Digging Deeper for such a time as this: - from "The Greater Men and Women of the Bible: Ruth–Naaman," Hastings, J. (Ed.). (1914), Edinburgh: T&T Clark. ELISHA III THE POLITICIAN Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.—2 Kings 6:12. ELISHA’S life and ministry were very closely linked with the political and military history of his country. However much he disliked the idolatrous practices of her kings, he had still hope for his country, and was ready to help her. He intervened, therefore, not once or twice only, to save the king and his soldiers. I DOTHAN 1. The Syrians, at this later period, seem to have carried on the war by a system of predatory incursions into the territory of Israel; and on several occasions Elisha warned King Jehoram of the place which the Syrians intended to surround, and, by thus putting him on his guard, enabled him to escape, or at any rate to defeat the measures of the enemy. The Syrian king, bewildered by his ill-success, at first suspected treachery, and then, learning of Elisha’s clairvoyance, sent an army to seize the prophet in Dothan. 2. The sequel was remarkable. A servant of the prophet first discovered the enemy, in the early morning; and, greatly alarmed, he informed his master of what appeared to him a hopeless situation. But Elisha was undisturbed. His mind was stayed on God. “Fear not,” he said; “for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.” He then prayed for his dismayed follower, and the man had a vision of forces, hitherto unseen by him, that guard and help the servants of God. The literal story runs: “And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” Our eyes are blinded and we need to have them cleared, if not in the same manner as this lad’s, yet in an analogous way. We look so constantly at the things seen that we have no sight for the unseen. Worldliness, sin, unbelief, sense and its trifles, time and its transitoriness, blind the eyes of our mind; and we need those of sense to be closed that these may open. The truest vision is the vision of faith. It is certain, direct, and conclusive. The world says, “Seeing is believing”; the gospel says, “Believing is seeing.” If we would but live near to Jesus Christ, pray to Him to touch our blind eyeballs, and turn away from the dazzling unrealities which sense brings, we should find Him the “master-light of all our seeing,” and be sure of the eternal, invisible things, with an assurance superior to that given by the keenest sight in the brightest sunshine. When we are blind to earth, we see earth glorified by angel presences, and fear and despair and helplessness and sorrow flee away from our tranquil hearts. If, on the other hand, we fix our gaze on earth and its trifles, there will generally be more to alarm than to encourage, and we shall do well to be afraid, if we do not see, as in such a case we shall certainly not see, the fiery wall around us, behind which God keeps His people safe. Almighty God, as now we raise Our longing eyes in hope to Thee, Anointed, may our wond’ring gaze Thy chariots and Thy horsemen see. Let faith revive, let courage new The vision of Thy hosts impart; That all Thou willest we may do With steadfast hands and holy heart. 3. There is a touch of almost joyful humour in the way in which Elisha proceeded to use, in the present emergency, the power of Divine deliverance. Some think that he went out of the town and came himself to the Syrian captains; but what we read is simply that “when they came down to him,” he prayed God to send them “illusion,” so that they might be misled. Then he boldly said to them, “This is not the way, neither is this the city: follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom ye seek.” Elisha led the Syrians in their delusion straight into the city of Samaria, where they suddenly found themselves at the mercy of the king and his troops. 4. With an eagerness and a spiritual dulness characteristic of him, Jehoram would fain have slaughtered these captives of the Lord. And, with an equally characteristic uprightness and large-hearted generosity, the prophet almost indignantly rebuked the spurious zeal and courage of the king: “Thou shalt not smite them: wouldest thou smite those whom thou hast taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow?” It would have been unmanly to act otherwise; Jehovah had not brought these blinded men as His own captives to give the king of Israel an easy and a cruel triumph; the whole moral purpose of this event, its very character, would have been changed, if the proposal of Jehoram had been carried out. And it was right royal treatment on the part of the Heavenly Conqueror’s ambassador, when, at his bidding, they gave them a great meal, and then dismissed them to their master, to report how Jehovah made captives of the captors of His representative, and how he entertained and released His captives. It was a signal victory for Elisha; and the calm faith he manifested when apparently in great peril makes the story of Dothan one of the most helpful and inspiring in his whole career. ¶ In the hollow where the Boer tents had stood, amid the laagered wagons of the vanquished, under a murky sky and a constant drizzle of rain, the victors spent the night. Sleep was out of the question, for all night the fatigue parties were searching the hillside and the wounded were being