FTEE the Moabites had rebelled against Israel,. Ahaziah became sick in consequence of a fall through a grating in his upper room, and sent messengers to Ekron to consult the idol Baalzebub concerning the result of his illness. By the command of God, however, Elijah met the messengers on the road, and told them that the king would die (vers. 1-8). When Ahaziah sent soldiers to fetch Elijah, the messengers were miraculously slain on two successive occasions, and it was only his humiliation before the prophet which saved the third captain and his host from sharing a similar fate; whereupon Elijah went with him to the king, and repeated the threat already announced on account of his idolatry, which was very soon fulfilled (vers. 9-18).
Vers. 1-8. After the death of Ahab, Moab rebelled against Israel (ver. 1). The Moabites, who had been subjugated by David (2 Sam. viii. 2), had remained tributary to the kingdom of the ten tribes after the division of the kingdom. But when Israel was defeated by the Syrians at Bamoth in the time of Ahab, they took advantage of this defeat and the weakening of the Israelitish power in the country to the east of the Jordan to shake off the yoke of the Israelites, and very soon afterwards attempted an invasion of the kingdom of Judah, in alliance with the Edomites and other tribes of the desert, which terminated, however, in a great defeat, though it contributed to the maintenance of their independence. For further remarks, see at ch. iii. 4 sqq. — Ver. 2. Ahaziah could not do anything to subjugate the Moabites any further, since he was very soon afterwards taken grievously ill. He fell through the grating in his upper room at Samaria, njJ&L1, the grating, is either a window furnished with a shutter of lattice- work, or a door of latticework- in the upper room of the palace, but hardly a grating in the floor of the Ally ah for the purpose of letting light into the lower rooms, as the Rabbins supposed. On account of this misfortune, Ahaziah resorted to the Ekronitish Baahvhvb to obtain an oracle concerning the result of his illness. Mp>JJ?, i.e. Fly- Baal, was not merely the " averter of swarms of insects," like the Zevs cnrofivlos, /jLviaypos of Elis (Ges., Winer, Movers, PhOniz. i. p. 175), since "the Fly-God cannot have received his name as the enemy of flies, like liccus a non lucendo" but was Mvla Oeos (LXX., Joseph.), i.e. God represented as a fly, as a fly-idol, to which the name Myiodcs, gnat-like, in Plin. h. n. xxix. 6, clearly points, and as a god of the sun and of summer must have stood in a similar relation to the flies to that of the oracle-god Apollo, who both sent diseases and took them away (yid. J. G. Muller, Art. Beelzebub in Herzog's Cycl. i. p. 768, and Stark, Gaza, pp. 260, 261). The latter observes that "these (the flies), which are governed in their coming and going by all the conditions of the weather, are apparently endowed with prophetic power themselves." This explains the fact that a special power of prophecy was attributed to this god.1 Ekron, now AHr, the most northerly of the five Philistian capitals (see at Josh. xiii. 3). — Vers. 3, 4. But the angel of the Lord, the mediator of the revelations made by the invisible God to the covenant nation (see Comm. on the Pentateuch, vol. i. pp. 185-191, transl.), had spoken to Elijah to go and meet the king's messengers, who were going to inquire of Baalzebub, and to ask them whether it was from the want of a God in Israel (r« 730 as in Ex. xiv. 11; see Ewald, § 323, a) that they turned to Baalzebub, and to announce to them the word of Jehovah, that Ahaziah would not rise up from his bed again, but would die. " And Elijah went," sc. to carry out the divine commission. — Vers. 5-8. The messengers did not recognise Elijah, but yet they turned back and reported the occurrence to the king, who knew at once, from the description they gave of the
1 The later Jews altered the name Beelzebub into BseA Je/3oi;A, i.e. probably lord of the (heavenly) dwelling, as a name given to the oipy^uv ruu Ixtpouiau (Matt. x. 25, etc.); and the later Rabbins finally, by changing 5>rQT pya into ^2T bvii made a fly-god into a dung-god, to express in the most intense form their abomination of idolatry (see Lightfoot, Horse hebr. et talm. in Matt. xiL 24, and my bibl. Archaol. i. pp. 440, 441).
habitus of the man in reply to his question, that it was Elijah the Tishbite. ^\sn Dpeb np: « what was the manner of the man? " DSBfo is used here to denote the peculiarity of a person, that which in a certain sense constitutes the vital law and right of the individual personality; figura et habitus (Vulg.). The servants described the prophet according to his outward appearance, which in a man of character is a reflection of his inner man, as "W?V3 B^K, vir pilosus, hirsutus. This does not mean a man with a luxuriant growth of hair, but refers to the hairy dress, i.e. the garment made of sheep-skin or goat-skin or coarse camel-hair, which was wrapped round his body; the ITTW (ch. ii. 8; 1 Kings xix. 13), or W HTTN (Zech. xiii. 4, cf. Matt. iii. 4, Heb. xi. 37), which was worn by the prophets, not as mere ascetics, but as preachers of repentance, the rough garment denoting the severity of the divine judgments upon the effeminate nation, which revelled in luxuriance and worldly lust. And this was also in keeping with " the leather girdle," "riv "tiTK, tyvq Sep/iaTivT] (Matt. iii. 4), whereas the ordinary girdle was of cotton or linen, and often very costly.
Vers. 9-16. After having executed the divine command, Elijah returned to the summit of the mountain, on which he dwelt. Most of the commentators suppose it to have been one of the peaks of Carmel, from ch. ii 25 and 1 Kings xviii. 42, which is no doubt very probable, though it cannot be raised into certainty. Elijah's place of abode was known to the king; he therefore sent a captain with fifty men to fetch the prophet. To the demand of the captain, "Man of God, the king has said, Come down," Elijah replied, "And if I am a man of God, let fire fall from heaven and consume thee and thy fifty." (The expression D81, and if, shows that Elijah's words followed immediately upon those of the captain.) This judicial miracle was immediately fulfilled. — Vers. 11,12. The same fate befell a second captain, whom the king sent after the death of the first. He was more insolent than the first, " both because he was not brought to his senses by hearing of his punishment, and because he increased his impudence by adding make haste (mnp)." — C. a Lap. For T3T1 IJn the LXX. (Cod. Alex.) have koI avefir) koX iXaXrjae, so that they read by]}. The correctness of this reading, according to which JJW would be an error of the pen, is favoured not only by bvi) in vers. 9 and 13, but also by 13T1 which follows; for, as a general rule, |iw would be followed by
"WMta. The repetition of this judicial miracle was meant to show in the most striking manner not only the authority which rightfully belonged to the prophet, but also the help and protection which the Lord gave to His servants. At the same time, the question as to the " morality of the miracle," about which some have had grave doubts, is not set at rest by the remark of Thenius, that " the soldiers who were sent come into consideration here purely as instruments of a will acting in opposition to Jehovah." The third captain also carried out the ungodly command of the king, and he was not slain (vers. 13 sqq.). The first two must therefore have been guilty of some crime, which they and their people had to expiate with their death. This crime did not consist merely in their addressing him as u man of God," for the third addressed Elijah in the same way (ver. 13), but in their saying "Man of God, come down." This summons to the prophet, to allow himself to be led as a prisoner before the king, involved a contempt not only of the prophetic office in the person of Elijah, but also of the Lord, who had accredited him by miracles as His servant. The two captains who were first sent not only did what they were bound to do as servants of the king, but participated in the ungodly disposition of their lord (aviiftalvovTes tco gk.oitQ> tov ireiro fjL(poTO$ — Theodoret); they attacked the Lord with reckless daring in the person of the prophet, and the second captain, with his " Come down quickly," did it even more strongly than the first. This sin was punished, and that not by the prophet, but by the Lord Himself, who fulfilled the word of His servant.1 What Elijah here did was an act of holy zeal for the honour of the Lord, in the spirit of the old covenant, under which God destroyed the insolent despisers of His name with fire and sword, to manifest the energy of His holy majesty by the side of the dead idols of the heathen. But this act cannot be transferred to the times of the new covenant, as is clearly shown in Luke ix. 54, 55, where Christ does not blame Elijah for what he did, but admonishes His disciples, who overlooked the difference between the economy of the law and that of the gospel, and in their carnal zeal wanted to imitate what Elijah had done in divine zeal for the honour of the Lord, which had been injured in his own person. — Vers. 13, 14. The king, disregarding the
0/ rov TrpotyviTOv KctTYiyopovurtg koctoc tov Qsov toD TrpotpqTOv xti/ovo/ rut yiuTTug, as Theodoret very aptly observes.
punishing hand of the Lord, which, even if it might possibly have been overlooked in the calamity that befell the captain who was first sent and his company, could not be misunderstood when a similar fate befell the second captain with his fifty men, sent a third company, in his defiant obduracy, to fetch the prophet. (DW£> after D^on is apparently an error of the pen for *KW; as the following word ^wn shows.) But the third captain was better than his king, and wiser than his two predecessors. He obeyed the command of the king so far as to go to the prophet; but instead of haughtily summoning him to follow him, he bent his knee before the man of God, and prayed that his own life and the lives of his soldiers might be spared. — Vers. 15, 16. Then Elijah followed him to the king O^srp, before him, i.e. before the king, not before the captain; and infc for friK, see Ewald, § 264, h), having been directed to do so by the angel of the Lord, and repeated to him the word of the Lord, which he had also conveyed to him through his messengers (see vers. 4 and 6). Vers. 17 and 18. When Ahaziah died, according to the word of the Lord through Elijah, as he had no son, he was followed upon the throne by his brother Joram, " in the second year of Joram the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah." This statement is at variance both with that in ch. iii. 1, to the effect that Joram began to reign in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat, and with that in 1 Kings xxii. 5 2, viz. that Ahaziah ascended the throne in the seventeenth year of the reign of Jehoshaphat, which lasted twenty-five years, and also with the statement in ch. viii. 16, that Joram of Judah became king over Judah in the fifth year of Joram of Israel. If, for example, Ahaziah of Israel died after a reign of not quite two years, at the most a year and a half, in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat; as Jehoshaphat himself reigned twenty-five years, he cannot have died till the seventh year of Joram of Israel, and his son Joram followed him upon the throne. The last of these discrepancies may be solved very simply, from the fact that, according to ch. viii. 16, Jehoshaphat was still king when his son Joram began to reign, so that Jehoshaphat abdicated in favour of his son about two years before his death. And the first discrepancy (that between ch. i. 17 and ch. iii. 1) is removed by Usher {Annates M. ad a.m. 3106 and 3112), Lightfoot, and others, after the example of the Seder Olam, by the assumption of a co-regency. According to this, when Jehoshaphat went with Ahab to Kamoth in Gilead to war against the Syrians, ill the eighteenth year of his reign, which runs parallel to the twenty-second year of the reign of Ahab, he appointed his son Joram to the co-regency, and transferred to him the administration of the kingdom. It is from this co-regency that the statement in ch. i. 17 is dated, to the effect that Joram of Israel became king in the second year of Joram of Judah. This second year of the co-regency of Joram corresponds to the eighteenth year of the reign of Jehoshaphat (ch. iii. 1). And in the fifth year of his co-regency Jehoshaphat gave up the reins of government entirely to him. It is from this point of time, i.e. from the twenty-third year of Jehoshaphat, that we are to reckon the eight years of the reign of Joram (of Judah), so that he only reigned six years more after his father's death.1 We have no information as to the reason which induced Jehoshaphat to abdicate in favour of his son two years before his death; for there is very little probability in the conjecture of Lightfoot (Opp. i. p. 85), that Jehoshaphat did this when he commenced the war with the Moabites in alliance with Joram of Israel, for the simple reason that the Moabites revolted after the death of Ahab, and Joram made preparations for attacking them immediately after their rebellion (ch. iii. 5-7), so that he must have commenced this expedition before the fifth year of his reign.
