CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
2 Kings 5:21. He lighted down from the chariot—Not merely dismounted, but quickly did so sprang out of the chariot, נָפל, to cast oneself, to throw oneself, to rush. It indicates Naaman’s anxiety.
2 Kings 5:24. Came to the tower—הֲעֹפֶל—the hill, i.e., a hill well understood in the locality of Elisha’s house.
2 Kings 5:26. Went not mine heart—In contrast with Gehazi’s words, “Thy servant went no whither.” “My heart”—לִּבִּי—i.e., in spirit, discerning the entire transaction. Is it a time to receive money, &c.—i.e., in any other case rather than this thou mightest have gratified thine avarice, but now, with so many hypocritical prophets abroad, this is no time for bringing the true prophetic office into disrepute by an act which seems to imply that the servant of the High God is only intent on selfish aggrandisement in his sacred and supernatural work.—W. H. J.
HOMILETICS OF 2 Kings 5:20-27
THE CURSE OF AVARICE
I. That a spirit of avarice loses no opportunity to gratify its greed. Gehazi was the Judas Iscariot of the Old Testament. Covetousness was his besetment. He was doubtless in many ways valuable to Elisha, and perhaps was at first a sincere enquirer after truth. But the spirit of avarice gained the mastery over what was good in him, and ultimately wrought his ruin. The wealth of Naaman was too great a temptation to him, and he could not forego the prospect of benefiting by the lavish generosity of the grateful Syrian. “As the Lord liveth, I will run after him and take somewhat of him” (2 Kings 5:20). Gehazi acts under the guise of religion while disregarding its teaching of disinterestedness, which it was particularly needful to make evident in those days of worldliness and time-serving among the national priesthood—the sycophantic Baalites. He showed contempt for the judgment of his master in the matter of receiving gifts, end cared not how far he disparaged the prophet in the eyes of his new convert. He mainly misrepresented Elisha by making him ask for what Naaman had just heard him most positively refuse. Avarice knows no scruples; is reckless of results; it sees only what is to be gained, and cannot relinquish the slightest hope of securing it.
II. That a spirit of avarice hesitates not to employ falsehood in attaining its purpose. Covetousness and lyiug go together; they are twin-vices. The burning desire for gain suggested to Gehazi the fabrication of a plausible story which would easily deceive the unsuspecting and generous Naaman (2 Kings 5:21-23). “What a round tale hath the craft of Gehazi devised of the number, the place, the quality, the age, of his master’s guests, that he might set a fair colour upon that pretended request, so proportioning the value of his demand as might both enrich himself, and yet well stand with the moderation of his master! Love of money can never keep good quarter with honesty, with innocence. Covetousness never lodged in the heart alone; if it find not, it will breed wickedness. What a mint of fraud there is in a worldly breast! How readily can it coin subtle falsehood for an advantage!” To find out the covetous, go round with a subscription book. It is perfectly appalling what lies you will hear told to evade giving.
III. That a spirit of avarice finds its pleasure in secretly storing its gains (2 Kings 5:24). Gehazi carefully stowed away the goods with which the liberality of Naaman had supplied him, and began already to indulge in dreams of increased possessions and of the pleasures his wealth might purchase. The miser wastes his best powers in the fond idolatry of his money, and gloats in secret over the piles of treasure which he counts with trembling joy. Avarice, says Channing, is a passion full of paradox, a madness full of method; for although the miser is the most mercenary of all beings, yet he serves the worst master more faithfully than some Christians do the best, and will take nothing for it. He falls down and worships the God of this world, but will have neither its pomps, vanities, nor its pleasures for his trouble He begins to accumulate treasure as a means to happiness, and by a common but morbid association he continues to accumulate it as an end. He lives poor to die rich, and is the mere jailer of his house and the turnkey of his wealth. Impoverished by his gold, he slaves harder to imprison it in his chest, than his brother slave to liberate it from the mine. The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchre of all his other passions, as they successively decay. But, unlike other tombs, it is enlarged by repletion and strengthened by age.