carried in. Campfires were lit and soldiers and prisoners crowded round them, and it is pleasant to recall that the warmest corner and the best of their rude fare were always reserved for the downcast Dutchmen, while words of rude praise and sympathy softened the pain of defeat. It is the memory of such things which may in happier days be more potent than all the wisdom of statesmen in welding our two races into one. ¶ It was six o’clock in the morning when General Pretyman rode up to Lord Roberts’ headquarters. Behind him upon a white horse was a dark-bearded man, with the quick restless eye of the hunter, middle-sized, thickly built, with grizzled hair flowing from under a tall brown felt hat. He wore the black broad-cloth of the burgher with a green summer overcoat, and carried a small whip in his hands. His appearance was that of a respectable London vestryman rather than of a most redoubtable soldier with a particularly sinister career behind him. The Generals shook hands, and it was briefly intimated to Cronje that his surrender must be unconditional, to which, after a short silence, he agreed. His only stipulations were personal, that his wife, his grandson, his secretary, his adjutant, and his servant might accompany him. The same evening he was despatched to Cape Town. receiving those honourable attentions which were due to his valour rather than to his character. His men, a pallid ragged crew, emerged from their holes and burrows, and delivered up their rifles. It is pleasant to add that, with much in their memories to exasperate them, the British privates treated their enemies with as large-hearted a courtesy as Lord Roberts had shown to their leader. Our total capture numbered some three thousand of the Transvaal and eleven hundred of the Free State. That the latter were not far more numerous was due to the fact that many had already shredded off to their farms. Besides Cronje, Wolverans of the Transvaal, and the German artillerist Albrecht, with forty-four other field-cornets and commandants, fell into our hands. Six small guns were also secured. The same afternoon saw the long column of the prisoners on its way to Modder River, there to be entrained for Cape Town, the most singular lot of people to be seen at that moment upon earth—ragged, patched, grotesque, some with goloshes, some with umbrellas, coffee-pots, and Bibles, their favourite baggage. So they passed out of their ten days of glorious history. ¶ Mr. Gladstone’s intellectual generosity was a part of the same largeness of nature. He cordially acknowledged his indebtedness to those who helped him in any piece of work, received their suggestions candidly, even when opposed to his own preconceived notions, did not hesitate to confess a mistake. Those who know the abundance of their resources, and have conquered fame, can doubtless afford to be generous. Julius Cæsar was, and George Washington, and so, in a different sphere, were Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. But the instances to the contrary are so numerous that one may say of magnanimity that it is among the rarest as well as the finest ornaments of character. II FAMINE IN SAMARIA The next incident, though introduced without remark immediately after the last, evidently occurred at a different time. The king of Syria gathered a great army to besiege Samaria. Elisha encouraged the men of Israel to defend their city to the last. The wonderfully vivid narrative tells a pitiful tale of women boiling their children, of unclean food worth more than its weight in silver, of a king worked up to a pitch of frenzy and murderous designs, and renouncing his allegiance to Jehovah. Such faith as he had was strained to the breaking point. In despair, he turned his fury upon the prophet who, he thought, had power which he would not use, and sent to apprehend him. Then, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, the king apparently followed his own messenger, and confessed that the calamity was Divinely inflicted, and that he must surrender the city: “Behold this evil is of the Lord; why should I wait for the Lord any longer?” Then at this crisis of fate, Elisha spoke. The message was confident: “Hear ye the word of the Lord: Thus saith the Lord, To-morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.” One of the lords in close attendance on the king derided the prophet. Only if windows were made in heaven might such a thing be. “Behold,” was the only response, “thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.” During the night there was a panic in the Syrian host, the camp was deserted and every part of the prophecy fulfilled. The very courtier who had mocked Elisha was appointed to guard the city gate, and was trodden to death by the uncontrollable rush of the hungry populace. The unbelieving lord has not only his predecessors, but, alas! he has also his followers, crowds and crowds of faithless souls who follow in his footsteps. Some of them are like himself, utterly unbelieving. They believe neither in God nor in His power. They utterly deny the use of prayer. They sneer at the true believer. They turn into ridicule every attempt to acknowledge God in His dealings with man. We have all heard of such men; nay, we have doubtless come across them in daily life. In the office, in the railway carriage, in the workshop, in the place of