwelling of the grateful Shunamite. Nor did Paul and his companions, many
centuries afterwards, reject the proffered hospitality of the newly converted
Lydia. The explanation is to be found in the peculiar circumstances of the
case.
With Elisha, the honour of God and the character of his religion
stood paramount above every other interest. Those could in no degree have
suffered by compliance in the other instances to which we have referred; they
would even be promoted by it; but in the present case it was otherwise. Naaman
was about to return immediately to his own land, his chief impressions
regarding the nature of the true religion would necessarily be drawn from his
intercourse with the prophet ; and had Elisha accepted his gift, the suspicion
might afterwards have arisen in his mind that the hope of reward had been his
motive in pointing him to the remedy.
But nothing mercenary must even
seem to be associated with the work of God. He will not allow the moral
impression of the miracle to be in the least impaired; both Naaman and his
servants must be made to mark the contrast between the selfishness of
heathenism and the benignant spirit of the true faith ; his cure must ever
stand out before him as the fruit of pure divine compassion, and never must the
Syrian in future days be able to say, ' I have made Elisha rich.'
But
there is much more difficulty found by many, in satisfactorily accounting for
the two requests which Naaman next proceeded to address to Elisha - the one
being that he might be allowed to take back with him to his own country two
mules' burden of the earth of Israel; and the other that, when his master
Ben-hadad went into the house of Rimmon, the idol-god of Syria, to worship, and
he leaned on his shoulder, he might be forgiven if he 'bowed himself in the
house of Rimmon.' For does not the one of these requests appear to savour of
superstition, and does not the other propose a compromise with idolatry? This
has often been said, but we are disposed to judge Naaman more gently. The
former wish might merely be the expression of a sentiment which is strong in
human nature, and which is quite innocent when kept within proper bounds - the
desire to have some object near us that may help to keep alive hallowed
recollections, and that shall be as a link to associate our thoughts with what
is loved and distant. Naaman's aim was to have something always in his sight
that would bring up Israel and the prophet and all the sacred memories of this
blessed visit, readily before his mind. And, moreover, if the altar on which he
henceforth sacrificed and worshipped was formed of this earth, it would serve
as an indication to his Syrian fellow-countrymen that, while he was of the same
nation with them, yet in religion he was identical with the worshippers of the
God of Israel.
Was the feeling unnatural or blameable, especially in one
whose eyes had just opened to the light, and whose heart was glowing with all
the ardour of first love? Such a sentiment might easily degenerate into
superstition, but it was not necessarily superstitious. Have you never
contracted a special regard for some particular copy of the Bible, which is
associated in your memory with interesting passages in your own spiritual
history? Have you never found your heart bettered by visiting the scenes of
holy and heroic deeds, or even looking on the faded handwriting of one who,
while he lived, had made the world his debtor? Could you look without emotion
on a vessel of water from the sea of Galilee or from the well of Samaria, or
upon a branch that had been plucked from one of the old olive-trees in
Gethsemane? And if not, do not blame this grateful Syrian, that, in departing
from this sacred land, the place at once of his cure and of his conversion, he
' took pleasure in her stones, and her very dust was dear to him.'
In
regard to the second of Naaman's requests to Elisha, we are disposed to speak
with more of caution and diffidence; at the same time, when we do not find the
prophet condemning him, it will surely be wisest and best so to understand his
meaning and design as to be able to add, ' Neither do I condemn thee.' He had
that day publicly avowed, in the presence of his Syrian servants and
attendants, his unqualified renunciation of all idol-worship. And when he
returned to Damascus, his daily offerings and holy services would tell his king
and the whole city and kingdom, that Jehovah alone was his God. But then he
foresaw that, as the prime minister of Ben-hadad, he would be required to
accompany him into the temple of Rimmon, and even to support his person and
accommodate himself to its motions while he worshipped there, and he wished
Elisha to understand that, in doing this unwelcome work, there would be no
conformity to idolatry or complication with it; he would simply be discharging
a civil service to his master, not offering worship to Rimmon. Still he was
anxious to learn, before he passed fiom the prophet's presence, whether this
could be permitted. And we know how many similar questions have been raised in
our times by Christian soldiers serving in idolatrous countries or under Papal
kings, and how difficult it has been found always to draw with delicate
precision the line between what may be yielded to Caesar and what must be
rendered to God.
Some have understood the prophet's answer, 'Go in
peace,' to indicate forbearance in the meantime with an error which he foresaw
that stronger religion would be certain to cure; according to Bishop Hall's
apologetic words, ' It is not for us to expect a full stature in the cradle of
conversion.' But is it not more natural to regard the language as conveying
Elisha's belief that, when Naaman discharged this service to his master, there
would be no homage on his part to the idol; and at the same time leaving it
with his individual conscience to determine whether it would not be still
better that this semblance of evil were avoided, according to the maxim given
forth by Paul in connection with kindred matters, ' Let every man be fully
persuaded in his own mind ?'
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