IV. That a spirit of avarice is unexpectedly exposed and faithfully warned (2 Kings 5:25-26). Little did Gehazi think that the whole transaction which had been carried out with such consummate craft and privacy was already known to his Master. He seeks still further to hide his duplicity by further lying. “He who tells a lie,” says Pope, “is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain one.” The wickedness of his servant was discovered by the prophetic insight of Elisha, and, to the utter confusion of the culprit, he is addressed in words of severe and faithful remonstrance—“Is it a time to receive money, &c?” Miserable Gehazi! how didst thou stand pale and trembling before the dreadful tribunal of thy severe master, looking for the woful sentence of some grievous judgment for so heinous an offence!” It is well when the money-loving worldling has a faithful monitor at hand to warn him of his danger and reprove him for his sin: it is better still when warning and reproof lead to reformation.
V. That a spirit of avarice is cursed with a terrible doom (2 Kings 5:27). Swift upon the heels of the transgression came the punishment, and that a punishment most loathsome and abhorrent: it was like a living death!—“He went out from his presence a leper as white as snow.” O heavy talents of Gehazi! O the horror of this one unchangeable suit which shall never be but loathsomely white, noisomely unclean! How much better had been a light purse and a homely coat with a sound body, a clear soul! Too late doth that wretched man now find that he hath loaded himself with a curse, that he hath clad himself with shame. His sin shall be read ever in his face, in his seed. All passengers, all posterities, shall now say—Behold the characters of Gehazi’s covetousness, fraud, sacrilege!—Bp. Hall. Perhaps the punishment cured the sin, and led to repentance. Gehazi the leper had more hope of salvation than Gehazi the miser. Gain got by a lie will burn your fingers, burn in your purses, rot your estates, and root out your posterity.
LESSONS:—
1. The love of money is the root of all evil.
2. The avaricious spirit is ever ready to take advantage of the generous.
3. Covet earnestly the best gifts.
DEFILEMENT OF GOD’S WORK BY COVETOUS MEN (2 Kings 5:20-24)
It is saddening to know that some of the best works, nd some of God’s most eminent workers, have been defamed and lowered, if their influence has not been actually counteracted and nullified, by inferior workers and by unworthy men. This defiling of God’s work has generally come from one source, and is the result of one vile lust or passion—covetousness. As illustrating this, read the repulsive histories of Balaam, of Achan, of David’s impious numbering of Israel, the story of Gehazi now before us, and the dark atrocity of the life and death of Judas Iscariot.
I. The action and duplicity of Gehazi are of singular unworthiness. Like so many other histories, they show that intercourse with good men and association with God-like work may become only the occasion of more vileness in a man. To the influence of his noble-minded master, to the refining and elevating power of such a character as Elisha, to the special needs of his fatherland and day, Gehazi seems to have been insensible, or, if not insensible, yet, which is worse, inclined to undervalue them, and to use the privileges and opportunities of his position for the gain of money. Nor is Gehazi lonely in this. On every side evidence of the like iniquity accumulates when we look into Scripture or other history. Few followers of great men have any of their real greatness, though they may share their honour. Few imitators of great teachers catch sight of anything but their own false exaggeration of their master’s position, and the opportunities thereby given of personal advance. The followers of Luther were seldom worthy of him. The followers of Calvin have not been true to their master. The adherents of the hallowed Wesleys did not take their sacred work only. The converts of Paul almost broke his heart. And the followers and servants of Jesus—where is there one of us who is worthy of his master? Do not many of us come to Christ with selfish feelings and serve our God for hire? We may find it helpful against this danger ever to remember that God’s gift of salvation was both undeserved and unsolicited. Being with the good and great will not necessarily make us similar; otherwise Gehazi would have been a better man, and it would not have been Christ’s sorrowful experience that “he who had eaten bread with Him lifted up his heel against Him.”