business, in the street, their laugh of unbelief is heard. They are very active, and they do their best to get others to join them. They would fain ridicule all around them out of their faith in God. Let us beware of allowing ourselves, even for a moment, to be shaken in our confidence; let us remember that those who join in the sneer of the unbeliever will share the unbeliever’s doom. ¶ Here, I think, is the moral fault of unbelief:—that a man can bear to make so great a moral sacrifice as is implied in renouncing God. He makes the greatest moral sacrifice to obtain partial satisfaction to his intellect: a believer ensures the greatest moral perfection, with partial satisfaction to his intellect also; entire satisfaction to the intellect is, and can be, attained by neither. Thus, then, I believe, generally, that he who has rejected God must be morally faulty, and therefore justly liable to punishment. But, of course, no man can dare to apply this to any particular case, because our moral faults themselves are so lessened or aggravated by circumstances to be known only by Him who sees the heart, that the judgment of those who see the outward conduct only must ever be given in ignorance. III HAZAEL AND JEHU i. Hazael 1. Elisha next appears in wider political connexion with the personages and events of his time. He is described as visiting Damascus, where he unwillingly carried out one of the commissions given to Elijah at Horeb. He did not indeed “anoint” Hazael to be king over Syria, but sorrowfully foretold his elevation to the throne. When Elisha arrived in the neighbourhood of Damascus, Benhadad was lying ill. He knew the fame of Elisha as a man of God, and desired to learn through him whether he would recover from this sickness. He sent Hazael, his commander-in-chief, laden with presents, to learn his fate from the seer. Elisha’s reply was uncertain: according to one reading, he bade Hazael return and tell the king that he should certainly recover; according to another reading (the kethibh, and therefore probably authentic), Hazael was to reply that Benhadad should certainly die. At any rate, Elisha left Hazael in no doubt that the king was not to recover, and that his successor was none other than Hazael himself. 2. Elisha had read Hazael’s guilty secret, just as, long before, he had read Gehazi’s guilty secret. Hazael had, in his inmost heart, conceived a plot. No doubt he had often been contrasting his own vigour with the decrepit, nominal king, and had nursed ambitious hopes, which gradually turned to dark resolves. While Hazael stood waiting before him, the prophet of Israel looked upon the Syrian with a fixed, intent gaze. Only when he noted that Hazael’s conscience was troubled by the glittering eyes which seemed to read the inmost secrets of his heart did Elisha drop his glance, and burst into tears. “Why weepeth my lord?” asked Hazael, in still deeper uneasiness. In answer, the prophet read off the blood-red vision, revealing the scourge which this man before him would yet prove to Israel. The revelation, described though it was with painful literalness, in no way shocked Hazael. In his eyes the picture was one of military glory, of conquest, with its attendant massacres, wherein the accompaniment of suffering and death to others was a small thing. Yet, though his heart leaped with joy at the possible realization of his dreams, he kept up the semblance of humility in his reply: “What, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?” Elisha was in no way deceived by the wily, ambitious Syrian, but answered that the throne of Syria was his ambition, and that he would yet reach it. 3. This conversation with Elisha seems to have accelerated Hazael’s purpose, as if the prediction were to his mind a justification of his means of fulfilling it. By his deed, or another’s, the king died, not of his illness, but apparently by accident; and Hazael was at once raised to the throne of Syria. Under him Damascus again became a formidable power. In spite of his humble anticipation of himself, he turned out to be all that the prophet had foretold,—“mighty and of great power.” ¶ The scene has sometimes been misrepresented to Elisha’s discredit, as though he suggested to the general the crimes of murder and rebellion. The accusation is entirely untenable. Elisha was, indeed, in one sense, commissioned to anoint Hazael king of Syria, because the cruel soldier had been predestined by God to that position; but, in another sense, he had no power whatever to give to Hazael the mighty kingdom of Aram, nor to wrest it from the dynasty which had now held it for many generations. All this was brought about by the Divine purpose, in a course of events entirely out of the sphere of the humble man of God. In the transferring of this crown he was in no sense the agent or the suggester. The thought of usurpation must, without doubt, have been already in Hazael’s mind. Ben-hadad, as far as we know, was childless. At any rate he had no natural heirs, and seems to have been a drunken king, whose reckless undertakings and immense failures had so completely alienated the affections of his subjects from himself and his dynasty that he died undesired and unlamented, and no hand was uplifted to strike a blow in his defence. It hardly needed a prophet to foresee that the sceptre would be snatched by so strong a