1 "Wolff indeed boldly declares that " the co-regency of Joram is a pure fiction, and the biblical historians do not furnish the slightest warrant for any such supposition " (see p. 628 of the treatise mentioned at p. 187); but he cannot think of any other way of reconciling the differences than by making several alterations in the text, and inventing a co-regency in the case of the Israelitish king Ahaziah. The synchronism of the reigns of the Israelitish kings necessarily requires the solution adopted in the text. For if Joram of Israel, who began to reign in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat and reigned twelve years (ch. iii. 1), was slain at the same time as Ahaziah of Judah (ch. ix. 24-27), and Ahaziah of Judah reigned about one year and his predecessor Joram about eight years, so that the two together certainly reigned fully eight years; Joram of Judah must have ascended the throne four years after Joram of Israel, i.e. in the twenty-third year of Jehoshaphat, which runs parallel to the fifth year of Joram of Israel. Consequently the twenty-five years of Jehoshaphat are to be reduced to twenty-three in reckoning the sumtotal of the years embraced by the period of the kings. It is true that there is no analogy for this combination of the years of the reigns of two kings, since the other reductions of which different chronologists are fond are perfectly arbitrary, and the case before us stands quite alone; but this exception to the rule is indicated clearly enough in the statement in ch. viii. 16, that Joram began to reign while Jehoshaphat was (still) king. When, however, Thenius objects to this mode of reconciling the differences, which even Winer adopts
Vers. 1-13. Elijah's Ascension to Heaven. — Vers. 1-10. Journey from Gilgal to the other side of the Jordan. — Vers. 1,2. When the time arrived that Jehovah was about to take up His servant Elijah in a tempest to heaven, Elijah went with his attendant Elisha from Gilgal down to Bethel. »"1iys3, in the tempest or storm, i.e. in a tempestuous storm, which was frequently the herald of the divine self-revelations in the terrestrial world (vid. Job xxxviii. 1, xl. 6; Ezek. i. 4; Zech. ix. 14). D?c$n is the accusative of direction. Gilgal and Bethel (Beitin, see at 1 Kings xii. 29) were seats of schools of the prophets, which Elijah had founded in the kingdom of the ten tribes. It is now generally admitted that Gilgal, from which they went down to Bethel, cannot be the place of that name which was situated in the Jordan valley to the east of Jericho, but must be the Gilgal upon the mountains, the elevated Jiljilia to the south-west of Silo (Seilun, see at Josh. viii. 35). On the way Elijah said to Elisha, " Stay here, I pray, for the Lord has sent me to Bethel;" but Elisha declared with a solemn oath that he would not leave him. The Lord had revealed to both that the seal of divine attestation was to be impressed upon the work of Elijah by his being miraculously taken up into heaven, to in the third edition of his bill. Real-Worterbuch, i. p. 539, on the ground that the reign of Joram is dated most precisely in 1 Kings xxii. 51 and 2 Chron. xxi. 1, 5, 20, from the death of Jehoshaphat, and that an actual co-regency, viz. that of Jotham, is expressly mentioned in ch. xv. 5, which does not render it at all necessary to carry the years of his reign into those of his father's, this appeal to the case of Jotham cannot prove anything, for the simple reason that the biblical text knows nothing of aoy co-regency of Jotham and Uzziah, but simply states that when Uzziah was smitten with leprosy, his son Jotham judged the people of the land, but that he did not become king till after his father's death (ch. xv, 5, 7; 2 Chron. xxvi. 21, 23). It is indeed stated in 1 Kings xxii. 51 and 2 Chron. xxvi. 1, 5, 20, that Jehoshaphat died and his son Joram became king, which may be understood as meaning that he did not become king till after the death of Jehoshaphat; but there is no necessity to understand it so, and therefore it can be very easily reconciled with the more precise statement in ch. viii. 16, that Joram ascended the throne during the reign of Jehoshaphat, whereas the assertion of Thenius, that the circumstantial clause imrv!fo BQK^rPI inch. viii. 16 is a gloss, is not critically established by the absence of these words from the LXX., Syr., and Arabic, and to expunge them from the text is nothing but an act of critical violence.
strengthen the faith not of Elisha only, but also of the disciples of the prophets and of all the godly in Israel; but the revelation had been made to them separately, so that Elijah had no suspicion that Elisha had also been informed as to his being taken away. He wanted, therefore, to get rid of his servant, not " to test his love and attachment " (VatabL), but from humility (C. a Lap. and others), because he did not wish to have any one present to witness his glorification without being well assured that it was in accordance with the will of God. — Ver. 3. In Bethel the disciples of the prophets came to meet Elisha, and said to him, " Knowest thou that Jehovah will take thy master from over thy head to-day? " ^N"i /VB npp expresses in a pictorial manner the taking away of Elijah from his side by raising him to heaven, like iiraipeiv and viroXxifjifidveiv in Acts i. 9, 10. Elisha replied, " I know it, be silent," because he knew Elijah's feeling. The Lord had therefore revealed to the disciples of the prophets the taking away of Elijah, to strengthen their faith. — Vers. 4—7. In Bethel, and again in Jericho, to which they both proceeded from Bethel, Elijah repeated the appeal to Elisha to stay there, but always in vain. The taking away of Elijah had also been revealed to the disciples of the prophets at Jericho. Thus they both came to the Jordan, whilst fifty disciples of the prophets from Jericho followed them at a distance, to be eye-witnesses of the miraculous translation of their master. The course which Elijah took before his departure from this earth, viz. from Gilgal past Bethel and Jericho, was not merely occasioned by the fact that he was obliged to touch at these places on the way to the Jordan, but had evidently also the same higher purpose, for which his ascension to heaven had been revealed both to Elisha and to the disciples of the prophets at Bethel and Jericho. Elijah himself said that the Lord had sent him to Bethel, to Jericho, to the Jordan (vers. 2, 4, 6). He therefore took this way from an impulse received from the Spirit of God, that he might visit the schools of the prophets, which he had founded, once more before his departure, and strengthen and fortify the disciples of the prophets in the consecration of their lives to the service of the Lord, though without in the least surmising that they had been informed by the Spirit of the Lord of his approaching departure from this life. But as his ascension to heaven took place not so much for his own sake, as because of those associates in his office who were left behind, God had revealed it to so many, that they might be even more firmly established in their calling by the miraculous glorification of their master than by his words, his teaching, and his admonitions, so that they might carry it on without fear or trembling, even if their great master should no longer stand by their side with the might of his spiritual power to instruct, advise, or defend. But above all, Elisha, whom the Lord had appointed as his successor (1 Kings xix. 16), was to be prepared for carrying on his work by the last journey of his master. He did not leave his side therefore, and resolved, certainly also from an inward impulse of the Spirit of God, to be an eye-witness of his glorification, that he might receive the spiritual inheritance of the first-born from his departing spiritual father. — Ver. 8. When they reached the Jordan, Elijah took his prophet's cloak, rolled it up (MS, air. \ey. convolvit), and smote the water with it; whereupon the water divided hither and thither, so that they both passed through on dry ground. The cloak, that outward sign of the prophet's office, became the vehicle of the Spirit's power which works unseen, and with which the prophet was inspired. The miracle itself is analogous to the miraculous dividing of the Bed Sea by the stretching out of Moses' rod (Ex. xiv. 16, 21); but at the same time it is very peculiar, and quite in accordance with the prophetic character of Elijah. Moses, the leader of the people, performed his miracles with his shepherd's crook, Elijah the prophet divided the river with his prophet's mantle. — Vers. 9, 10. After crossing the Jordan, Elijah allowed his servant and companion to make one more request before he was taken away, in the full confidence that the Lord would fulfil it in answer to his prayer; and Elisha asked, " Let D!^"^ irar?, &7r\a iv TTvevfiaTi crov, i.e. a double portion in (of) thy spirit be granted to me." This request has been misunderstood by many translators, from Ephraem Syrus down to Koster and F. W. Krummacher, who have supposed that Elisha wished to have a double measure of Elijah's spirit (" that thy spirit may be twofold in me:" Luther after the Vulgate, " ut fiat in me duplex spiritus tuus "); and some have taken it as referring to the fact that Elisha performed many more miracles and much greater ones than Elijah (Cler., Pfeiffer, dub. vex. p. 442), others to the gift of prophecy and miracles (Koster, die Proph. p. 82), whilst others, like Krummacher, have understood by it that the spirit of Elisha, as an evangelical spirit, was twice as at as the legal spirit of Elijah. But there is no such meaning implied in tin- words, nor can it be interred from the answer of Elijah; whilst it is impossible to show that there was any such measure of the Spirit in the life and works of Elisha in comparison with the spirit of Elisha, although his request was fulfilled. The request of Elisha is evidently based upon Dent, xxL 17, where 3 Dye^B denotes the double portion which the. first-born received in (of) the father's inheritance, as R Levi b. Gers., Seb. Miinst., Vatabl., Grot., and others have perceived, and as Hengstenberg (Beitrr. ii. p. 133 f.) in our days has once more proved. Elisha, resting his foot upon this law, requested of Elijah as a first-born son the double portion of his spirit for his inheritance. Elisha looked upon himself as the first-born son of Elijah in relation to the other " sons of the prophets," inasmuch as Elijah by the command of God had called him to be his successor and to carry on his work. The answer of Elijah agrees with this: " Thou hast asked a hard thing," he said, because the granting of this request was not in his power, but in the power of God. He therefore made its fulfilment dependent upon a condition, which did not rest with himself, but was under the control of God: "if thou shalt see me taken from thee (nj37, partic. Pual with the D dropped, see Ges. § 52, Anm. b; Ewald, vj 169, d), let it be so to thee; but if not, it will not be so." Erom his own personal inclination Elijah did not wish to have Elisha, who was so closely related to him, as an eye-witness of his translation from the earth; but from his persistent refusal to leave him he could already see that he would not be able to send him away. He therefore left the matter to the Lord, and made the guidance of God the sign for Elisha whether the Lord would fulfil his request or not. Moreover, the request itself even on the part of the petitioner presupposes a certain dependence, and for this reason Elisha could not possibly desire that the double measure of Elijah's spirit should be bestowed upon him. A dying man cannot leave to his heir more than he has himself. And, lastly, even the ministry of Elisha, when compared with that of Elijah, has all the appearance of being subordinate to it. He lives and labours merely as the continuer of the work already begun by Elijah, both outwardly in relation to the worshippers of idols, and inwardly in relation to the disciples of the prophets. Elisha performs the anointing of Jehu and Hazael, with which Elijah was charged, and thereby prepares the way for the realization of that destruction of Ahab's house which Elijah predicted to the king; and he merely receives and fosters those schools of the prophets which Elijah had already founded. And again, it is not Elisha but Elijah who appears as the Coryphaeus of prophecy along with Moses, the representative of the law, upon the mount of transfiguration (Matt, xvii. 3). — It is only a thoroughly external mode of observation that can discover in the fact that Elisha performed a greater number of miracles than Elijah, a proof that the spirit of Elijah rested doubly upon him.