II. Gehazi’s covetousness was of a gross material kind—the love of money; and the miserable influence of it upon him is seen in this—that it produced inability to appreciate Elisha’s spiritual motives. Ali that Gehazi let himself see was that with the departing Naaman so much money went away too. As with Gehazi, so generally the covetous and unprincipled man lowers himself to a level on which he is unable, in daily life and business, to appreciate other motives than those of getting gain, or measure anything in life’s movements and enterprises by any other gauge than that of the money that can be gained or must be lost. Gehazi could not feel the power of Elisha’s spiritual motives in sparing Naaman and letting him go free of payment. Elisha’s noble determination that the mercy of his God should, in Naaman’s case, be had literally for the asking; his resolve that the goodness of God should be then, as we say now, of grace, and not of buying or selling—this, to such a soul as Gehazi’s, was useless, fanciful, intangible. He was, evidently, a practical vigorous man, who had not much room for fancies, whether religious or any other. Covetous men in the world, and Gehazis in the Church, are too many and too influential. Too many of us have this coarse grain in us, and when there is ever any beauty or tenderness of feeling in us, we get into the habit of hiding it from what we think would be the rude looks and unappreciating touch of others.
III. In several other ways Gehazi’s covetousness involved him in sin, and further defiled the good work that had been wrought by Elisha. These are no lonely, single sins. Sin needs sin to help it along, to buttress it, to back it, and give it success. One deception leads to another, and needs it, and each becomes a pledge of worse. Gehazi had to lie to Naaman; and it speaks of the power of greed and covetousness, to see this man telling the lie so plainly and confidently, misrepresenting his master, and dishonoring God’s work as done by his master. All the food and fame of this grand world are not worth one little lie. Let us he careful not to want anything beyond the reach of honesty, nor to go where we need lies and double-dealing for advancement. To be simple-minded, with Christ, is better than all the successes of duplicity. Gezahi’s lie deceived a trusting man, and made the liar take still greater and more ungenerous advantage of Naaman’s goodness, in doubling the amount of silver. The covetous liar has no room for generosity.
IV. The success of the lie. The falsehood has thriven; to deceive has been found to be the short road to wealth; to insult God, to defame his work, to misrepresent Elisha, and to plunder Naaman. These things have “paid,” as men say. It is this kind of thing that is enough to shake a feeble faith, to see the wicked in great power. Gehazi had gotten his wealth, but what could he do with it? He hid it, hoarded it up for a few hours, and then the judgment came. He got his money like Achan, he hid it like Achan, and God troubled him as he troubled Achan. This is the life of those who are greedy of gain. It is like sowing the barren sea. We can only hoard earth’s gain, or hide it away, or spend it on the world that passes away, for a few hours, and then God must come, and judgment must begin.—C. W. P.