hand as that of Hazael from a grasp so feeble as that of Ben-hadad II. The utmost that Elisha had done was, under Divine guidance, to read his character and his designs, and to tell him that the accomplishment of these designs was near at hand. ii. Jehu The third commission entrusted to Elijah at Horeb was still unfulfilled; Jehu had to be anointed king of Israel. Elisha took the first step in this revolution, but apparently no further part in its blood-stained course. The occasion was a campaign against Syria, at Ramoth-gilead, again, as in Ahab’s time, a centre of contention. Ahab’s son Joram was wounded, and went home to Samaria to be cured. His ally the king of Judah left the army, and went to visit him. During their absence Elisha called one of the sons of the prophets, and sent him to Ramoth-gilead, with instructions to seek out Jehu, and secretly anoint him king. As soon as Jehu divulged the secret to his brother officers, they proclaimed him king, and the whole army at once espoused his cause. The nation had long been ready for a change, and the house of Omri fell without being able to strike a blow in self-defence. Throughout all the bloodthirsty though imperative reforms that Jehu carried out, Elisha kept entirely in the background. ¶ Personal ambition and blind religious zeal were so blended in the energetic, ruthless character of Jehu that his revolution was the most bloody recorded in all of Israel’s history.… According to the tradition, his religious fervour was not cooled until all the prophets and worshippers of Baal, together with the pillar and temple, were completely destroyed. Jehu’s acts were doubtless approved by the extremists of his day. It is true that the evils which he undertook to correct were deep-seated and deadly. Disloyalty to Jehovah was counted in ancient Israel as treason, and treason in all ages has been punished by death. Jehu also lived before the conception of Jehovah as the God not only of justice but of love had been clearly proclaimed to the race. But measured even by the standards of his own age, his deeds as recorded by tradition cannot be wholly justified. Politically, Jehu’s policy of slaying the leaders of his nation was as disastrous as it was indefensible. It left his kingdom weak and open to attack on every side at the moment when all its strength was needed to meet the great dangers which impended. The prophet Hosea, who saw clearly the mistakes of the past, absolutely condemned Jehu’s bloody acts. IV JOASH 1. Elisha lived to extreme old age, and his last thoughts were given to his country. It is clear that there is a long blank in the story of his life. For nearly sixty years he was the great religious force in the land, and on many occasions the guide of her policy at home and abroad. Yet for more than forty years we have no record at all (unless some of the miracles fall within this period) of how that time was spent, or how that influence told upon the history of his native country. It is sad to reflect that, in spite of all his labours, Israel had become feeble and dependent. During the reigns of the pusillanimous sons of Jehu, the Syrians had done to Israel according to their will, and the nation had more than once been brought to the verge of extinction. 2. But at last a brighter day began to dawn. Already in the time of Jehoahaz there was a promise of a great deliverer. In the days of Joash, Elisha himself foresaw the first turn of the fortune which he had so mournfully predicted. The last scene of his life showed how deeply the Syrian war coloured all his thoughts, as well as those of the king. When he was now struck with his mortal sickness, the young Joash came to visit the aged seer who had placed his grandfather on the throne, and wept over his face. No words could be more appropriate than those in which he addressed the prophet: “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof!” Elisha had still the spirit of the master to whom he first applied these words. To impress on the young king’s mind a sense of his duty, he used a fine piece of symbolism. He bade the king open the window and shoot an arrow eastward, calling it “the Lord’s arrow of victory, even the arrow of victory over Syria.” He then directed the king to strike on the ground with the rest of the arrows. “And he smote thrice, and stayed.” The energy of the youth was not equal to the energy of the expiring prophet, who burst out in indignation on his dying bed—“Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it; whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice.” The prophet perhaps read the king’s character by the indecisive way in which he performed what he must have known to be intended as a “sign” from Jehovah. ¶ He was never very ready to talk about himself, but when asked what he regarded as his master secret, he always said, “Concentration.” Slackness of mind, vacuity of mind, the wheels of the mind revolving without biting the rails of the subject, were insupportable. Such habits were of the family of faintheartedness, which he abhorred. Steady practice of instant, fixed, effectual attention was the key alike to his rapidity of apprehension and to his powerful memory. By instinct, by nature, by constitution, he was a man of action in all the highest senses of a phrase too narrowly applied and too narrowly construed. The currents of