CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
2 Kings 6:12. Elisha … telleth … the words thou speakest in thy bedchamber—Elisha apprised king Jehoram of the designs of the Syrian king, who thereby was enabled to anticipate and defeat his guerilla attacks.
2 Kings 6:13. Behold he is in Dothan—In a narrow pass through mountains, on the caravan road from Gilead to Egypt, twelve miles north of Samaria, in the Esdraelon plain.
2 Kings 6:17. The mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire—For in this case, and in contrast with the mere “horses and chariots” (2 Kings 6:15) of the Syrian army, this was fiery host, אֵשׁ, denoting their supernatural and divine origin, for it is the symbol of Deity.
HOMILETICS OF 2 Kings 6:8-17
THE TRIUMPHS OF PRAYER
We have seen the power of Elisha in the working of miracles in the realm of private life, and, for the most part, on behalf of the individual. Now we are to witness the beneficent power of the prophet as it operates in the wider sphere of public and national life. He appears as the seer, the man of supernatural insight, the prophet who is in habitual and prayerful communion with God, the adviser and friend of a perplexed sovereign and a harassed nation. In him is a combination of great gentleness with great power. The character in which the history now reveals him, as a man of prayer, may explain the source of his enormous power, and the vast range of his influence. The incidents here described illustrate the triumphs of prayer.
I. Seen in giving extraordinary insight into the plottings of the enemy (2 Kings 6:8-12). Elisha had power to read the secret counsels of the invading Syrian, and thus enabled the king of Israel to disconcert the plans of Benhadad, and to escape his ambuscades. Prayer intensifies the sensibilities of the soul, and makes it more keenly alive to the movements of the wicked one; it can see sights and hear sounds unperceived by others. After Elijah had wrestled with God in prayer, on Mount Carmel, he heard “a sound of abundance of rain,” though others heard it not. The sky was cloudless and hard as steel, the earth seamed and cracked, vegetation withered, the cattle were perishing, and the gaunt figure of famine, which had been tightening its grasp upon the land for two years and a half, was as pitiless and inflexible as ever. The soul that is quick to perceive coming good, is also quick to detect coming evil. The man of prayer is more than a match for the subtlest adversary.
2 Kings 6:2. Seen in inspiring a fearless courage in the midst of threatened danger (2 Kings 6:13-16). The glittering spears and chariots surrounding the city, which filled the servant of Elisha with so much alarm, struck no fear in the breast of his undaunted master. With what unutterable confidence he whispers those reassuring words: “Fear not; for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.” The praying spirit is ever brave and strong in great emergencies. It was prayer that sustained Moses when at Rephidim he was surrounded by the mutinous host clamouring for water, and threatening to stone him to death (Exodus 17:1-4). Before Luther went to the Diet of Worms, where he expected the worst, and before Knox was tried for high treason, which threatened his own life and the ruin of the Reformation movement in Scotland, they both found relief in prayer. When a steamer went down in the Bay of Biscay a short time ago, what enabled the minister and his wife to speak with such calmness and hope to their fellow-passengers and the crew assembled in the already flooded cabin, when they expected the next lurch of the vessel would be the last? It was prayer. The solitary praying prophet felt far more confidence and courage than did Benhadad with all his warlike hosts.
III. Seen in giving the soul sublime visions of the nearness and all-sufficiency of heavenly help (2 Kings 6:17). The horses and chariots of fire were there before; but they were not seen by the young man, though they were seen by Elisha. Both had the ordinary common sense by which external objects are apprehended; but in Elisha’s case there was superadded the God-given sense of supernatural vision. Our common sense, however sound and accurate, is limited in its scope. When the comet of 1858 appeared, an observer declared that its luminous tail was just four feet long, while to the educated scientific sense it was known to extend for millions of miles. So the glories of the heavenly firmament are diminished or altogether hidden to the ordinary sense, and are revealed only to the eye of faith. Prayer intensifies the spiritual vision, and the soul beholds around it the shining hosts of heavenly ministrants ready to do the bidding of the all-powerful Jehovah.
