Oh, the hush—the solemn silence! The judgment seemed to begin with the sound of trumpets and the rending of things that apparently could not be shaken; at the end there is simply a going away, a silent motion, a conviction that the sentence is right.
See Gehazi as he goes out of Elisha’s presence, and regard him as a specimen of those who, having been judged, on the last day will depart.
Men should consider the price which they really pay for their success.
The grateful Syrian would gladly have pressed upon Elisha gifts of high value, but the holy man resolutely refused to take any thing, lest the glory redounding unto God from this great act should in any degree be obscured. But his servant, Gehazi, was less scrupulous, and hastened with a lie in his mouth to ask, in his master’s name, for a portion of that which Elisha had refused.
The illustrious Syrian no sooner saw the man running after his chariot than he alighted to meet him, and being glad to relieve himself in some degree under the sense of overwhelming obligation, he sent him back with more than he ventured to ask.
Nothing more is known of Naaman.
We afterward find Gehazi recounting to King Joram the great deeds of Elisha, and in the providence of God it so happened that when he was relating the restoration to life of the Shunnammite’s son, the very woman with her son appeared before the king to claim her house and lands, which had been usurped while she had been absent abroad during the recent famine. Struck by the coincidence, the king immediately granted her application.
As lepers were compelled to live apart outside the towns, and were not allowed to come too near to uninfected persons, some difficulty has arisen with respect to Gehazi’s interview with the king. Several answers occur. The interview may have taken place outside the town, in a garden or garden house, and the king may have kept Gehazi at a distance, with the usual precautions which custom dictated. Some even suppose that the incident is misplaced, and actually occurred before Gehazi was smitten with leprosy. Others hasten to the opposite conclusion, and allege the probability that the leper had then repented of his crime, and had been restored to health by his master.
HEZEKIAH.
So far in our Bible studies we have had many weary wanderings among bad men. The fear was that, to some extent, familiarity with them might blunt our own moral sensibility.