ONE MAN’S BLESSING ANOTHER MAN’S CURSE (2 Kings 5:25-27)
Gehazi has to face that from which a liar never escaped, and a false tongue never was delivered—even detection, exposure, shame, and everlasting contempt. The whole transaction had been decided on so quickly, and carried out so easily, that the probabilities were all in his favour, and warranted his hope that having gained his wealth by a bold stroke he would be able to keep it by effrontery. I. Lying and false ways of earthly prosperity always leave out God. Liars and deceivers ignore God’s interest in their life, God’s knowledge of their plans and schemes, and the execution of them. And in their apparently untroubled doing without God these men and their actions become most hurtful stumbling-blocks to many tender souls. Oh, guard in your daily actions against this perilous thought, this most hurtful habit of ignoring God, and his knowledge of your ways! Let us take the word of God as a “wholesome” blame to ourselves, and as a wise correction of many shameful things in our daily life. Let us really and solemnly believe in God’s omnisicence, not as a theological article only, but as a matter for daily life and care; and let us try to cultivate the ever-present sense that God knows all our ways, and understands our hearts with their pitiful vileness. Yea, let not this beget terror and horror, like that of the prisoner in his cell, who, having been condemned to have some one day and night watching him through a hole in the prison door, became haunted and horrified by the eye that was ever looking at him; but, rather, let us gladly believe that “the Lord has searched us, and known us;” that He “understands our thoughts afar off;” and let us bare and open ourselves to the Infinite Searcher of hearts. II. They who will not do this, will have to prove the experience of Gehazi, that one sin, one lie, makes others easier and worse. Gehazi presumed that Elisha was ignorant of his doings, and when he went in and was asked, “Whence comest thou?” he had his answer ready, “Thy servant went nowhither.” The lie came from him easily and readily, for he had prepared himself beforehand; and the lie he had told to Naaman trained him to insult, by deceiving, his master. The way to perdition is downhill, on a slippery way, with a descent that is ever quickening. The first step down gives us impetus, and every after step is easier to the soul that is going down away from the light. One act of lying or deceiving needs another, and begets its own kind until the liar deceives himself, imagining himself to be secure, when he is on, the edge of perdition, and thinking his schemes are all doing well, when “He that sitteth in the heavens laughs at them, and the Lord has them in derision.” In thus leading to a vile, false security of self-deception, lying becomes its own enemy and judgment. Though others may be hoodwinked, and conscience may be blindfolded, so that right and wrong are not clearly discernible, yet deception must end somewhere. Somewhere, and with some one, a lie must be of no use, be wasted breath and ruinous sin. It is of no use with God; it stops at the throne of God; there it must stand revealed; and we have yet to see whether the boldness of earth’s deceptions will be continued there. Who shall be bold in the day of God? Certainly not the false man. III. Gehazi’s exposure and shame come now before us. How soon the scheme came to an end, and such an end! How soon the bubble burst! Gehazi had deceived Naaman and had gotten his money, but he had misled himself much more. For Elisha’s spirit had been with him, and it is notable that Elisha says, that from the moment in which Gehazi began to deceive Naaman, he knew the whole. It is not a light thing to God when we allow ourselves to glide into an iniquity, but it must be and is before God a much viler thing when, in addition to wronging our own souls, we hurt and sin against others. Sin has been vile enough when, in cases that have come before our law courts, men have lied, and forged, and perjured themselves; the outrage on truth has been bad, but when widows and orphans and others have been ruined by trusting their money to such men, has there not risen a cry to God, a cry clamorous as that of Abel’s unexpiated blood? Samuel Rutherford spoke tenderly yet terribly when he said, “I find it would be no art, as I see now, to make hypocrisy a goodly web, and to go through the market as a saint among men, and yet steal quietly to hell without observation, so easy it is to deceive men. Men see but as men, but to be approved of God (may I add in business?) is no ordinary mercy.” Gehazi got Naaman’s money; would that we all in our trading and toil had the spirit that would lay all gains before God, saying, Lord, whose money have I? IV. Elisha’s patriotism cried out against Gehazi’s sin. “Is it a time to receive money and garments and oliveyards, and vineyards and sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and maidservants?” This protest is based not only on Elisha’s desire that Naaman’s cure should be from beginning to end the evident work of the free grace and mercy of the God of Israel, but rises also from the condition of Israel as a nation at that time. It was a time of strife and care, of war and rumour of war, in which everyone ought to have been ready for the call of self-sacrifice, and for the encouragement of self-denying