IV. Seen in giving power to baffle and defeat the foe (2 Kings 6:18-20). Through the prayer of Elisha the Syrian host is smitten with blindness, so that they could not recognise him, nor the way in which he led them. What was their astonishment when, the blindness being removed at the instance of the man of prayer, they beheld themselves in the midst of Samaria, at the mercy of the soldiers of Jehoram. The soul has to contend with enemies, fierce and form dable. When Napoleon at Waterloo watched the tremendous charge of the Scots Greys, and witnessed the havoc wrought among the French columns, he exclaimed “How terrible are these Greys!” But more terrible still are the enemies with which we have to fight. Prayer only can give the skill and power to conquer. Gideon prayed, and though his army was reduced from 32,000 to 300, he inflicted upon the Midianites a most disastrous defeat (Judges 6:7). Samson prayed, and with restored strength he pulled down the Philistian temple, and destroyed more of his own and the Lord’s enemies in his death than he had done in his lifetime.
V. Seen in treating a conquered and distressed enemy with clemency and kindness (2 Kings 6:20-23). The king of Israel, seeing the Syrians thus brought into his power, was anxious at once to despatch them. Perhaps he remembered Ahab’s great mistake in not slaying the Syrian king when in his power, and for which mistake he was sternly rebuked by one of the prophets (1 Kings 20:35-43). But the man of prayer interposed between the fury of the king and his captives; instead of being slaughtered, they were hospitably entertained and then released, refreshed and unscathed. There are enemies of the soul to whom no mercy should be shown; no opportunity to crush them should be missed. There are enemies, again, who, when their wrong is exposed and acknowledged, we may generously forgive. Prayer fills the soul with sympathy and mercy, and expands it with magnanimity. Abraham prayed for Abimelech, and he and his house were healed. Moses prayed, and Miriam, who was punished because she had joined in the sedition against her brother, was cured of her leprosy.
VI. Seen in giving rest and security to a harrassed nation. “So the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel” (2 Kings 6:23). The prayers and wisdom of one man relieved the troubles of the court and of the people. The nation is often unspeakably indebted to the prayers of a faithful few. Hezekiah prayed when Rabshekah thundered at the gates of Jerusalem, and the Assyrians were smitten with death (2 Kings 19:14-36). Ezra’s prayer led to national reform and prosperity (Ezekiel 9:10). More solid good is wrought in a nation by prayer than by diplomacy or arms.
LESSONS:—
1. Prayer is essential to building up a great and influential moral character.
2. Prayer intensifies the perceptive and realizing power of faith.
3. Prayer is an all-potent agency in conquering spiritual adversaries.
THE VISION PERMITTED TO ELISHA’S SERVANT AS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE TRUE FAITH OF THE SOUL (2 Kings 6:17)
The chariots and horses are not here, as in the account of the ascent of Elijah a few Chapter s before, vehicles for a glorious passage to the skies, but simply symbols of the Divine power and protection; but in both passages the highest intelligences are represented as taking shapes, like the forms in Ezekiel, which imply that their true nobility is always service. The immaterial spirits become cognizable by the servant of Elisha under forms best calculated to reassure his fainting faith. Fire is a symbol of the Godhead, because fire is the most ethereal of the earthly elements. The gift of Pentecost sat as tongues of fire on the heads of the apostles. God is said by His prophet and His apostle to be “a consuming fire.” “The seraph is properly the burning spirit.” The horses and chariots mean, therefore, warlike force. Still, what the servant sees is not a material, it is a spiritual reality, taking a form which assures him of God’s sure protection, through the agencies of these ministers of His who do His pleasure, and at a time when all was death to the eye of flesh.