Vers. 11-13. Elijah's ascension. — Ver. 11. While they were walking on and talking to each other, " behold (there suddenly appeared) a fiery chariot and fiery horses, and separated the two (by driving between them), and Elijah went up in the tempest to heaven." As God had formerly taken Enoch away, so that he did not taste of death (see at Gen. v. 24), so did He also suddenly take Elijah away from Elisha, and carry him to heaven without dying. It was ""nj®?, " in the tempest," that he was taken away. The storm was accompanied by a fiery phenomenon, which appeared to the eyes of Elisha as a chariot of fire with horses of fire, in which Elijah rode to heaven. The tempest was an earthly substratum for the theophany, the fiery chariots and fiery horses the symbolical form in which the translation of his master to heaven presented itself to the eye of Elisha, who was left behind.1 — The ascension of Elijah has been compared to the death of Moses. " As God Himself buried Moses, and his grave has not been found to this day, so did He fetch Elias to heaven in a still more glorious manner in a fiery chariot with fiery horses, so that fifty men, who searched for him, did not find him on the earth " (Ziegler). This parallel has a real foundation in the appearance of Moses and Elijah with Christ on the mountain of transfiguration, only we must not overlook the difference in the departure from this life of these two witnesses of God. Eor Moses died and was to die in the wilderness because of his sin (Deut. xxxii.
1 All further questions, e.g. concerning the nature of the fiery chariot, the place to which Elijah was carried, the day of his ascension, which C. a Lap., according to the Romish martyrology, assigns to the 20th of July in the 19th year of Jehoshaphat, and others of the same kind, which hav>e been discussed by the earlier commentators, are to be set down as useless trifles, which go beyond the bounds of our thought and comprehension.
49 sqq.), and was only buried by the hand of the Lord, so that no one has seen his grave, not so much for the purpose of concealing it from men as to withdraw his body from corruption, and preserve and glorify it for the eternal life (see the Comm. on Deut. xxxiv. 5, 6). Elijah did not die, but was received into heaven by being " changed" (1 Cor. xv. 51, 52; 1 Thess. iv. 15 sqq.). This difference is in perfect harmony with the character and position of these two men in the earthly kingdom of God. Moses the lawgiver departed from the earthly life by the way of the law, which worketh death as the wages of sin (Rom. vi. 23, vii. 13); Elijah the prophet, who was appointed to admonish for future times (6 fcaraypafeU iv iXey/xoU et? iccupovs), to pacify the wrath before the judgment, to turn the heart of the father to the son, and to restore the tribes of Jacob (Ecclus. xlviii. 10), was taken to heaven as the forerunner of Christ (Mai. iii. 23, 24; Matt. xi. 10, 11) without tasting of death, to predict the ascension of our Lord, and to set it forth in Old Testament mode; for as a servant, as the servant of the law, who with his fiery zeal preached both by word and deed the fire of the wrath of divine justice to the rebellious generation of his own time, Elijah was carried by the Lord to heaven in a fiery storm, the symbol of the judicial righteousness of God. " As he was an unparalleled champion for the honour of the Lord, a fiery warchariot was the symbol of his triumphal procession into heaven " (0. v. Gerlach). But Christ, as the Son, to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth, after having taken away from death its sting and from hell its victory, by His resurrection from the grave (1 Cor. xv. 55), returned to the Father in the power of His eternal deity, and ascended to heaven in His glorified body before the eyes of His disciples as the victor over death and hell, until a cloud received Him and concealed His figure from their sight (Luke xxiv. 51; Acts i. 9).1 — Ver. 12. When Elisha saw his
1 The actual truth of this miraculous departure of the prophet is strongly confirmed by the appearance of Elijah, as recorded in Matt. xvii. 3, 4 and Luke ix. 30, upon which the seal of attestation is impressed by the ascension of our Lord. His ascension was in harmony with the great mission with which he, the mightiest of all the prophets, was entrusted in that development of the divine plan of salvation which continued through the centuries in the interval between Moses and Christ. — Whoever is unable to do justice to the spirit and nature of the divine revelation of mercy, will be unable to comprehend this miracle also. This was the case with Josephus, and even with Ephraem the Syrian father. Josephus, for example {Ant. ix. 2, 2), says nothing about the master carried thus miraculously away, lie exclaimed, " My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and horsemen thereof!" and as he saw him no more, he took hold of his clothes and rent them in two pieces, i.e. from the top to the bottom, as a proof of the greatness of his sorrow at his being taken away. He called Elijah *2K, " my father," as his spiritual father, who had begotten him as his son through the word of God. " Chariot (war-chariot) and horsemen of Israel," on which the Israelitish kings based the might and security of their.kingdom, are a symbolical representa- miracle, and simply states that 'Ha/«j s% dvQpuTruu v)$xviody' xxl ovOil; tyuu f*sxpi<; tyis avjpspou ocvrou rqv TiKivryju, and adds that it is written of Elijah and Enoch in the sacred books, or; yeyouacotv cc$xvug. Oocvoitov oi ctvruu ovdsig olhv. Ephraeru, the Christian father, passes over the last clause of ver. 11, " so Elijah went up in the whirlwind to heaven," in his exposition of our chapter, and paraphrases the rest of the words thus: u There came suddenly from on high a fire-storm, and in the midst of the flame the form of a chariot and of horses, and separated them from one another; one of the two it left on but whither the wind (or Spirit? |^jOJ) took him, or in what place it left him, the Scriptures have not told us. They say, however, that some years afterwards an alarming letter from him, full of threats, was delivered to king Joram of Judah." Following the lead of such predecessors as these, J. D. Michaelis, who boasts so much of his orthodoxy, informed the " unlearned" (in the Anmerkungen to his Bibel-ubersetzung) that Elijah did not go to heaven, but was simply carried away from Palestine, and lived at least twelve years more, that he might be able to write a letter to king Joram (2 Chron. xxi. 12), for "men do not receive letters from people in heaven." This incident has been frequently adduced since then as a disproof of the ascension of Elijah. But there is not a word in the Chronicles about any letter (D'HQD, 13D» or mJKi which would be the Hebrew for a letter); all that is said is that a writing (2J"Dft) from the prophet Elijah was brought to Joram, in which he was threatened with severe punishments on account of his apostasy. Now such a writing as this might very well have been written by Elijah before his ascension, and handed to Elisha to be sent by him to king Joram at the proper time. Even Bertheau admits that, according to the chronological data of the Old Testament, Elijah might have been still living in the reign of Joram of Judah; and it is a priori probable that he both spoke of Joram's sin and threatened him with punishment. It is impossible to fix the year of Elijah's ascension. Neither the fact that it is mentioned after the death of Ahaziah of Israel, which he himself had personally foretold to that ungodly king, nor the circumstance that in the war which Jehoshaphat and Joram of Israel waged with the Moabites the prophet Elisha was consulted (ch. hi.), warrants the conclusion that Elijah was taken from the earth in the interval between these two events. It is very obvious from ch. hi. 11, that the two kings applied to Elisha simply because he was in the neighbourhood, and not because Elijah was no longer alive.
tion of the strong defence which Elijah had been through his ministry to the kingdom of Israel (cf. ch. xiii. 14). — Ver. 13. lie then took up Elijah's prophet's mantle, which had fallen from him when he was snatched away, and returned to the Jordan. The prophet's mantle of the master fell to Elisha the disciple, as a pledge to himself that his request was fulfilled, and as a visible sign to others that he was his divinely appointed successor, and that the spirit of Elijah rested upon him (ver. 15).
Vers. 14-25. Return of Elisha to Jericho and Bethel, and his First Miracles. — Vers. 14, 15. Having returned to the banks of the Jordan, Elisha smote the water with Elijah's mantle, saying, "Where is Jehovah the God of Elijah, yea He? " and the water divided hither and thither, so that he was able to go through. IWHH?, which the LXX. did not understand, and have simply reproduced in Greek characters, dcfxfxo, is an emphatic apposition, " yea He," such as we find after suffixes, e.g. Pro v. xxii. 1 9; and ^ is only a strengthened 03, which is more usual when emphatic prominence is given to the suffix {yid. Ges. § 121, 3). The Masoretic accentuation, which separates it from the preceding words, rests upon a false interpretation. There is no need either for the alteration proposed by Ewald, § 362, a, of *[$> into?]N, "he had scarcely smitten the water," especially as not a single analogous example can be adduced of the use of fcttn tjx followed by a Vav conscc; or for the conjecture that the original reading in the text was ^ss (Houb., Bottch., Then.), "where is now the God of Elijah? " which derives no critical support from the acfxjxo of the LXX., and is quite at variance with Hebrew usage, since NteK generally stands immediately after njK, when it serves to strengthen the interrogation (vid. Judg. ix. 38, Job xvii. 15, Isa. xix. 12, Hos. xiii. 10). This miracle was intended partly to confirm Elisha's conviction that his petition had been fulfilled, and partly to accredit him in the eyes of the disciples of the prophets and the people generally as the divinely appointed successor of Elijah. All the disciples of the prophets from Jericho saw also from this that the spirit of Elijah rested upon Elisha, and came to meet him to do homage to him as being now their spiritual father and lord. — Vers. 16—18. But the disciples of the prophets at Jericho were so unable to realize the fact of Elijah's translation, although it had been previously revealed to them, that they begged permission of Elisha to send out fifty brave men to seek for Elijah. teB>p"ja: whether the Spirit of the Lord has not taken him and cast him upon one of the mountains, or into one of the valleys. 1^ with the perfect is used " where there is fear of a fact, which as is conjectured almost with certainty has already happened," like firj in the sense of " whether not " (vid. Ewald, § 337, b). njn* rm is not a wind sent by Jehovah (Ges.), but the Spirit of Jehovah, as in 1 Kings xviii. 12. The Chethib rti&oa is the regular formation from fcOa or N^. (Zech. xiv. 4); the Keri with the transposition of N and \ the later form: n^KI, Ezek. vii. 16, xxxi. 12, etc. The belief expressed by the disciples of the prophets, that Elijah might have been miraculously carried away, was a popular belief, according to 1 Kings xviii. 1 2, which the disciples of the prophets were probably led to share, more especially in the present case, by the fact that they could not imagine a translation to heaven as a possible thing, and with the indefiniteness of the expression 1$K1 7VD rip? could only understand the divine revelation which they had received as referring to removal by death. So that even if Elisha told them how miraculously Elijah had been taken from him, which he no doubt did, they might still believe that by the appearance in the storm the Lord had taken away His servant from this life, that is to say, had received his soul into heaven, and had left his earthly tabernacle somewhere on the earth, for which they would like to go in search, that they might pay the last honours to their departed master. Elisha yielded to their continued urgency and granted their request; whereupon fifty men sought for three days for Elijah's body, and after three days' vain search returned to Jericho. BETT^, to being ashamed, i.e. till he was ashamed to refuse their request any longer (see at Judg. iii. 25).
