Scripture
Characters
CHAPTER III.
GEHAZI.
2 KINGS V. 20-27.
ALONG the whole way of life over which the Christian is
called to pass, the Scriptures have placed beacons as well as guiding lights,
facts to alarm as well as examples to direct, on which the thoughtful mind may
see inscribed, ' Here such a soul suffered shipwreck' - ' Beware of perishing
through the same example of unbelief.'
Such a beacon is Gehazi the
servant of Elisha, whose whole biography is not indeed recorded in Scripture
like that of his illustrious master, but from before whom a divinely directed
hand lifts the veil on a particular day of his life, and seizing a moment of
awful self-revelation, in a few bold strokes presents us with his whole moral
portrait. Let us proceed to contemplate him in his religious privileges, in his
sin, in his detection, and in his punishment.
I. Of Gehazi in his
religious privileges.
These appear to have been singularly great and
eminent. It is supposed by many that he had been the servant of Elijah, and had
witnessed from a distance the sublime miraculous ascent of that earlier prophet
in his fire-chariot to heaven, and that after his ascension he had passed into
the service of Elisha his successor. At all events, he had been the constant
attendant of the latter prophet, following him in his journeys, beholding his
miracles, enjoying his conversation and instructions, admitted in some degree
to his confidence, and looking from day to day on his holy and spotless
life.
Was not this almost like living at heaven's own gate? The sacred
narrative seems to call our special attention to the case, for it speaks of him
as 'Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God' But it is a terrible thing
when, to use old Fuller's striking words, 'the clouds appear to rain not over
Arabia the Happy, but over Arabia the Stony or Desert.' For nothing is more
certain than that where a man, placed in the midst of great religious
advantages, continues insincere and acts a part, he will become morally very
hardened, and will sink very far. The dog that sleeps beside the anvil ceases
to fear the sparks.
While Gehazi could not but possess a large amount of
barren religious knowledge, in all likelihood Naaman the Syrian, who had so
lately passed from his presence, had not in all his train a heathen servant
with a conscience so hardened and a heart so petrified as his. If you wish to
see the most wicked man in the world, look for him not in the dark places of
the earth and beside bloody heathen altars, but in Christian lands, where light
has been resisted, all sacred influences despised, and the very grace of God
turned into licentiousness.
It is every way probable, however, that up
to this period the real character of Gehazi had remained concealed from Elisha,
for men of pure minds are naturally confiding and unsuspicious. Little
incidents may have occurred which now and then awakened in the prophet's mind a
painful doubt regarding his servant; but the cloud was unwelcome and transient,
and hitherto Gehazi had succeeded in maintaining, on the whole, a plausible
outward demeanour.
This is quite a possible thing even for the most
thorough hypocrite. For it is events that try a man, and bring the moral
sediment of his character to the surface. And he may sometimes wait even for
many years before the particular temptation is brought near to him which suits
his case, and, blowing aside the seemly outward covering, reveals him to the
startled world as a whited sepulchre.
So it was with this Gehazi now.
Naaman the Syrian's bags of silver and gold, and rich changes of raiment, were
the touchstone which disclosed the counterfeit, the Ithuriel spear which
unmasked the 'whited devil.' and showed the astonished prophet what a base
person had been allowed by him for years to haunt his presence, to track his
footsteps, and to share in his confidence.
The facts are these. Naaman
the Syrian, after having been miraculously cured of his leprosy by washing
seven times in Jordan according to the directions of Elisha, had immediately
returned to the humble gate of the prophet, offering him a princely reward. But
the man of God had persistently and solemnly refused to accept even the
smallest fragment of what was offered him. He was desirous that the moral
impression of the miracle should remain in full force upon the Syrian's mind;
that nothing should be done to awaken even the least suspicion of selfishness
as prompting its performance ; and that the whole should be seen to have had
its origin in pure compassion for Naaman, and zeal for the honour of the true
God.