I. Now, here we see, as if through a microscope, the act or process of faith in the human soul. Faith, first of all, is not an act of the natural imagination. It is necessary to say this, because a great many persons constantly allude to faith in terms which imply that it is. They speak of a person of great faith, meaning that he is a very imaginative person, that he has quite an unusual share of that privileged, that versatile faculty which does indeed achieve so much in society, so much for literature, which is the very wellspring of poetry, which is the soul, the genius of constructive art, but which is less welcome in the sphere of religious truth, because its highest efforts result in surrounding us with the unreal, while investing it with the attributes of reality. When men speak of faith as a vivid and energetic form of imagination, they mean to imply this, without stating in terms that they do so; they mean to imply that just as the poet Virgil projected a picture of the nether world out of the immense wealth of his fancy, so evangelists and apostles have traced their own beautiful pictures of heaven, and their awful descriptions of hell and of judgment, on the pages of our testaments, by the aid of an extraordinary variety of the religious imagination. The evangelists and apostles, whatever else they were—I say it with reverence—were not poets, they were eminently prosaic; and the remarks of Rousseau that the inventor of the gospel history must have been not less wonderful than its hero if he were entirely unassisted from above, is at least a satisfactory reply to this theory of faith doing the work of pure imagination. In the case before us Elisha’s servant did not create, by an act of imagination, a splendid picture in the air, after the manner of a Milton or a Rubens, a picture of fiery beings circling round the form of his beloved, of his imperilled master. The thing is psychologically impossible. He had his eye upon the hard and menacing fact before him, upon the lines of the Syrian troops who were sent to capture the prophet his master. He could, for the time, see nothing beyond the sphere of sense. His new power of seeing the chariots and horses of fire sweeping around Elisha did not create these spiritual forms and beings; there they were, whether he and other men saw them or not, just as the more remote planets were certainly revolving in their orbits during the centuries when our science had not yet reached them by her reckonings and telescopes. Elisha had been just as much encompassed by the spirit-world the moment before his servant saw that this was the case, as he was the moment afterwards. The man’s new sight could not create, as his blindness could not have destroyed, the supernatural reality.
II. Nor is faith only the conclusion, the final act, of a process of natural reasoning. If this were the case, if faith were merely the conclusion of a syllogism, it would necessarily follow that all people with good undertandings must necessarily be believers in Christianity. We know, my brethren, that this is not the case. We know, alas! that many persons of great natural abilities, such as was Voltaire, are and have been unbelievers; and this alone would seem to show that something besides intelligence is implied in an act of faith. No man whose mind was not impaired could go through a proposition of Euclid and refuse to assent to a conclusion; but many people do read “Paley’s Evidences,” or, what is more to the purpose, what St. Paul himself says about the resurrection, and yet do not admit Paley’s and St. Paul’s conclusion that Christianity comes from God. If believing in Christianity were simply an affair of the natural understanding, this could not be. It would be just as inevitable to believe St. Paul as it is intellectually to believe Euclid. The affections and the will have a great deal to say to every pure act of faith. The understanding cannot compel faith. The evidence at the disposal of the understanding is always less than absolutely mathematical; it does not convince unless the moral nature is in such a condition that it is possible for it to be convincing. What is it which makes the desire, the heart on the one side, and the evidence at the disposal of the understanding on the other side, result in the complex, in the perfect act of faith? What is it which strikes the sacred spark which thus combines the action of the understanding and the yearnings of the heart into the single act which supersedes while it combines them?
III. Faith is, in the last resort, the fire which is lighted up in the soul by a ray from Heaven, by a ray of grace. It is a gift from God. It is a fresh gift, which nature can neither rival nor anticipate. Elisha might have insisted upon many considerations which ought in reason to have satisfied his servant that God and His holy ones were now, as of old, near at hand, that the near presence of the Syrians did not amount to a real reason of despair. Elisha did not argue. There are times when it is worse than useless. Elisha prayed; he prayed that the Lord would open the eyes of the young man to see things, not as they appear to sense, but as they are; to see, not merely the world of sense, but the world of spirit; and his prayer was granted. Reason can do very much for faith. Reason stands to faith just as did the Baptist to Christ our Lord. She is the messenger which goes before the face of faith to make ready its path within the soul. Reason can explain, she can infer, she can combine, she can reduce difficulties to their true proportions, she can make the most of considerations which show what, upon the whole, is to be expected; but here she must stop. She cannot do the work of God’s grace; she cannot transfigure the moral nature so as to enable it to correspond to the conclusions of the illuminated intellect; she cannot open the eyes of the young man and make him see. If this last triumph is to be achieved, it must be by grace given in answer to prayer.