The two following miracles of Elisha (vers. 19-25) were also intended to accredit him in the eyes of the people as a man endowed with the Spirit and power of God, as Elijah had been. Vers. 19—22. Elisha makes the water at Jericho wholesome.— During his stay at Jericho (ver. 18) the people of the city complained, that whilst the situation of the place was good in other respects, the water was bad and the land produced miscarriages. H?'7, the land, i.e. the soil, on account of the badness of the water; not " the inhabitants, both man and beast " (Thenius). Elisha then told them to bring a new dish with salt, and poured the salt into the spring with these words: u Thus saith the Lord, I have made this water sound; there will no more be death and miscarriage thence " (&$*?). H3|^D is a substantive here (vid. Ewald, 160, c). E^rr trcio is no doubt the present spring Ain es Sultan, the only spring near to Jericho, the waters of which spread over the plain of Jericho, thirty-five minutes' distance from the present village and castle, taking its rise in a group of elevations not far from the foot of the mount Quarantana (Kuruntul); a large and beautiful spring, the water of which is neither cold nor warm, and has an agreeable and sweet (according to Steph. Schultz, " somewhat salt ") taste. It was formerly enclosed by a kind of reservoir or semicircular wall of hewn stones, from which the water was conducted in different directions to the plain (vid. Bob. Pal. ii. p. 283 sqq.). With regard to the miracle, a spring which supplied the whole of the city and district with water could not be so greatly improved by pouring in a dish of salt, that the water lost its injurious qualities for ever, even if salt does possess the power of depriving bad water of its unpleasant taste and injurious effects. The use of these natural means does not remove the miracle. Salt, according to its power of preserving from corruption and decomposition, is a symbol of incorruptibility and of the power of life which destroys death (see Bahr, Symbolik, ii. pp. 325, 326). As such it formed the earthly substratum for the spiritual power of the divine word, through which the spring was made for ever sound. A new dish was taken for the purpose, not oh munditiem (Seb. Schm.), but as a symbol of the renewing power of the word of God. — But if this miracle was adapted to show to the people the beneficent character of the prophet's ministry, the following occurrence was intended to prove to the despisers of God that the Lord does not allow His servants to be ridiculed with impunity. — Vers. 23-25. The judgment of God upon the loose fellows at Bethel. Elisha proceeded from Jericho to Bethel, the chief seat of the idolatrous calf- worship, where there was also a school of the prophets (ver. 3). On the way thither there came small boys out of the city to meet him, who ridiculed him by calling out, (t Come up, bald-head, come," etc. rnp., bald-head (with a bald place at the back of the head), was used as a term of scorn (cf. Isa. iii. 17, 24); but hardly from a suspicion of leprosy (Winer, Thenius). It was rather as a natural defect, for Elisha, who lived for fifty years after this (eh. xiii. 1 4), could not have been bald from age at that time. — Ver. 24. The prophet then turned round and cursed the scoffers in the name of the Lord, and there came two bears out of the wood, and tore forty-two boys of them in pieces. The supposed " immorality of cursing," which Thenius still adduces as a disproof of the historical truth of this miracle, even if it were established, would not affect' Elisha only, but would fall back upon the Lord God, who executed the curse of His servant in such a manner upon these worthless boys. And there is no need, in order to justify the judicial miracle, to assume that there was a preconcerted plan which had been devised by the chief rulers of the city out of enmity to the prophet of the Lord, so that the children had merely been put forward (0. v. Gerlach). All that is necessary is to admit that the worthless spirit which prevailed in Bethel was openly manifested in the ridicule of the children, and that these boys knew Elisha, and in his person insulted the prophet of the Lord. If this was the case, then Elisha cursed the boys for the purpose of avenging the honour of the Lord, which had been injured in his person; and the Lord caused this curse to be fulfilled, to punish in the children the sins of the parents, and to inspire the whole city with a salutary dread of His holy majesty.1 — Ver. 25. Elisha went from Bethel to Carmel (see at 1 Kings xviii. 19), probably to strengthen himself in solitude for the continuation of his master's work. He returned thence to Samaria, where, according to ch. vi. 32, he possessed a house.
CHAP. III. JOKAM OF ISRAEL, AND THE EXPEDITION AGAINST MOAB WHICH HE UNDERTOOK IN COMPANY WITH JEHOSHAPHAT.
Vers. 1-3. Eeign of Joram of Israel. — Eor the chronological statement in ver. 1, see at ch. i. 17. Joram or Jelwram was
1 Augustine, or the author of the Sermo 204 de Tempore (or Sermo 41 de Elis&o in t. v. of the Opp. August., ed. J. P. Migne, p. 1826), which is attributed to him, gives a similar explanation. " The insolent boys," he says, " are to be supposed to have done this at the instigation of their parents; for they would not have called out if it had displeased their parents." And with regard to the object of the judicial punishment, he says it was inflicted " that the elders might receive a lesson through the smiting of the little ones, and the death of the sons might be a lesson to the parents; and that they might learn to fear the prophet, whom they would not love, notwithstanding the wonders which he performed."
not so ungodly as his father Ahab and his mother Jezebel. He had the statue or pillar of Baal, which his father had erected in Samaria, removed; and it was only to the sin of Jeroboam, i.e. the calf-worship, that he adhered. Joram therefore wished to abolish the worship of Baal and elevate the worship of Jehovah, under the image of the calf (ox), into the religion of his kingdom once more. For the singular suffix na£» see Ewald, § 3 1 7, a. He did not succeed, however, in exterminating the worship of Baal. It not only continued in Samaria, but appears to have been carried on again in the most shameless manner (cf. ch. x. 18 sqq.); at which we cannot be surprised, since his mother Jezebel, that fanatical worshipper of Baal, was living throughout the whole of his reign (ch. ix. 30).
Vers. 4-2 7. War of Joram, in alliance with Jehoshaphat, against the Moabites. — Vers. 4, 5. The occasion of this war was the rebellion of the Moabites, i.e. the refusal to pay tribute to Israel since the death of Ahab. Mesha the (vassal-) king of Moab was a possessor of flocks, and paid to the king of Israel 100,000 lambs and 100,000 rams; not merely at the commencement of each new reign (Cler.), but as a yearly tribute pH$7, to bring again = to bring repeatedly, as in Num. xviii. 9, etc.). This yearly tribute could not be exorbitant for the land of the Moabites, which abounded in good pasture, and was specially adapted for the rearing of flocks. The payment of tribute in natural objects and in the produce of the land was very customary in ancient times, and is still usual among the tribes of Asia.1 *i£U signifies both a shepherd (Amos i. 1) and also a possessor of flocks. In Arabic it is properly the possessor of a superior kind of sheep and goats (vid. Boch. Hieroz. i. p. 483 sq. ed. Eos.). 10£ may either be taken as a second object to M*D, or he connected with Dv*K as an accusative of looser government (Ewald, § 287, h). In the first case the tribute would consist of the wool (the fleeces) of 100,000 lambs and 100,000 rams; in the second, of 100,000 lambs and the wool of 100,000 rams. In support of the latter we may quote Isa. xvi. 1, where lambs are mentioned as tribute. — Vers. 5 sqq. The statement
1 Pecunia ipsa a pecore appellabatur. Edam nunc in tabulis Censoriis pascua dicuntur omnia, ex quibus populus reditus habet, quia diu hoc solum vecti'jal fait. Mulctatio quoque nonnisi ovium boumque impendio dicebatur. — Plinii h. nat. xviii. 3.
concerning the rebellion of the Moabites, which has already been mentioned in ch. i. 1, is repeated here, because it furnished the occasion for the expedition about to be described. Ahaziah had been unable to do anything during his short reign to renew the subjugation of Moab; Joram was therefore anxious to overtake what had been neglected immediately after his ascent of the throne. He went to Samaria K*nn Dis3, at that time, namely, when he renewed his demand for the tribute and it was refused (Thenius), and mustered all Israel, i.e. raised an army out of the whole kingdom, and asked Jehoshaphat to join in the war, which he willingly promised to do (as in 1 Kings xxii. 4), notwithstanding the fact that he had been blamed by prophets for his alliance with Ahab and Ahaziah (2 Chron. xix. 2 and xx. 37). He probably wished to chastise the Moabites still further on this occasion for their invasion of Judah (2 Chron. xx.), and to do his part by bringing them once more under the yoke of Israel, to put it out of their power to make fresh incursions into Judah. — Ver. 8. In reply to Joram's question, " By which way shall we advance (against Moab)? " Jehoshaphat decided in favour of " the way through the desert of Edom." There were two ways by which it was possible to enter the land of the Moabites; namely, either by going above the Dead Sea, and crossing the Jordan and the boundary river Arnon, and so entering it from the north, or by going round the southern point of the Dead Sea, and advancing through the northern portion of the mountains of Edom, and thus entering it from the south. The latter way was the longer of the two, and the one attended with the greatest difficulties and dangers, because the army would have to cross mountains which were very difficult to ascend. Nevertheless Jehoshaphat decided in its favour, partly because, if they took the northern route, they would have the Syrians at Eamoth in Gilead to fear, partly also because the Moabites, from their very confidence in the inaccessibility of their southern boundary, would hardly expect any attack from that side, and might therefore, if assailed at that point, be taken off their guard and easily defeated, and probably also from a regard to the king of Edom, whom they could induce to join them with his troops if they took that route, not so much perhaps for the purpose of strengthening their own army as to make sure of his forces, namely, that he would not make a fresh attempt at rebellion by a second invasion of the kingdom of Judah while
Jehoshaphat was taking the field against the Moabites. — Ver. 9. But however cleverly this plan may have been contrived, when the united army had been marching round for seven days and was passing through the deep rocky valley of the Ahsy} which divided the territories of Edom and Moab, it was in the greatest danger of perishing from want of water for men and cattle, as the river which flows through this valley, and in which they probably hoped to find a sufficient supply of water, since according to Kobinson (Pal. ii pp. 47 G and 488) it is a stream which never fails, was at that time perfectly dry.