But Gehazi, who had been present during the entire interview, had
regarded his master's sublime self-denial with secret displeasure and strong
disappointment. When at length he saw Naaman turning his chariot in the
direction of his native Syria, and bearing away with him the splendid offerings
untouched, he bitterly grudged the lost prize; and, reckless of all the
consequences to Elisha and his religion, resolved, that if his master would not
accept of some portion of the rich Syrian's wealth in which he might afterwards
share, it should then be his. Accordingly, Naaman and his retinue were not a
mile distant from the prophet's door before Gehazi was hurrying after them with
rapid pace. The moment the grateful Syrian became aware of this he commanded
his chariot to halt, and, paying respect to the prophet in the person of his
servant, alighted from the chariot, and hastened back to meet him with the
question, ' Is all well ?'
The villain was ready with his well-feigned
lie. Two poor scholars of the prophets had that moment arrived from their
college on mount Ephraim, craving assistance both for themselves and their
brethren, which Elisha was not in circumstances to supply. And now he had sent
him to say that he was willing to accept of a portion of the gifts which Naaman
had so freely offered and so earnestly pressed upon him, to the extent of a
talent of silver and two changes of garments.
The request was a large
one, exceeding in amount ( some hundred pounds of our money; but it was
exceeded by Naaman's grateful generosity. For binding two talents of silver in
two bags, accompanied by two changes of garments, he laid them upon the
shoulders of two of his own servants, who bare them before Gehazi to a secret
place or storehouse in a hill near to the prophet's dwelling. There the
hypocrite safely deposited them until he should find an early opportunity of
appropriating them to his own use, meanwhile concealing them from no eye so
anxiously as Elisha's.
II. We are now to contemplate Gehazi in
his sin.
It is evident that covetousness lay at the foundation of it all;
that lust of gain, which, in one aspect of it, as indicating a sinful distrust
of God, is spoken of in Scripture as infidelity, and in another aspect of it,
as revealing an undue dependence on created things and an utter overvaluing of
them, is characterized as idolatry, and, on account of the many forms of
iniquity and of human wretchedness of which it is directly and indirectly the
prolific cause, is strongly represented by an apostle as 'the root of all
evil.' And the example of this miserable man may suggest the remark, that this
unhallowed passion is not confined to those who possess riches; it is equally
common and equally mischievous in its operation in the case of those who,
though still poor or in moderate worldly circumstances, are 'hasting to be
rich.'
Now, it would seem that Gehazi had resolutely set himself to
obtain a portion of Naaman's wealth, no matter what might be the measures of
fraud or villany necessary to accomplish his purpose. And so it was that this
'lust, when it had conceived, brought forth sin;' the one unclean spirit went
and took to itself seven other spirits worse than itself. It is seldom indeed
that one sin can stand alone, or be restricted in the range of its
transgression to one precept or prohibition of the moral law ; there is ever 'a
complicate disobedience,' and what appears at least to the perverted conscience
a fatal necessity of sinning more and more.
Behold the foul and varied
progeny of this man's reigning avarice. There was the deliberate and plausibly
constructed falsehood told to Naaman, speedily invented, and leading to the
conclusion that he was no novice in deception, but that long practice had given
him promptitude and skill in the black art of lying. Then there was the act of
theft from which his hardened heart did not shrink, even when the magnanimous
gratitude of Naaman gave him double what his rapacious heart had asked, and
made his own servants the bearers of his guilty booty to the secret place.
Next, there was the base unfaithfulness to his kind master Elisha, whose heart
had unsuspectingly confided in him for so many years. And, last of all, and in
some respects also worst of all, there was the treachery to the cause of true
religion - which the act expressed - the readiness, for the sake of securing
his own selfish ends, to 'lay its honour in the dust,' by taking away from
Naaman's miraculous cure its character of generosity, throwing an air of
selfishness around the deed of mercy, and doing what he could to disturb, and
even to obliterate, the favourable impressions which had been made upon the
Syrian's mind. With what peculiar aggravations of sin does the man's conduct
stand out before us when looked at in these sober lights!
It appears to
me as if there were some hints in the brief narrative to show us that even his
wicked heart had laboured to find excuses for the crime on which it had
resolved, and to make it look very light and venial in the eye of his
conscience. It is difficult indeed to say with certainty whether in those words
of soliloquy, when he plotted the mischief in his heart, 'As the Lord liveth,'
he intended a kind of mocking travesty of his master's language when he had
refused to accept of Naaman's gifts: 'As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand,
I will receive none;' or whether he sought to cast an air of religion over his
acts by the free use of sacred words - according to Foster's severe saying
regarding a certain Russian emperor, that "he had no doubt that he said grace
before he swallowed Poland." But when he goes on to say to himself, 'Behold, my
master hath spared Naaman this Syrian" there is an wish to put a sop in the
mouth of his conscience, and to speak it fair. For it is as if he had said
'This man is only a heathen, a Syrian, an idolater, and am I bound to keep such
rigid terms with him?'