daimonic energy seemed never to stop, the vivid susceptibility to impressions never to grow dull. He was an idealist, yet always applying ideals to their purposes in act. Toil was his native element. There was nobody like him when it came to difficult business for bending his whole strength to it, like a mighty archer stringing a stiff bow. V ELISHA’S BONES There is one other tradition regarding Elisha, and that the most marvellous of all. His wonder-working power did not terminate with his life. In the spring of the year after his death a burial was taking place in the cemetery which contained his sepulchre, when it chanced that a band of marauding Moabites came in sight. The Moabites had now had time to recover from their great defeat by Jehoram and Jehoshaphat; they had spread themselves over the districts north of the river Arnon; and every year, when the spring crops were just ripe, their hordes poured over the fields of Samaria on their errand of plunder and violence. It was one of these bands of spoilers that was observed in the distance by the mourners. They wished to put the corpse for safety into the nearest hiding-place before the Moabites were upon them. It may have been accident, it may have been design, which led them to choose the tomb of Elisha; it may have been the depth and spaciousness of the cave; it may have been the prophet’s reputation for sanctity. So, as the original says, “they thrust the man into the sepulchre.” “And,” we are told, “as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.” There is no other miracle in Holy Scripture which is exactly like this: and it certainly is much more striking than any of those which were performed by Elisha during his lifetime. It produced a great effect upon the Jews; they held this posthumous miracle to be Elisha’s chief title to distinction among the prophets. “After his death his body prophesied,” or taught—that was his crowning glory in the Jewish school. ¶ Alone of all the graves of the saints of the Old Testament, there were wonders wrought at Elisha’s resting-place which seemed to continue after death the grace of his long and gentle life. It was believed that by the mere touch of his bones a dead corpse was re-animated. In this, as in so much beside, his life and miracles are not Jewish but Christian. His works stand alone in the Bible in their likeness to the acts of mediæval saints. There alone in the Sacred History the gulf between Biblical and Ecclesiastical miracles almost disappears. The exception proves the general rule; still it is but just to notice the exception. ¶ In Dinet’s Saint Symphorien d’ Autun, there is attributed to the body of St. Virgilius, who died A.D. 610, a miraculous power similar to that recorded in Scripture in the case of Elisha’s bones. “When the funeral procession of the saint arrived at the grave, and the remains were about to be lifted therein,” we are told, “all of a sudden came persons carrying the body of one dead. It was that of a young girl, the only child of her mother, and she was a widow. The bearers, out of breath, implored the clergy to let the dead body touch that of the deceased prelate. The permission was granted, and at a given signal all the immense crowd fell on their knees, waiting to see what would happen. Forthwith the ‘Kyrie Eleison’ was intoned; a thousand voices or more took up the chant, and at the seventh repetition, the young girl rose on her feet in the presence of the whole multitude. A shudder ran through the crowd, a silence ensued unbroken by a single sound, then a sudden reaction took place, a shout of joy burst forth, the funeral hymn was changed to a song of praise, the funeral procession to a march of triumph. The resuscitated damsel, pressed on all sides by the crowd, went homewards, crying as she went along, ‘O blessed bishop! O good and holy pastor! How am I thy debtor! How powerful thy merits! Well hast thou shown thy inheritance to eternal life in giving me back to life.’ ” ¶ The relation between Elijah and Elisha was of a particularly close kind, and may be compared with that between Moses and Joshua or David and Solomon. The one is the complement of the other; the resemblances, and still more the marked contrast between the character and activity of each, qualified both together for the common discharge of one great work by “diversity of operation.” The difference between them is much more striking than the resemblance. Elijah is the prophet of the wilderness, rugged and austere; Elisha is the prophet of civilized life, of the city and the court, with the dress, manners, and appearance of “other grave citizens.” Elijah is the messenger of vengeance,—sudden, fierce, and overwhelming; Elisha is the messenger of mercy and restoration. Elijah’s miracles, with few exceptions, are works of wrath and destruction; Elisha’s miracles, with but one notable exception, are works of beneficence and healing. Elijah is the “prophet as fire” (Ecclesiasticus 48:1), an abnormal agent working for exceptional ends; Elisha is the “holy man of God which passeth by us continually,” mixing in the common life of the people, and promoting the advancement of the Kingdom of God in its ordinary channels of mercy, righteousness, and peace. - via Logos 5
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 22:38:10 +0000
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