In this distress the hearts of the two kings were manifested. — Vers. 10—12. Joram cried out in his despair: "Woe, that Jehovah has called these three kin^s, to give them into the hand of Moab!" (s3, that, serves to give emphasis to the assurance; see Ewald, § 330, b.) Jehoshaphat, on the other hand, had confidence in the Lord, and inquired whether there was no prophet there, through whom they could seek counsel of the Lord (as in 1 Kings xxii. 7); whereupon one of the servants of the Israelitish king answered that Elisha was there, who had poured water upon the hands of Elijah, i.e. had been with him daily as his servant, and therefore could probably obtain and give a revelation from God. Elisha may perhaps have come to the neighbourhood of the army at the instigation of the Spirit of God, because the distress of the kings was to be one means in the hand of the Lord, not only of dis-
1 The usual route from southern Judaea to the land of the Moabites, which even the Crusaders and more recent travellers took, runs round the Dead Sea up to the mouth of the Wady ed Deraah or Kerak, and then up this wady to Kerak (yid. Rob. ii. p. 231). The allied kings did not take this route however, but went through the Wady el Kurahy or es-SaJieh, which opens into the southern end of the Dead Dea, and which is called the Wady el Ahsy farther up in the mountains, by Seetzen (i?. ii. pp. 355, 356) erroneously the Wady el Hossa (Rob. ii. p. 488), a ravine through which Burckhardt passed with the greatest difficulty (Syrien, ii. p. 673). That they advanced by this route is a necessary inference from the fact, that when they first suffered from want of water they were on the border of the Moabitish territory, of which this very wady forms the boundary (ver. 21; see Burckh. p. 67-1, and Rob. Pal. ii. p. 555), and the water came flowing from Edom (ver. 20). Neither of these circumstances is applicable to the Wady el Kerak. — Still less can we assume, with 0. v. Gerlach, that they chose the route through the Arabah that they might approach Moab from the south, as the Israelites under Moses had done. For it would have been impossible for them to reach the border of Moab by this circuitous route. And why should they go so far round, with the way through Edom open to them?
tinguisliing the prophet in the eyes of Joram, but also of pointing Joram to the Lord as the only true God. The three kings, humbled by the calamity, went in person to Elisha, instead of sending for him. — Vers. 13, 14. In order still further to humble the king of Israel, who was already bowed down by the trouble, and to produce some salutary fruit of repentance in his heart, Elisha addressed him in these words: " What have I to do with thee? Go to the (Baal-) prophets of thy father and thy mother! Let them help thee." When Joram replied to this in a supplicatory tone: •**, no, pray (as in Euth i. 1 3), i.e. speak not in this refusing way, for the Lord has brought these three kings — not me alone, but Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom also — into this trouble; Elisha said to him with a solemn oath (cf. 1 Kings xvii. 1): "If I did not regard Jehoshaphat, I should not look at thee and have respect to thee," i.e. I should not deign to look at thee, much less to help thee. — Vers. 15—17. He then sent for a minstrel, to collect his mind from the impressions of the outer world by the soft tones of the instrument, and by subduing the self-life and life in the external world to become absorbed in the intuition of divine things. On this influence of music upon the state of the mind, see the remark on 1 Sam. xvi. 16, and Passavant's Untersuchungen uber den Lebens-magnetismus, p. 207 (ed. 2). — As the minstrel was playing, the hand of the Lord came upon him (njni according to the later usage for sn^ as in 1 Sam. xvii. 48, etc.; compare Ewald, § 345, b, and rirp T as in 1 Kings xviii. 46), so that he said in the name of the Lord: " Make this valley full of trenches (•"OT, inf. abs. for the imperative; for D^aa D^aa see Ges. § 108, 4); for thus saith the Lord, ye will see neither wind nor rain, and this valley will be filled with water, that ye may be able to drink, and your flocks and your cattle." D*aa are trenches for collecting water (vicl. Jer. xiv. 3), which would suddenly flow down through the brook-valley. This large quantity of water came on the (following) morning " by the way of Edom" (ver. 20), a heavy fall of rain or violent storm having taken place, as is evident from the context, in the eastern mountains of Edom, at a great distance from the Israelitish camp, the water of which filled the brook-valley, i.e. the Wady el Kurahy and el Ahsy (see at ver. 9) at once, without the Israelites observing anything either of the wind, which always precedes rain in the East (Harmar, Bedbb. i. pp. 51, 52), or of the rain itself, oa^jpp are the flocks intended for slaughtering, D^*?"!?? the beasts of burden. — Vers. 18, 19. Elisha continued: " and this is too little for Jehovah (the comparative force of •£$ is implied in the context, especially in the alternating combination of the two clauses, which is indicated by 1... ^ see Ewald, § 360, c): He will also give Moab into your hand, and ye will smite all the fortified and choice cities, fell all the good trees (fruit-trees), stop up all the springs of water, and spoil all the good fields with stones." TO30 and "tinao are intended to produce a play upon words, through the resemblance in their sound and meaning (Ewald, § 160, c). In the announcement of the devastation of the land there is an allusion to Deut. xx. 19, 20, according to which the Israelites were ordered to spare the fruit-trees when Canaan was taken. These instructions were not to apply to Moab, because the Moabites themselves as the arch-foes of Israel would not act in any other way with the land of Israel if they should gain the victory. 3K3H to add pain, is a poetical expression for spoiling a field or rendering it infertile through the heaping up of stones. — Ver. 20. The water came in the morning at the time of the morning sacrifice (see 1 Kings xviii. 36), to indicate that the Lord was once more restoring His favour to the people on account of the sacrifice presented to Him in His temple.
The help of God, which preserved the Israelitish army from destruction, also prepared destruction for the Moabites. Vers. 21-23. On hearing the report of the march of the allied kings, Moab had raised all the men that were capable of bearing arms, and stationed them on the frontier. In the morning, when the sun had risen above the water, the Moabites saw the water opposite to them like blood, and said: " That is blood: the (allied) kings have destroyed themselves and smitten one another; and now to the spoil, Moab! " Coming with this expectation to the Israelitish camp, they were received by the allies, who were ready for battle, and put to flight. The divine help consisted, therefore, not in a miracle which surpassed the laws of nature, but simply in the fact that the Lord God, as He had predicted through His prophet, caused the forces of nature ordained by Him to work in the predetermined manner. As the sudden supply of an abundance of water was caused in a natural way by a heavy fall of rain, so the illusion, which was so fatal to the Moabites, is also to be explained in the natural manner indicated in the text. From the reddish earth of the freshly dug trenches the water collected in them had acquired a reddish colour, which was considerably intensified by the rays of the rising sun, so that when seen from a distance it resembled blood. The Moabites, however, were the less likely to entertain the thought of an optical delusion, from the fact that with their accurate acquaintance with the country they knew very well that there was no water in the wady at that time, and they had neither seen nor heard anything of the rain which had fallen at a great distance off in the Edomitish mountains. The thought was therefore a natural one, that the water was blood, and that the cause of the blood could only have been that their enemies had massacred one another, more especially as the jealousy between Israel and Judah was not unknown to them, and they could have no doubt that Edom had only come with them as a forced ally after the unsuccessful attempt at rebellion which it had made a short time before; and, lastly, they cannot quite have forgotten their own last expedition against Judah in alliance with the Edomites and Ammonites, which had completely failed, because the men composing their own army had destroyed one another. But if they came into collision with the allied army of the Israelites under such a delusion as this, the battle could only end in defeat and in a general flight so far as they were concerned. — Vers. 24, 25. The Israelites followed the fugitives into their own land and laid it waste, as Elisha had prophesied (ver. 25 compared with ver. 19). The Chethib nroi is to be read PQ titt (for Kin^ as in 1 Kings xii. 12): and (Israel) came into the land and smote Moab. The Keri EM is a bad emendation. nisn is either the infinitive construct used instead of the infin. absolute (Ewald, § 351, c), or an unusual form of the inf. absol. (Ewald, § 240, b). "WWfrHJ, till one ( = so that one only) left its stones in Kir-charescth. On the infinitive form WK'n see at Josh. viii. 22. The suffix in?^?N probably points forward to the following noun (Ewald, § 309," c). The city called nfenn Tp here and Isa. xvi. 7, and W)}) "Vp in Isa. xvi. 11 and Jer. xlviii. 31, 36, i.e. probably city of potsherds, is called elsewhere T*j? 3Ste, the citadel of Moab (Isa. xv. 1), as the principal fortress of the land (in the Chaldee Vers. 2Kto"i R3T3), and still exists under the name of Kerak, with a strong castle built by the Crusaders, upon a lofty and steep chalk rock, surrounded by a deep and narrow valley, which runs westward under the name of Wady Kerak and falls into the Dead Sea (vid. Burckhardt, Syr. pp. 643 sqq., C. v. Eaumer, Pal. pp. 271, 272). This fortress the allied kings besieged. " The slingers surrounded and smote it," i.e. bombarded it. — Ver. 26. When the king of Moab saw that the battle was too strong for him, he attempted to fight a way through the beseigers with 700 men with drawn swords (JTiP^np, lit. to split them) to the king of Edom, i.e. on the side which was held by this king, from whom he probably hoped that he should meet with the weakest resistance. — Ver. 27. But when this attempt failed, in his desperation he took his first-born son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice upon the wall, i.e. in the sight of the besiegers, not to the God of Israel (Joseph., Ephr. Syr., etc.), but to his own god Camos (see at 1 Kings xi. 7), to procure help from him by appeasing his wrath; just as the heathen constantly sought to appease the wrath of their gods by human sacrifices on the occasion of great calamities (yid. Euseb. prcepar. ev. iv. 16, and E. v. Lasaulx, die Siihnopfer der Griechen und Eomer, pp. 8 sqq.). — " And there was (came) great wrath upon Israel, and they departed from him (the king of Moab) and returned into their land." As?V *|¥pe n\i is used of the divine wrath or judgment, which a man brings upon himself by sinning, in every other case in which the phrase occurs, we cannot understand it here as signifying the " human indignation," or ill-will, which broke out among the besieged (Budd., Schulz, and others). The meaning is: this act of abomination, to which the king of the Moabites had been impelled by the extremity of his distress, brought a severe judgment from God upon Israel. The besiegers, that is to say, felt the wrath of God, which they had brought upon themselves by occasioning human sacrifice, which is strictly forbidden in the law (Lev. xviii. 21, xx. 3), either inwardly in their conscience or in some outwardly visible signs, so that they gave up the further prosecution of the siege and the conquest of the city, without having attained the object of the expedition, namely, to renew the subjugation of Moab under the power of Israel.