The moral law knows nothing of geography or
distinctions of races; and there were even special reasons in the very
circumstance that Naaman had been a heathen and an idolater, but had declared
his solemn purpose to abandon his false faith, why he should be treated by one
who professed to be a worshipper and servant of the only living and true God,
with all the more scrupulous morality and unselfishness. Ah! how does the evil
heart thus weave for itself ingenious apologies when it has formed its hidden
purposes of iniquity, when all the while they are lighter than the gossamer web
in the eyes of ' Him with whom we have to do !'
'Let no man,' says the
apostle, 'go beyond or defraud his brother in any matter, because that the Lord
is the avenger of all such.' 'Men are ready,' adds holy Leighton, 'to find out
poor shifts to deceive themselves when they have some way deceived their
brother, and to stop the mouth of their own conscience with some quibble and
some slight excuse, and force themselves at length to believe they have done no
wrong. Therefore the apostle, to frighten them out of their shifts, sets before
them an exacter Judge, that cannot be deceived nor mocked, that shall one day
unveil the conscience and blow away these vain self-excuses as smoke. And that
just God will punish all injustice. He is the avenger of all such.'
And
now the talents of silver and the changes of such festal robes have been
deposited and secured by Gehazi in the place of concealment, and he thinks with
himself in guilty self-gratulation - 'At last my fortune is made, and I shall
no longer be the drudge of this prophet, but shall become myself a master.' How
soon was he to find that even gold may be purchased too dear, and that ' the
lying tongue is but for a moment!'
Unabashed by the thought of what he
has done, he enters into Elisha's presence with the same bearing of outward
respect as he had been wont to manifest on former occasions, like the
adulterous woman described by Solomon, 'who eateth and wipeth her mouth, and
saith, I have done no wickedness,' and doubtless congratulating himself on the
fact that he had managed his villanous work so adroitly - when both the reproof
of his master and the judgment of Heaven alight upon him
together!
III. We thus come to consider Gehazi in his
detection.
Now, we incline to the opinion that the question of Elisha
'Whence comest thou, Gehazi?' with which he proceeded to unmask the daring
culprit, was addressed to him in part with the kind intention of putting him
once more to the proof, lest perchance, even at the eleventh hour, there should
be the rising of repentance to suspend or avert the blow. But there is no
giving way, no relenting, no quivering of the lip, no blush of shame which is
the tribute which even a guilty heart, when it is not utterly hardened, pays to
virtue. He is ready with the second lie to buttress or conceal the first: ' Thy
servant went no whither.' What obdurate wickedness was there here! It must have
needed a long course of deception to bear him so far away from that 'fair and
round dealing which is the honour of man's nature.'
Nothing is more
remarkable, as the prophet proceeds with his terrible work, forced onward by
his servant's fatal obduracy, than his resolved calmness, his entire freedom
from the influence of angry passion. There is profound seriousness, but no
excitement. It is the prophet, and not the man merely, that speaks throughout.
And yet, remembering quaint Fuller's words, that ' it is best when the sentence
of condemnation is steeped in the Judge's tears,' we can well believe that when
he proceeded to address Gehazi in those words of stern reproof by which he
showed him that he knew all, there was intense sorrow mingled with other
feelings; especially when he thought that one, who had followed and conversed
with him for so niany years, and had so largely shared in his confidence, had
thus been revealed as a withered branch; reprobate silver; in another moment to
be blasted by the visible stroke of Heaven and separated from him for both
worlds. 'Went not mine heart with thee,' said the prophet in his stern sorrow
to the astounded deceiver, 'when the man turned again from his chariot to meet
thee? Is it a time to receive money, and to receive garments, and oliveyards,
and vineyards, and sheep, and oxen, and men-servants, and maid-servants? The
leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for
ever.'
