HAZAEL’S ABHORRENT REPUDIATION OF HIS FUTURE SELF.
2 Kings viii. 13.
Why wept Elisha in the presence of Hazael, when that envoy from the sick king of Syria courted the man of God, in his sovereign’s behalf, with a consignment of every good thing of Damascus, forty camels’ burden? Courteous and gentle was Benhadad’s messenger who came to inquire of the Lord of Elisha, if the royal Syrian should recover of the disease which had brought him so low. Why wept the prophet, when his prophecy had been uttered, ominously vague? “Go, say unto him [Benhadad], Thou mayest certainly recover. Howbeit the Lord hath showed me that he shall certainly die.” And he settled his countenance stedfastly, until he was ashamed.
“And Hazael said, Why weepeth my lord? And he answered, Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel; their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children,” etc. And Hazael said, “But what! is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?”
Yet Hazael went home, and on the very morrow commenced his justification of the seer’s previsionary tears, by spreading a thick wet cloth on the face of his master, so that Benhadad, who else would have recovered, died, and Hazael reigned in his stead.
Well might the man of God weep, nor could anything be more natural, or at least naturally assumed, than the shuddering repudiation, the deprecating protest, of the envoy that now was, the king—and dog—that to-morrow should be.
“Lui-même, à son portrait forcé de rendre hommage,
Il frémira d’horreur devant sa propre image.”
The man who is weak, observes Miss Lee in the “Canterbury Tales,” is always in danger of becoming a villain; and she exemplifies this liability in the instance of Villars, who, by indulging a passion calculated to enfeeble his understanding and corrupt his heart, is soon to be found touching that point which his high tone of romantic refinement had once induced him to believe it impossible he should even approach. But he protests too much who strenuously protests, with protestation heaped on protestation, against any such possible lapse and collapse on his part; and there are cases of this kind, of which one may say with Molière—
“Que c’est être à demi ce que l’on vient de dire,