Erom ch. iv.-ch. viii. 6 there follows a series of miracles on the part of Elisha, which both proved this prophet to be the continuer of the work which Elijah had begun, of converting Israel from the service of Baal to the service of the living God, and also manifested the beneficent fruits of the zeal of Elijah for the honour of the Lord of Sabaoth in the midst of the idolatrous generation of his time, partly in the view which we obtain from several of these accounts of the continuance and prosperity of the schools of the prophets, and partly in the attitude of Elisha towards the godly in the land as well as towards Joram the king, the son of the idolatrous Ahab, and in the extension of his fame beyond the limits of Israel. (See the remarks on the labours of both prophets at pp. 229 sqq, and those on the schools of the prophets at 1 Sam. xix. 24.) — All the miracles described in this section belong to the reign of Joram king of Israel. They are not all related, however, in chronological order, but the chronology is frequently disregarded for the purpose of grouping together events which are homogeneous in their nature. This is evident, not only from the fact that (a) several of these accounts are attached quite loosely to one another without any particle to indicate sequence (vid. ch. iv. 1, 38, 42, v. 1, vi. 8, and viii. 1), and (b) we have first of all those miracles which were performed for the good of the scholars of the prophets and of particular private persons (ch. iv.-vi. 7), and then such works of the prophet as bore more upon the political circumstances of the nation, and of the king as the leader of the nation (ch. vi. 8-vii. 20), but also from the circumstance that in the case of some of these facts you cannot fail to perceive that their position is regulated by their substantial relation to what precedes or what follows, without any regard to the time at which they occurred. Thus, for example, the occurrence described in ch. viii. 1—6, which should undoubtedly stand before ch. v. so far as the chronology is concerned, is placed at the end of the miracles which Elisha wrought for king Joram, simply because it exhibits in the clearest manner the salutary fruit of what he had done. And so, again, the account of Naaman the leper is placed in ch. v., although its proper position would be after ch. vi. 7, because it closes the series of miracles performed for and upon private persons, and the miracle was wrought upon a foreigner, so that the fame of the prophet had already penetrated into a foreign country; whereas in order of time it should either stand between vers. 23 and 24 of the sixth chapter (because the incursions of the flying parties of Syrians, to which ch. vi. 8-23 refers, had already taken place), or not till after the close of ch. vii. On the other hand, the partial separation of the miracles performed for the schools of the prophets (ch. iv. 1-7, 38-41, 42-44, and ch. vi. 1-7) can only he explained on chronological grounds; and this is favoured by the circumstance that the events inserted between are attached by a Vav consec, which does indicate the order of sequence (ch. v. 8 sqq. and vi. 1 sqq.). Eegarded as a whole, however, the section ch. iv. 1-viii. 6, which was no doubt taken from a prophetical monograph and inserted into the annals of the kings, is in its true chronological place, since the account in ch. iii. belongs to the earlier period of the history, and the events narrated from ch. viii. 7 onwards to the later period.
Vers. 1-7. The Widow's Cruse of Oil. — A poor widow of the scholars of the prophets complained to Elisha of her distress, namely, that a creditor was about to take her two sons as servants (slaves). The Mosaic law gave a creditor the right to claim the person and children of a debtor who was unable to pay, and they were obliged to serve him as slaves till the year of jubilee, when they were once more set free (Lev. xxv. 39, 40). When the prophet learned, on inquiry, that she had nothing in her house but a small flask of oil (JfiP$, from?pD, means an anointing flask, a small vessel for the oil necessary for anointing the body), he told her to beg of all her neighbours empty vessels, not a few f^yiprrpK, make not few, sc. to beg), and then to shut herself in with her sons, and to pour from her flask of oil into all these vessels till they were full, and then to sell this oil and pay her debt with the money, and use the rest for the maintenance of herself and her children. She was to close the house-door, that she might not be disturbed in her occupation by other people, and also generally to avoid all needless observation while the miracle was being performed. WBF} froer^ let that which is filled be put on one side, namely by the sons, who handed her the vessels, according to vers. 5 and 6, so that she was able to pour without intermission. The form npTO is a participle Piel, and is quite appropriate as an emphatic form; the Keri npy® (Ifiphil) is an unnecessary alteration, especially as the Hiphil of pVJ is p^n. iP^f'!1 ^V.% then the oil stood, i.e. it ceased to flow. The asyndeton ^2 WW is very harsh, and the Vav copul. has probably dropped out. With the alteration proposed by L. de Dieu, viz. of ip^l into flNi, " live with thy sons," the verb ".HI? would necessarily stand first (Thenius).
Vers. 8-37. The Shunammite and her Son. — Ver. 8. When Elisha was going one day (lit. the day, i.e. at that time, then) to Shunem (Solam, at the south-western foot of the Lesser Hermon; see at 1 Kings i. 3), a wealthy woman (p?\l\ as in 1 Sam. xxv. 2, etc.) constrained him to eat at her house; whereupon, as often as he passed by that place in his subsequent journeys from Carmel to Jezreel and back, he was accustomed to call upon her ("no as in Gen. xix. 2). — Vers. 9, 10. The woman then asked her husband to build a small upper chamber for this holy man of God, and to furnish it with the necessary articles of furniture (viz. bed, table, seat, and lamp), that he might always turn in at their house. "1,i?"ri??V is either a walled upper chamber, i.e. one built with brick and not with wooden walls (Cler., Then.), or an upper chamber built upon the wall of the house (Ges.). — Vers. 11-13. After some time, when Elisha had spent the night in the chamber provided for him, he wanted to make some acknowledgment to his hostess for the love which she had shown him, and told his servant Gehazi to call her, and say to her: " Thou hast taken all this care for us, what shall I do to thee? Hast thou (anything) to say to the king or the chief captain?" i.e. hast thou any wish that I could convey to them, and intercede for thee? There is something striking here in the fact that Elisha did not address the woman himself, as she was standing before him, but told his servant to announce to her his willingness to make some return for what she had done. This was, probably, simply from a regard to the great awe which she had of the " holy man of God " (ver. 9), and to inspire her with courage to give expression to the wishes of her heart.1 She answered: " I dwell among my people," i.e. not, I merely belong to the people (Thenius), but, I live quietly and peaceably among my countrymen, so that I have no need for any intercession with the king and great men of the kingdom. 'ATTpayfiocrvvr) ^alpco, icaX elpyvLKtoS Bcdyco koX 7rpo<; riva a/jL<f>t<rf3i]Tr)<rLv ov/c avkyo\xai (Theodoret). — Vers. 14-16. When Elisha conversed with Gehazi still further on the matter, the latter said: " But she has no son, and her husband is old." Elisha
1 The conjecture that Elisha would not speak to her directly for the sake of maintaining his dignity, or that the historian looked upon such conversation with women as unbecoming in a teacher of the law (Thenius), is already proved to be untenable by vers. 15, 16, where Elisha does speak to her directly.
then had her called again, and told her when she had entered the door: " At this time a year hence (njn D#3, lit. at the time when it revives again; see at Gen. xviii. 10) thou wilt embrace a son." The same favour was to be granted to the Shunammite as that which Sarah had received in her old age, that she might learn that the God of Abraham still ruled in and for Israel. She replied: " No, my lord, thou man of God," norotf, i.e. do not excite in thy servant any deceptive hopes. — Ver. 17. But however incredible this promise might appear to her, as it had formerly done to Sarah (Gen. xviii. 12, 13), it was fulfilled at the appointed time (cf. Gen. xxi. 2). — Vers. 18-20. But even the faith of the pious woman was soon to be put to the test, and to be confirmed by a still more glorious revelation of the omnipotence of the Lord, who works through the medium of His prophets. When the child presented to her by God had grown up into a lad, he complained one day to the reapers in the field of a violent headache, saying to his father, " My head, my head!" He was then taken home to his mother, and died at noon upon her knees, no doubt from inflammation of the brain produced by a sunstroke. — Vers. 21-23. The mother took the dead child at once up to the chamber built for Elisha, laid it upon the bed of the man of God, and shut the door behind her; she then asked her husband, without telling him of the death of the boy, to send a young man with a sheass, that she might ride as quickly as possible to the man of God; and when her husband asked her, " Wherefore wilt thou go to him to-day, since it is neither new moon nor Sabbath? " 1 she replied, shalom; i.e. either " it is all well," or " never mind." For this word, which is used in reply to a question after one's health (see ver. 26), is apparently also used, as Clericus has correctly observed, when the object is to avoid giving a definite answer to any one, and yet at the same time to satisfy him. — Vers. 24, 25. She then rode without stopping, upon the animal
1 From these words, Theod., Kimchi, 0. a Lap., Vatabl., and others have drawn the correct conclusion, that the pious in Israel were accustomed to meet together at the prophets' houses for worship and edification, on those days which were appointed in the law (Lev. xxiii. 3; Num. xxviii. 11 sqq.) for the worship of God; and from this Hertz and Hengstenberg have still further inferred, that in the kingdom of the ten tribes not only were the Sabbath and new moons kept, as is evident from Amos viii. 5 also, but the prophets supplied the pious in that kingdom with a substitute for the missing Levitical priesthood.
driven by the young man, to Elisha at mount Carmel. Yiyjp-JK 3b"6, literally, do not hinder me from riding. — Vers. 25-27. When the prophet saw her 1?3D (from the opposite), that is to say, saw her coming in the distance, and recognised her as the Shunammite, he sent Gehazi to meet her, to ask her about her own health and that of her husband and child. She answered, shalom, i.e. well, that she might not be detained by any further discussion, and came to the prophet and embraced his feet, to pray for the help of the " holy man of God." Gehazi wanted to thrust her away, " because it seemed to him an immodest importunity to wish to urge the prophet in such a way as this, and as it were to compel him " (Seb. Schm.); but the prophet said, " Let her alone, for her soul is troubled, and Jehovah has hidden it from me and has not told me." 1 — Ver. 28. The pious woman then uttered this complaint to the prophet: " Did I ask a son of the Lord? Did I not say, Do not deceive me?" What had happened to her she did not say, — a fact which may easily be explained on psychological grounds from her deep sorrow, — but Elisha could not fail to discover it from what she said. — Ver. 29. He therefore directed his servant Gehazi: " Gird thy loins and take thy staff in thy hand and go: if thou meet any one, thou wilt not salute him; and if any one salute thee, thou wilt not answer him; and lay my staff upon the face of the boy." The object of this command neither to salute nor to return salutations by the way, was not merely to ensure the greatest haste (Thenius and many others), inasmuch as the people of the East lose a great deal of time in prolonged salutations (Niebuhr, Bcschr. v. Arab. p. 48),2 but the prophet wished thereby to preclude at the very outset the possibility of attributing the failure of Gehazi's attempt to awaken the child to any external or accidental circumstance of this kind. For since it is inconceivable that the prophet should have adopted a wrong method, that is to say, should have sent Gehazi with the hope
1 All that we can infer from these last words with regard to the nature of prophecy, is that the donum propheticum did not involve a supernatural revelation of every event.