motives for the sake of the time and the fatherland. During all the period of war and siege and famine of which you may read in the next chapter, Elisha was the leader of the patriotic and no-surrender party in Samaria. He it was who encouraged the people to resist even to the uttermost; and even when the city was so reduced that women ate their own children, and the king sent a man to strike off Elisha’s head as the leader of the resisting party, Elisha still kept the gates of the city shut against a surrender. Knowing the vigorous patriotism of this man of God, his readiness for self-devotion, we may well and easily understand Elisha’s detestation of Gehazi’s conduct when all that he seemed to wish for was the increase of his money and the accumulation of hoarded wealth. It was not a time to receive money, and pander by false ways to the lust for gain, though there are men who, in any crisis of a nation or society or religion, will put the claims of self-interest in the foreground, and judge only under the impulse of insatiable appetite for wealth. The patriot as well as the prophet speaks to us here, and his word declares that a man is required by the condition of his country and the state of the times in which he lives to forbid himself any gain, to deny himself any advance, that may involve him in meanness and sinfulness. With broader meaning also, out of which all other special applications come, we must learn from this that the Christian man is required to govern all his life by such a feeling as this of Elisha, that time on earth is to be passed in the actual subordination of earthly gains of money, or rich dress, or property, or social status. The present time is a time for honest toil and labour in the fear of God and the love of Jesus; but not for aiming at the miscalled “goods” of this world. V. Now, coming to the last of this history, we see Gehazi pierced through with many sorrows. He had sought his good here, but with Naaman’s money he got his leprosy too. The blessing of the Syrian became the curse of the servant of the man of God. Let us get this matter close to ourselves. The day of God, we may fear, will show many who have blighted themselves, marked themselves with a curse by their part in connection with God’s word; many who have helped to do good, but therein doomed themselves by the spirit that they have allowed to grow on the work. It is not a light thing to assume leadership in the Lord, or eldership in His work, for if we are hurtful in these things, who shall heal the hurt?
“For what shall heal, when holy service banes?
Or who may guide
O’er desert plains
Thy lov’d, yet sinful people wandering wide,
If Aaron’s hand, unshrinking, mould
An idol form of earthly gold?”
What shall save when being an instrument of good is made its own curse by any soul? This doom of Gehazi is prophetic of all uncleansed sin and its miserable end. Any unrepented wrong against man or God must come back to the wrongdoer. Sin that we will not let Christ wash away must “find us out,” for it is our sin, our own ghastly belonging for ever and ever. We are its author, owner, and home for ever. We raise a demon that we cannot lay but by taking it home to ourselves. Unpardoned—that is, unrepented—sin is as the unclean spirit of which the Lord spake: it has no end till it returns whence it set out. We began with honour and degradation in Naaman; and it all ends in this dishonour and degradation in Gehazi. “He went out a leper”—the curse of God had fallen on him by the word of the gentle master whose work he had defiled. Elisha’s kindliness gave place to the word of vengeance. Oh, remember that there is such a thing as “the wrath of the Lamb,” and that when the gentleness of God, the Lamb in the midst of the throne, gives way to judgment, there shall be found no place for the liar, the covetous, or any impenitent. In the free grace and love by which Naaman was washed and purified we have our hope; and in the outraged love by which Gehazi was blighted we have our warning. Take both the hope and the warning.—C. W. P.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2 Kings 5:20-24. A sordid spirit. I. Remains unchanged, though in daily intercourse with the most unselfish nobleness. II. Cannot appreciate the motive that relinquishes a single opportunity of getting gain. III. Deludes itself in assuming a religious guise for its basest acts (2 Kings 5:20). IV. Displays unseemly haste in getting possession of coveted treasure (2 Kings 5:21). V. Is facile in manufacturing falsehood (2 Kings 5:22). VI. Does not scruple to take every advantage of the generosity of others (2 Kings 5:23). VII. Is careful to conceal the extent of its hoardings (2 Kings 5:24).
2 Kings 5:20. How mighty are the evil inborn lusts of the human heart! Even in the case of those who have for years enjoyed the society of the noblest and most pious men, who have heard and read the Word of God daily, and who have had the example of holy conduct daily before their eyes, lusts arise, take possession of them, and carry them captive (James 1:13-15).
2 Kings 5:23. He who himself thinketh no evil, and is sincere, does not suspect cunning and deceit in others. Good-hearted, noble men, to whom it is moro lessed to give than to receive, are easily deceived, and they follow the inclination of their hearts instead of examining carefully to whom they are giving their benefactions.