It appears from these words that the conduct of Gehazi had been
made known to Elisha by supernatural revelation, as distinctly as if the whole
interview with Naaman had passed before his bodily senses. The prophet's soul
had for the time been turned into a mirror, or camera obscura, in which even
the minutest incident of the scene was accurately pictured. It would even seem
that he was made aware of the workings of his servant's mind in reference to
his ill-gotten gain, and had 'sat as it were in his heart.'
And from
the whole we conclude that both when Gehazi was returning from Naaman, and when
he was now standing in his master's presence, he was secretly ruminating about
what he should do with his suddenly acquired riches. ' I will purchase
oliveyards, and vineyards, and sheep, and oxen, and hire men-servants and
maid-servants, and luxuriate in an abundance far different from the scanty fare
of the prophet's board.' Therefore, when Elisha put to him the solemn question,
' Is it a time for thee to receive garments, and oliveyards, and vineyards' it
was like the voice of Omniscience itself addressing him, and turned in a moment
all his guilty self-complacency into despair, by darting home upon his inmost
heart the withering conviction that all was already known.
But while in
this instance the means of discovery were supernatural, there are many ways in
which deeds of darkness may become known to our fellow-men, and 'that which was
done in secret be proclaimed upon the house-tops.' There is an infatuation
connected with crime which generally makes it leave a clue for its own
detection. It is sometimes as if the very birds of the air told the matter. It
was the observation of this fact which long since occasioned the proverb, that
"Satan always halts on one foot." Some expression dropped in a moment of
thoughtlessness, some undestroyed writing, the ravings of delirium, and even
sometimes overdone efforts at concealment, have torn aside the veil from past
deeds of violence or fraud, and brought the transgressor to an ignominious
doom. But there are eyes that see even the most secret crimes when they succeed
in eluding human detection, and there is a resistless hand that will one day
bring every work into judgment.
You cannot shake yourself free of your
conscience; and even when it becomes feeble as a judge, it continues
incorruptible and faithful as a witness, and writes its terrible records in
indelible ink. There is one sleepless eye that follows us everywhere and for
ever. ' The wicked saith in his heart, God hath forgotten, He hideth His face,
He will never see it. Thou hast seen it; for Thou beholdest mischief and spite,
to requite it with Thy hand.' ' Be sure your sin will find you out.'
We
must not omit the remark, that what still presented itself to the prophet's
mind, as the darkest feature of aggravation in Gehazi's sin, was the deep
injury which his conduct was fitted to inflict on the interests of religion. He
had tried to pull down what his master had built up, and, speaking in his
master's name, had done what he could to represent him as pretending to an
unselfishness and magnanimity which he did not in reality possess.
And
was this a time especially to put the interests of religion ih jeopardy, when '
iniquity was abounding, and the love of many waxing cold,' when there was but a
little remnant in the land adhering to the old and uncorrupted faith? At such a
time, for one who should have been a standard-bearer in the army of the Lord,
to swell the stream of apostasy and to throw a stumbling-block in the path of
one who was favourably disposed towards the truth, was to win himself double
damnation. 'Thou hast tried to make fraudulent gain by means of Naaman's cure;
God will now punish thee for this by sending upon thee Naaman's disease.' ' The
leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee and unto thy seed for ever.
And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow.'
IV.
Let us now look at Gehazi in his punishment.
Its immediateness ought not
to pass without observation. It most frequently happens in the divine
government of the world, that retribution in its external forms is delayed - '
sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily.' One of the Greek poets
whose writings often contained more truly religious sentiments than those of
the philosophers, remarked this two thousand years since, -
' Vengeance
divine to punish sin moves slow; The slower is its pace, the surer is its
blow.'
But there are occasions, like the present, when the punishment
moves swiftly in the footsteps of the crime, and the executioners of Heaven's
justice appear impatient to mark the sin with the deep brand of divine
displeasure. The former of these classes of facts confirm us in the belief that
there is a future judgment; the latter proclaim to us, as with a
trumpet-tongue, that ' verily there is a God that judgeth in the
earth'.