2 Or, as C. a Lap. supposes: " that Gehazi might avoid all distraction of either eyes or ears, and prepare himself entirely by prayers for the accomplishment of so great a miracle." Theodoret explains it in a similar manner: u He knew that he was vainglorious and fond of praise, and that he would be sure to tell the reason of his journey to those who should meet him by the way. And vainglory is a hindrance to thaumaturgy."
that he would restore the dead boy to life, his only intention in sending the servant must have been to give to the Shunammite and her family, and possibly also to Gehazi himself, a practical proof that the power to work miracles was not connected in any magical way with his person or his staff, but that miracles as works of divine omnipotence could only be wrought through faith and prayer; not indeed with the secondary intention of showing that he alone could work miracles, and so of increasing his own importance (Koster), but to purify the faith of the godly from erroneous ideas, and elevate them from superstitious reliance upon his own human person to true reliance upon the Lord God. — Ver. 30. The mother of the boy does not appear, indeed, to have anticipated any result from the measures adopted by Elisha; for she swears most solemnly that she will not leave him. But the question arises, whether this urging of the prophet to come himself and help arose from doubt as to the result of Gehazi's mission, or whether it was not rather an involuntary utterance of her excessive grief, and of the warmest wish of her maternal heart to see her beloved child recalled to life. We may probably infer the latter from the fulfilment of her request by Elisha. — Ver. 31. Gehazi did as he was commanded, but the dead child did not come to life again; the prophet's staff worked no miracle. " There was no sound and no attention," i.e. the dead one gave no sign of life. This is the meaning of T\> PK 2Vp. V$) both here and 1 Kings xviii. 29, where it is used of dead idols. The attempt of Gehazi to awaken the child was unsuccessful, not propter fidem ipsi a muliere non adhibitam (Seb. Schm.), nor because of the vainglory of Gehazi himself, but simply to promote in the godly of Israel true faith in the Lord. — Vers. 32—35. Elisha then entered the house, where the boy was lying dead upon his bed, and shut the door behind them both (i.e. himself and the dead child), and prayed to the Lord. He then lay down upon the boy, so that his mouth, his eyes, and his hands lay upon the mouth, eyes, and hands of the child, bowing down over him (1H5 • see at 1 Kings xviii. 42); and the flesh (the body) of the child became warm. He then turned round, i.e. turned away from the boy, went once up and down in the room, and bowed himself over him again; whereupon the boy sneezed seven times, and then opened his eyes. This raising of the dead boy to life does indeed resemble the raising of the dead by Elijah (1 Kings xvii. 20 sqq.); but it differs so obviously in the manner in which it was effected, that we may see at once from this that Elisha did not possess the double measure of the spirit of Elijah. It is true that Elijah stretched himself three times upon the dead child, but at his prayer the dead returned immediately to life, whereas in the case of Elisha the restoration to life was a gradual thing.1 And they both differ essentially from the raising of the dead by Christ, who recalled the dead to life by one word of His omnipotence (Mark v. 39-42; Luke vii. 13-15; John xi. 43, 44), a sign that He was the only-begotten Son of God, to whom the Father gave to have life in Himself, even as the Father has life in Himself (John v. 25 sqq.), in whose name the Apostle Peter also was able through prayer to recall the dead Tabitha to life, whereas Elisha and Elijah had only to prophesy by word and deed of the future revelation of the glory of God. — Vers. 36, 37. After the restoration of the boy to life, Elisha had his mother called and gave her back her son, for which she fell at his feet with thanksgiving.
Vers. 38-41. Elisha makes Uneatable Food Wholesome. — Ver. 38. When Elisha had returned to Gilgal, the seat of a school of the prophets (see at ch. ii. 1), i.e. had come thither once more on his yearly circuit, during the famine which prevailed in the land (see at ch. viii. 1), and the prophets' scholars sat before him (the teacher and master), he directed his servant {i.e. probably not Gehazi, but the pupil who waited upon him) to put the large pot to the fire and boil a dish for the pupils of the prophets, npw answers to the German heisetzcn, which is used for placing a vessel upon the fire (cf. Ezek. xxiv. 3). — Ver. 39. One (of these pupils) then went to the field to gather vegetables (niK, olera: for the different explanations of this word see Celsii Hierobot. i. 459 sqq., and Ges. Thcs. p. 56), and found J23 flTfe^ i.e. not wild vines, but wild creepers (Luther), field-creepers
1 The raising of the dead by Elijah and Elisha, especially by the latter, has been explained by many persons as being merely a revivification by magnetic manipulations or by the force of animal magnetism (even Passavant and Ennemoser adopt this view). But no dead person was ever raised to life by animal magnetism; and the assumption that the two boys were only apparently dead is at variance with the distinct words of the text, in addition to which, both Elisha and Elijah accomplished the miracle through their prayer, as is stated as clearly as possible both here (ver. 33) and also at 1 Kings xvii. 21, 22.
resembling vines; and having gathered his lap full of wild cucumbers, took them home and cut them into the vegetable pot, because they did not know them. n'y|3B is rendered in the ancient versions colocynths (LXX. irokvirri dypla, i.e., according to Suid., colocynthis), whereas Gesenius (Thes. p. 1122), Winer, and others, following Celsius (I.e. i. 393 sqq.), have decided in favour of wild cucumbers, a fruit re'sembling an acorn, or, according to Oken, a green fleshy fruit of almost a finger's length and an inch thick, which crack with a loud noise, when quite ripe, on very gentle pressure, spirting out both juice and seeds, and have a very bitter taste. The reason for this decision is, that the peculiarity mentioned answers to the etymon Vps, to split, in Syr. and Chald. to crack Nevertheless the rendering given by the old translators is apparently the more correct of the two; for the colocynths also belong to the genus of the cucumbers, creep upon the ground, and are a round yellow fruit of the size of a large orange, and moreover are extremely bitter, producing colic, and affecting the nerves. The form of this fruit is far more suitable for oval architectural ornaments (B^iJB, 1 Kings vi. 18, vii. 24) than that of the wild cucumber. — Ver. 40. The extremely bitter flavour of the fruit so alarmed the pupils of the prophets when they began to eat of the dish, that they cried out, • Death in the pot," and therefore thought the fruit was poison. If eaten in any large quantity, colocynths might really produce death: vid. Dioscorid. iv. 175 (178). — Ver. 41. Elisha then had some meal brought and poured it into the pot, after which the people were able to eat of the dish, and there was no longer anything injurious in the pot. Vlpf then take, * denoting sequence in thought (vid. Ewald, § 348, a). The meal might somewhat modify the bitterness and injurious qualities of the vegetable, but could not take them entirely away; the author of the Exegetical Handbook therefore endeavours to get rid of the miracle, by observing that Elisha may have added something else. The meal, the most wholesome food of man, was only the earthly substratum for the working of the Spirit, which proceeded from Elisha, and made the noxious food perfectly wholesome.
Vers. 42-44. Feeding of a hundred Pupils of the Prophets with Twenty Barley Loaves. — A man of Baal-Shcdisha (a place in the land of Shalisha, the country to the west of Gilgal, Jiljilia; see at 1 Sam. ix. 4) brought the prophet as firstfruits twenty barley loaves and te"ip=bp")3 bna, £& roasted ears of corn (see the Comm. on Lev. ii. 14), in his sack (ftp?, air. Xey., sack or pocket). Elisha ordered this present to be given to the people, i.e. to the pupils of the prophets who dwelt in one common home, for them to eat; and when his servant made this objection: " How shall I set this (this little) before a hundred men? " he repeated his command, " Give it to the people, that they may eat; for thus hath the Lord spoken: They will eat and leave" p^™ ^3£, infin. dbsol; see Ewald, § 328, a); which actually was the case. That twenty barley loaves and a portion of roasted grains of corn were not a sufficient quantity to satisfy a hundred men, is evident from the fact that one man was able to carry the whole of this gift in a sack, and still more so from the remark of the servant, which shows that there was no proportion between the whole of this quantity and the food required by a hundred persons. In this respect the food, which was so blessed by the word of the Lord that a hundred men were satisfied by so small a quantity and left some over, forms a type of the miraculous feeding of the people by Christ (Matt. xiv. 16 sqq., xv. 36, 37; John vi. 11, 12); though there was this distinction between them, that the prophet Elisha did not produce the miraculous increase of the food, but merely predicted it. The object, therefore, in communicating this account is not to relate another miracle of Elisha, but to show how the Lord cared for His servants, and assigned to them that which had been appropriated in the law to the Levitical priests, who were to receive, according to Deut. xviii. 4, 5, and Num. xviii. 13, the first-fruits of corn, new wine, and oiL This account therefore furnishes fresh evidence that the godly men in Israel did not regard the worship introduced by Jeroboam (his state- church) as legitimate worship, but sought and found in the schools of the prophets a substitute for the lawful worship of God (vid. Hengstenberg, Beitrr. ii. S. 136 £).
Vers. 1-19. Curing of Naaman from Leprosy. — Ver. 1. Naaman, the commander-in-chief of the Syrian king, who was a very great man before his lord, i.e. who held a high place in the service of his king and was greatly distinguished (E^p NGW, cf. Isa. iii. 3, ix. 14), because God had given the Syrians salvation (vie- tory) through him, was as a warrior afflicted with leprosy. The 1 has not dropped out before vr^tot nor has the copula been omitted for the purpose of sharpening the antithesis (Thenius), for the appeal to Ewald, sj 354, a, proves nothing, Bince the passages quoted there are of a totally different kind; but TJ} ^33 is a second predicate: the man was as a brave warrior leprous. There is an allusion here to the difference between the Syrians and the Israelites in their views of leprosy. Whereas in Israel lepi were excluded from human society (see at Lev. xiii. and xiv.), in Syria a man afflicted with leprosy could hold a very high stateoffice in the closest association with the king. — Vers. 2, 3. And in Naaman's house before his wife, i.e. in her service, there was an Israelitish maiden, whom the Syrians had carried off in a marauding expedition (DH^m ix>"; they had gone out in (as) marauding bands). She said to her mistress: " 0 that my lord were before the prophet at Samaria! (where Elisha had a house, ch. vi. 32,) he would free him from his leprosy." n^p slpN; to receive (again) from leprosy, in the sense of " to heal," may be explained from Num. xii. 14, 15, where ^pN is applied to the reception of Miriam into the camp again, from which she had been excluded on account of her leprosy. — Vers. 4, 5. When Naaman related this to his lord (the king), he told him to go to Samaria furnished with a letter to the king of Israel; and he took with him rich presents as compensation for the cure he was to receive, viz. ten talents of silver, about 25,000 thalers (£3750 — Tr.); 6000 shekels (= two talents) of gold, about 50,000 thalers (£7500); and ten changes of clothes, a present still highly valued in the East (see the Comm. on Gen. xlv. 22). This very large present was quite in keeping with Naaman's position, and was not too great for the object in view, namely, his deliverance from a malady which would be certainly, even if slowly, fatal. — Vers. 6, 7. When the king of Israel (Joram) received the letter of the Syrian king on Naaman's arrival, and read therein that he was to cure Naaman of his leprosy (nW, and now, — showing in the letter the transition to the main point, which is the only thing communicated here; cf. Ewald, § 353, b), he rent his clothes in alarm, and exclaimed, " Am I God, to be able to kill and make alive?" i.e. am I omnipotent like God? (cf. Deut. xxxii. 