2 Kings 5:24. That which we must conceal brings no blessing.
2 Kings 5:25-27. The audacity of a liar. I. Stands unabashed in the holiest presence. II. Under the necessity of adding lie to lie. III. Unexpectedly exposed. IV. Does not escape signal punishment.
2 Kings 5:25 compared with 2 Kings 5:27. “But he went in and stood before his master. And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow.” A never-to-be forgotten interview. I. He went in guilty, yet little dreaming of detection; he came out baffled, exposed, humbled. II. He went in hardened, impenitent, and prepared with excuses; he came out smitten with a punishment as little expected as it was terrible. III. A single interview may wither the happiness of a lifetime; judgment, though unanticipated, is swift and sure. IV. The way in which we shall come out of the last judgment will depend upon the character with which we go in.
2 Kings 5:26. It is folly to presume upon sin in hopes of secrecy. When thou goest aside into any bye-path, does not thy own conscience go with thee? Does not the eye of God go with thee?
—Giving is kind, and taking is courteous, and both may at times and in some cases be done without sin. There is much use of godly discretion, doubtless, in directing us when to open, when to shut our hands.—Trapp.
2 Kings 5:27. It is a woful exchange that Gehazi hath made with Naaman; Naaman came a leper, returned a disciple. Gehazi came a disciple, returned a leper. Naaman left behind both his disease and his money; Gehazi takes up both his money and his disease. Now shall Gehazi neverlook upon himself but he shall think of Naaman, whose skin is transferred upon him with those talents, and shall wear out the rest of his days in shame, in pain, and sorrow. His tears may wash off the guilt of his sin, but shall not, like another Jordan, wash off his leprosy; that shall ever remain as a hereditary monument of Divine severity. Happy was it for him if, while his skin was snow white with leprosy, his humbled soul was washed white as snow with the water of true repentance.—Bp. Hall.
—The leprosy of riches. Gold is tainted. Strength required to use it aright. A curse cleaves to it when it is ill-gotten or ill-used. This curse crops out most frequently in the children. A father absorbed in the pursuit of wealth, and mother absorbed in fashion, will bring up corrupt and neglected children. Parents who love gold, fashion, and display, train their children to hold these the chief things in life.
—As Naaman was a living monument of the saving might and grace of Jehovah, so Gehazi was a monument of the retributive justice of the Holy One in Israel; a living warning and threat for the entire people. By his conversion Naaman was taken up into God’s community of redemption in Israel; by his unfaithfulness and denial of this God, Gehazi brings down upon himself the punishment which excludes him from the society of the prophet-disciples and of the entire covenant people. As Naaman’s cure and conversion was a physical prophecy that God will have pity upon the heathen also, and will receive him into His covenant of grace, so Gehazi’s leprosy prophesied the rejection of the people of Israel who should abandon the covenant of grace and persevere in apostasy (Matthew 8:11-12; Matthew 21:43).—Lange.
—Let not the punishment of Gehazi be thought too severe. Important principles were involved in his conduct, for it was a time when the representatives of the sacred office needed to observe the greatest caution against the spirit of worldliness. Gehazi’s acts on this occasion were a complication of wickedness. He showed contempt for the judgment of his master in the matter of receiving gifts; he meanly misrepresented the prophet by making him ask for what Naaman had just heard him most positively refuse; he invented a false story to blind the eyes of Naaman; and, finally, told a miserable lie in the hope of escaping detection from Elisha. Add to all this the foul spirit of covetousness that actuated him through all this evil course, and his curse will not appear too great. The extending of his curse to his children after him is but another exhibition of the terrible consequences of human sinfulness. Gehazi’s posterity, innocent of their father’s sins, but, like many others, they were compelled to bear the consequences of ancestral crimes. That thousands of innocents are subjected to suffering because of the sins of others is a fact which none can deny. Why this is permitted under the government of an all-wise God is a question which He has not seen fit fully to answer.—Whedon.