2 Kings 8:8 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The king said, Go, meet the man of God, and inquire of the Lord, &c. In his health he bowed down in the house of Rimmon, but now he sends to inquire of the God of Israel. It is not long since he sent a great force to seize and treat Elisha as an enemy; yet now he courts and inquires of him as a prophet: thus affliction brings those to God, who, in their prosperity, made light of him: it opens men's eyes, and rectifies their mistakes: and among other instances of the change it produces in their minds, this is one, and not the least considerable, that it often gives them other thoughts of God's ministers, and teaches them to value those whom they before hated and despised. Affliction, however, has not this good effect upon all: it only blinds and hardens some. We lately saw even a king of Israel sending, in his sickness, to inquire of the god of Ekron, as if there had been no God in Israel. How does the conduct of this heathen, in similar circumstances, reprove and condemn the idolatrous and incorrigible Israelite! Thus does God sometimes fetch that honour to himself from strangers, which is denied him, and alienated from him, by his own professing people.