39; 1 Sam. ii. 6;) " for he sends to me to cure a man of his leprosy." The words of the letter inpDSi, " so cure him," were certainly not so insolent in their meaning as Joram supposed, but simply meant: have him cured, as thou hast a wonder-working prophet; the Syrian king imagining, according to his heathen notions of priests and goetes, that Joram could do what he liked with his prophets and their miraculous powers. There was no ground, therefore, for the suspicion which Joram expressed: " for only observe and see, that he seeks occasion against me." ^Knn, to seek occasion, sc. for a quarrel (cf. Judg. xiv. 4). — Ver. 8. When Elisha heard of this, he reproved the king for his unbelieving alarm, and told him to send the man to him, " that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel." — Vers. 9, 10. When Naaman stopped with his horses and chariot before the house of Elisha, the prophet sent a messenger out to him to say, " Go and wash thyself seven times in the Jordan, and thy flesh will return to thee, i.e. become sound, and thou wilt be clean." 3B^, return, inasmuch as the flesh had been changed through the leprosy into festering matter and putrefaction. The reason why Elisha did not go out to Naaman himself, is not to be sought for in the legal prohibition of intercourse with lepers, as Ephraem Syrus and many others suppose, nor in his fear of the leper, as Thenius thinks, nor even in the wish to magnify the miracle in the eyes of Naaman, as C. a Lapide imagines, but simply in Naaman's state of mind. This is evident from his exclamation concerning the way in which he was treated. Enraged at his treatment, he said to his servant (vers. 11, 12): "I thought, he will come out to me and stand and call upon the name of Jehovah his God, and go with his hand over the place (i.e. move his hand to and fro over the diseased places), and take away the leprosy." XnjSBH, the leprous = the disease of leprosy, the scabs and ulcers of leprosy. "Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? (for the combination of 3iB with rriiru, see Ewald, § 174,/.) Should I not bathe in them, and become clean? " With these words he turned back, going away in a rage. Naaman had been greatly strengthened in the pride, which is innate in every natural man, by the exalted position which he held in the state, and in which every one bowed before him, and served him in the most reverential manner, with the exception of his lord the king; and he was therefore to receive a salutary lesson of humiliation, and at the same time was also to learn that he owed his cure not to any magic touch from the prophet, but solely to the power of God working through him. — Of the two rivers of Damascus, Abana or Amana (the reading of the Keri with the interchange of the labials 2 and d, see Song of Sol. iv. 8) is no doubt the present
(Strabo, xvi. p. 755; Plin. h. n. 18 or 16), which rises in the table-land to the south of Zebedany, and Hows through this city itself, and then dividing into two arms, enters two small lakes about 4£ hours to the east of the city. The Pliarpar is probably the only other independent river of any importance in the district of Damascus, namely, the Avaj, which arises from the union of several brooks around Sasa', and flows through the plain to the south of Damascus into the lake Heijany (see Rob. Bill. Researches, p. 444). The water of the Barada is beautiful, clear and transparent (Rob.), whereas the water of the Jordan is turbid, " of a clayey colour " (Rob. Pal. ii. p. 256); and therefore Naaman might very naturally think that his own native rivers were better than the Jordan. — Ver. 13. His servants then addressed him in a friendly manner, and said, " My father, if the prophet had said to thee a great thing {i.e. a thing difficult to carry out), shouldst thou not have done it? how much more then, since he has said to thee, Wash, and thou wilt be clean?" *3K, my father, is a confidential expression arising from childlike piety, as in ch. vL 2 1 and 1 Sam. xxiv. 1 2; and the etymological jugglery which traces *3K from w=^J=^7 (Ewald, Gr. § 358, Anm.), or from DK (Thenius), is quite superfluous (see Delitzsch on Job, voL ii. p. 265, transL). — Wl... ^1113^ is a conditional clause without BK (see Ewald, § 357, b), and the object is placed first for the sake of emphasis (according to Ewald, § 309, a). *? *\$, how much more (see Ewald, § 354, c), sc. shouldst thou do what is required, since he has ordered thee so small and easy a thing. — Ver. 14. Naaman then went down (from Samaria to the Jordan) and dipped in Jordan seven times, and his flesh became sound (pw\ as in ver. 10) like the flesh of a little boy. Seven times, to show that the healing was a work of God, for seven is the stamp of the works of God. — Vers. 15, 16. After the cure had been effected, he returned with all his train to the man of God with this acknowledgment: " Behold, I have found that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel," and with the request that he would accept a blessing (a present, roia, as in Gen. xxxiii. 11, 1 Sam. xxv. 27, etc.) from him, which the prophet, however, stedfastly refused, notwithstanding all his urging, that he might avoid all appearance of selfishness, by which the false prophets were actuated. — Vers. 17, 18. Then Naaman said: K?}, " and not " = and if not, ical el fit] (LXX.; not " and 0," according to Ewald, § 358, b, Anm.), " let there be given to thy servant ( = to me) two mules' burden of earth (on the construction see Ewald, § 287, h), for thy servant will no more make (offer) burnt-offerings and slain-offerings to any other gods than Jehovah. May Jehovah forgive thy servant in this thing, when my lord (the king of Syria) goeth into the house of Eimmon, to fall down (worship) there, and he supports himself upon my hand, that I fall down (with him) in the house of Kimmon; if I (thus) fall down in the house of Eimmon, may," etc. It is very evident from Naaman's explanation, " for thy servant," etc., that he wanted to take a load of earth with him out of the land of Israel, that he might be able to offer sacrifice upon it to the God of Israel, because he was still a slave to the polytheistic superstition, that no god could be worshipped in a proper and acceptable manner except in his own land, or upon an altar built of the earth of his own land. And because Naaman's knowledge of God was still adulterated with superstition, he was not yet prepared to make an unreserved confession before men of his faith in Jehovah as the only true God, but hoped that Jehovah would forgive him if he still continued to join outwardly in the worship of idols, so far as his official duty required. Eimmon (i.e. the pomegranate) is here, and probably also in the local name Hadad-rimmon (Zech. xii. 11), the name of the supreme deity of the Damascene Syrians, and probably only a contracted form of Hadad-rimmon, since Hadad was the supreme deity or sun-god of the Syrians (see at 2 Sam. viii. 3), signifying the sun-god with the modification expressed by Kimmon, which has been differently interpreted according to the supposed derivation of the word. Some derive the name from DQ"} = E^, as the supreme god of heaven, like the 'EXiovv of Sanchun. (Cler., Seld., Ges. thes. p. 1292); others from $&), a pomegranate, as a personification of the power of generation, as numen naturce omnia fcecundantis, since the pomegranate with its abundance of seeds is used in the symbolism of both Oriental and Greek mythology along with the Phallus as a symbol of the generative power (vid. Bahr, Symbolik, ii. pp. 122, 123), and is also found upon Assyrian monuments (yid. Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, p. 343); others again, with less probability, from no*!, jaculari, as the sun-god who vivifies and fertilizes the earth with his rays, like the e/o7/3o\o? 'AiroWwv; and others from DB^ = *„ comjpu- truit, as the dying winter sun (according to Movers and Hitzig; see Leyrer in Herzog's Cyclopaedia). — The words " and he supports himself upon my hand" are not to be understood literally, but are a general expression denoting the service which Naaman had to render as the aide-de-camp to his king (cf. ch. vii. 2, 17). For the Chaldaic form Wnntfn see Ewald, § 156, a. — In the repetition of the words " if I fall down in the temple of Eimmon," etc., he expresses the urgency of his wish. — Ver. 19. Elisha answered, "Go in peace," wishing the departing Syrian the peace of God upon the road, without thereby either approving or disapproving the religious conviction which he had expressed. For as Naaman had not asked permission to go with his king into the temple of Eimmon, but had simply said, might Jehovah forgive him or be indulgent with him in this matter, Elisha could do nothing more, without a special command from God, than commend the heathen, who had been brought to belief in the God of Israel as the true God by the miraculous cure of his leprosy, to the further guidance of the Lord and of His grace.1
Vers. 20-27. Punishment of Gehazi. — Vers. 20-22. When Naaman had gone a stretch of the way (H? n123, ver 19; see at Gen. xxxv. 16), there arose in Gehazi, the servant of Elisha,
1 Most of the earlier theologians found in Elisha's words a direct approval of the religious conviction expressed by Naaman and his attitude towards idolatry; and since they could not admit that a prophet would have permitted a heathen alone to participate in idolatrous ceremonies, endeavoured to get rid of the consequence resulting from it, viz. licitam ergo esse Christianis ovptyavwiv kigtov fteroc ctTriarov, seu symbolizationem et communicationem cum ceremonia idololatrica, either by appealing to the use of niriJT^n and to the distinction between incurvatio regis voluntaria et religiosa (real worship) and incnrvatio servilis et coacta Naemani, qux erat politico, et civilis (mere prostration from civil connivance), or by the ungrammatical explanation that Naaman merely spoke of what he had already done, not of what he would do in future (vid. Pfeiffer, Bub. vex. p. 445 sqq., and J. Meyer, ad Seder Olam, p. 904 sqq., Budd., and others). — Both are unsatisfactory. The dreaded consequence falls of itself if we only distinguish between the times of the old covenant and those of the new. Under the old covenant the time had not yet come in which the heathen, who came to the knowledge of the true deity of the God of Israel, could be required to break off from all their heathen ways, unless they would formally enter into fellowship with the covenant nation.
the desire for a portion of the presents of the Syrian which his master had refused (DN *? '* *n, as truly as Jehovah liveth, assuredly I run after him; BN *3 as in 1 Sam. xxv. 34). He therefore hastened after him; and as Naaman no sooner saw Gehazi running after him than he sprang quickly down from his chariot in reverential gratitude to the prophet (?'& as in Gen. xxiv. 64), he asked in the name of Elisha for a talent of silver and two changes of raiment, professedly for two poor pupils of the prophets, who had come to the prophet from Mount Ephraim. — Ver. 23. But Naaman forced him to accept two talents (p\> pttfn, be pleased to take; and E*1??» with the dual ending, ne pereat indicium numeri — Winer) in two purses, and two changes of raiment, and out of politeness had these presents carried by two of his servants before Gehazi. — Ver. 24. When Gehazi came to the hill (/?'yn, the well-known hill before the city) he took the presents from the bearers, and dismissing the men, laid them up in the house. 3 *7j?s, to bring into safe custody. — Vers. 25, 26. But when he entered his master's presence again, he asked him, "Whence (comest thou), Gehazi?" and on his returning the lying answer that he had not been anywhere, charged him with all that he had done. *pn *3? fcO, " had not my heart gone, when the man turned from his chariot to meet thee?" This is the simplest and the only correct interpretation of these difficult words, which have been explained in very different ways. Theodoret {ovyl y tcapSla fiov tjv pera gov) and the Vulgate (nonne cor meum in jprcesenti erat, quando, etc.) have already given the same explanation, and so far as the sense is concerned it agrees with that adopted by Thenius: was I not (in spirit) away (from here) and present (there)? *I?n stands in a distinct relation to the?pn fcO of Gehazi. — 'til nyn: " is it time to take silver, and clothes, and olive-trees, and vineyards, and sheep and oxen, and servants and maidens?" i.e. is this the time, when so many hypocrites pretend to be prophets from selfishness and avarice, and bring the prophetic office into contempt with unbelievers, for a servant of the true God to take money and goods from a non-Israelite for that which God has done through him, that he may acquire property and luxury for himself? — Ver. 2 7. " And let the leprosy of Naaman cleave to thee and to thy seed for ever." This punishment took effect immediately. Gehazi went out from Elisha covered with leprosy as if with snow (cf. Ex. iv. 6, Num. xii. 10). It was not too harsh a punishment that the leprosy taken from Naaman on account of his faith in the living God, should pass to Gehazi on account of his departure from the true God. For it was not his avarice only that was to be punished, but the abuse of the prophet's name for the purpose of canying out his selfish purpose, and his misrepresentation of the prophet.1