And the second of these truths becomes yet more impressively
manifest when we consider the particular form of Gehazi's punishment. It was
evidently intended to bear the image of his sin. He had sought to become
possessed of Naaman's wealth by wickedly trading on his recovery from his
leprosy, and he has obtained the wealth - but he shall receive the leprosy with
it. From that fatal hour to the end of his now embittered life, he shall never
be able to look on his body snow-white with this loathsome disease, without
having his falsehood, hypocrisy, and fraud brought to his remembrance; his sin
shall be ever before him; and more than this, his children made the sharers and
inheritors of his curse, shall reflect back on his conscience the accusing
memory of his wickedness - 'his own iniquities reproving him, and his own
backslidings correcting him.'
Some may perhaps be surprised at the fact
that this curse of leprosy should have been made to fall upon Gehazi's children
in common with himself, while we have no reason to believe that they were
partakers of his crime. But various considerations may be adduced to mitigate,
if not entirely to dispel, the difficulty. Thus, it should be remembered that
his children were depraved beings, and we may rest assured that the suffering
inflicted on them did not in itself exceed their desert; for 'shall not the
Judge of all the earth do right?' Then the moral effects of such an infliction
might be salutary to the children. Their father's example of covetousness must
have been morally contaminating. Such a visitation of the divine hard as this,
so terribly and distinctly significant in what it said, might save them from
partaking with their father also in the leprosy of his soul. It may be, too,
that one of the excuses by which Gehazi had tried to palliate his sin and
apologize for it to his own conscience, had been the desire of providing
abundantly for his family, just as men are every day making this the apology
for covetous acts of moral obliquity now ; and, in this instantaneous judgment,
he and others were made to see what sort of inheritance it is that sin
bequeaths to children. And besides all this, it should never be forgotten that
this is not a difficulty which, properly speaking, lies at the door of revealed
religion, or which the friend of the Bible is particularly called upon to
remove. We find the same fact in many forms pervading the whole scheme of
divine providence: the conditions of men linked into each other and shedding
mutual influence; children especially suffering in many ways from the
misconduct of their parents ; so that the difficulty rests more heavily with
the Deist than with the Christian, whose Bible supplies him with certain
explanations which the Deist has cast away. Let us be thankful for the
twilight, especially when we have the promise that it shall soon pass into
unclouded day. The refuge of the unbeliever from such difficulties and shadows
is into the midnight darkness.
We may surely gather from the bitter and
baneful experience of Gehazi the peculiarly uncertain and unsatisfactory nature
of sinfully acquired riches. Those who inherit them appear to inherit a curse
with them, just as leprosy in this awful instance came with wealth. The prophet
Jeremiah noticed the fact in his days in the case of those who 'got riches, but
not by right.' And those, who have lived in times of rapacity and spoliation in
our own country, have remarked how goods obtained by such means have proved
gangrenes to men's whole estates, and have compared them to the eagle that
stole a piece of meat from the altar which carried a live coal attached to it
that set her nest on fire. Their wealth has passed from man to man without
rest, 'like the ark among the Philistines, which was removed from Ashdod to
Gath and from Gath to Ekron,' vexing every one that kept it until it returned
to its rightful owner.
But unquestionably the great lesson of the whole
story of Gehazi is the evil and danger of a covetous spirit. Behold it eating
into this man's soul like a canker or moral leprosy, rendering him unfaithful
to his master, reckless of the honour and interests of religion, turning him
into a base liar and hypocrite, tempting him to rob man and to rob God also.
See the visible judgment of Heaven leaping forth against him and withering him
in a moment, and with its dark wing sweeping his very children within the
blasted circle of the curse. Nor does he stand alone in the sacred volume as an
eternal monument of the peril of loving this present world. ' This hath slain
many mighty.' Behold a crowd of witnesses moving before us in ghastly
procession - Balaam, Achan, Ananias and Sapphira, Demas, Judas, and many
others, and turning towards us their miserable countenances as they pass, and
saying, ' Take heed, and beware of covetousness.'
Let us learn that true
riches consists not in possessing much, but in desiring little ; let us drive
out, or rather keep out, the demon of covetousness, by 'having our affections
set on things above.' Then with God as our portion and heaven as our not far
distant rest, we shall find the feelings of our peaceful and satisfied souls
sweetly echoed in those words of our Christian poet -
'But Thou, O
bounteous Giver of all good !
Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the crown :
Give what Thou wilt, without Thee we are poor;
And with Thee rich, take
what Thou wilt away.'
END OF SELECTION
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