IV. Let us see in this history a remedy against despondency, such as good Christians often feel on contemplating the state of the world at particular periods. All seems to be going against the cause of right, of truth, of God. Intellectual assailants, political adversaries, all the passions, all the prejudices, all the misapprehensions of an unregenerate humanity come down and besiege the prophet in Dothan. All might seem to be lost again and again, if it were not that again and again the eyes of the spirit are opened to perceive that they which are with as are more than they which are with them. Courage; the unseen is greater than the seen, the eternal will surely outlive the things of time. An act of faith may cross the threshold of the door which separates us from that world which is beyond the senses, and may at once correct the apparent preponderance of evil by a vision of the throne, and the resources of the All-good.
V. And see, too, in this history, our true pattern of nobility. It has been a common saying, quoted again and again of late, to explain and justify changes on the Continent that have taken place within the last ten years, that it is better to be the citizens of a great state than the citizens of a small one. It is better for many reasons; for this among the rest, there is an inspiration for good, which comes from the sense of wide and noble fellowship, of high and distinguished associates and guardians, which is denied to those who are members of a small society that have it not. And in His kingdom God has provided us with this. All the races of the world furnish their contributions to the universal church. But the frontier of sense is not the frontier of the church of Christ. It embraces both worlds, the unseen world as well as the visible. The church is a mixed as well as a world-embracing society, consisting, here of the faithful, there of the blessed angels and of the spirits of the dead, united in the bonds of one indissoluble communion, and all ranged beneath the throne of thrones, the throne of God, the throne of Jesus. The Syrian host may press us hard; the host of temptations and bad thoughts and bad acquaintances; of haunting memories; but when, at the voice of prayer, our eyes open upon the realities around and above us, we must remember that we have a destiny before us, and means at hand to prepare for it.
VI. Lastly, we see here the secret of real effective prayer. Why is prayer, public prayer especially, in so many cases nothing better than the coldest of cold, heartless forms? For two reasons especially. They enter on it without having any true knowledge of themselves whatever; of their sins and wants, as well as of their hopes and fears; of their real state before God, as well as of their reputed character in the eyes of men; in a word, they have no true knowledge of that for which prayer wins something like a remedy, and thus they have no personal interest of their own which they can import into and identify with the public language of the Church. This is the first reason. But there is a second. Prayer is so cold and heartless a thing in numbers of instances, because men see nothing of Him to whom prayer is addressed, nothing of God, nothing of Jesus, nothing of the spirit-world around the throne, nothing of the majesty, the beauty, the glory which encircles God, such as is possible, really possible, to our finite and purbliud gaze—nothing of the everlasting worship which surrounds Him, nothing of the ministers of His that do His pleasure. There are, believe it, few better prayers on entering a church than Elisha’s, “Lord, open mine eyes, that I may see.” “I do not wish to mock Thee by lip service, I do not wish to pile up my ordinary business thoughts, or my thoughts of pleasure, on the very steps of Thy throne; open mine eyes, then, that I may see in Thy beauty, and in Thy glorious presence may lose all relish which belongs only to the things of time.” It is when the soul struggles thus in an honest spiritual agony that it is really emanicipated from the tyranny of sense, and, like the young man in this history, or rather like the dying martyr of the gospel times, see the heavens opened, sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God.—Canon Liddon, condensed from Hom. Quarterly.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2 Kings 6:8-17. Hints of the course of things in Zion.
1. The revealed plot.
2. The military expedition against one man.
3. The peaceful abode.
4. The cry of alarm.
5. The unveiled protection from above.—Krummacher.
2 Kings 6:8-12. The mischief maker.
1. Consults with kindred spirits who are most likely to carry out his designs.
2. Delights in plotting evil against the weak and inoffensive.
3. Fondly dreams his schemes are too cunningly devised for discovery.
4. Is intensely mortified when his plans prove abortive.
5. Is first to suspect his accomplices of treachery.
6. Cannot tolerate a superior.
2 Kings 6:9. It is no treason to bring crafty and malicious plots to the light. It is a sacred duty (Acts 23:16). Beware of going into places where thou wilt be in jeopardy of soul and body. Be on thy guard when the enemy advances.—Osiander.
2 Kings 6:11. When God brings to naught the plots of the crafty, they become enraged, and, instead of recognizing the hand of God and humbling themselves, they lay the blame upon other men, and become more malicious and obstinate. He who does not understand the ways of God thinks that he sees human treason in what is really God’s dispensation. Woe to the ruler who cannot trust his nearest attendants.—Starke.
2 Kings 6:12. God-given Wisdom
1. Bestowed on men eminent for prayer and obedience.
2. Enables man to discern the unsuspected secrets of others.
3. Is more than a match for the most consummate subtlety of the wicked.
4. Should be used in warning and delivering the innocent.
—Tremble with fear, ye obstinate sinners, because all is bared and discovered before His eyes, and shudder at the thought that the veil behind which ye carry on your works does not exist for Him! All which ye plot in your secret corners to-day, ye will find to-morrow inscribed upon His book; and however secretly and cunningly ye spin your web, not a single thread of it shall escape His eye!—Krumm.
2 Kings 6:13-16. Moral courage.
1. Is gained by communion with God.
2. Is a tower of strength to man in whatever locality he may dwell.
3. Is not intimidated by the most formidable host.
4. Inspires confidence in the timid and fearful.
5. Is conscious of being backed by superior force.
2 Kings 6:17. The vision of the supernatural.
1. Hidden from the most highly educated natural powers.
2. Granted by a special operation of the Divine Spirit on the human mind.
3. A dazzling revelation of heavenly power and beauty.
4. Inspires invincible bravery in times of peril.
—In answer to Elisha’s prayer, God opened his spiritual eyes, unveiled his inner sense, and lifted him for a moment to the high plane of Elisha’s supernatural vision, whence he obtained a view of the mighty creations of the spiritual world around him. This sight into the spiritual world was not an instance of hallucination, but a miracle of grace; an instance of that Divine ecstacy or trance in which the holy scers were enabled to behold the visions of the supersensual world, and which consists essentially in this, that the human spirit is seized and compassed by the Divine spirit with such force and energy, that, being lifted from its natural state, it becomes altogether a seeing eye, a hearing ear, a perceiving sense, that takes most vivid cognizance of things in either heaven, earth, or hell.—Whedon.
—Invisible armies guard the servants of God while they seem most forsaken of earthly aid, most exposed to certain dangers. If the eyes of our faith be as open as those of our sense, to see angels as well as Syrians, we cannot be appalled with the most unequal terms of hostility. Those blessed spirits are ready either to rescue our bodies, or to carry up our souls to blessedness.—Bp. Hall.
2 Kings 6:18-23. The Divine treatment of sin.
1. Sin blinds the soul so that it does not justly apprehend the true character of what it sees.
2. Sin causes the soul to wander in darkness and error.
3. The wicked are always eager to take advantage of the mistakes of their opponents.
4. God spares the sinner, though he is completely in His power.
5. Divine mercy has made every provision for the present and future welfare of the sinner.
6. The Divine clemency should disarm hostility, and promote amity and peace among men.
2 Kings 6:18. The Lord smites with blindness those who fight against Him, not in order that they may remain blind, but in order that they may truly see, after they shall have observed how far they have strayed, and shall have recognized the error of their way.
2 Kings 6:23. The king of Israel has done by his feast what he could not have done by his sword. The bands of Syria will no more come by way of ambush or incursion into the bounds of Israel. Never did a charitable act go away without the retribution of a blessing. In doing some good to our enemies, we do most good to ourselves. God cannot but love in us this imitation of His mercy, who bids His sun shine, and His rain fall, where He is most provoked; and that love is never fruitless.