And the men of the city said unto Elisha.
The bitter waters sweetened-Elisha the healer
Jericho, a city of high antiquity, was one of the most important in the land of Palestine. Its walls were so broad, that at least one person--Rahab--had her house upon them. Silver and gold were so abundant that one man--Achan--could stealthily appropriate 200 shekels. Between the city and the far East, there had existed for years, before its occupation by the children of Israel, a wide and extensive commerce, of which the “goodly Babylonish garment,” purloined in the act of dishonesty just mentioned, may be accepted as proof. The New Testament notices of Jericho are full of interest. The lonely limestone rocks behind the city formed the scene of our Lord’s temptation. It was down the banks of the Jordan, at Jericho, the Master had previously gone to be baptized. Three times in Jericho did our Blessed Lord give sight to the blind. Once in Jericho, the descendant of Rahab the “hostess” accepted the hospitality of Zaccheus the publican. For five hundred and fifty years a doom had lain upon Jericho. She had been the first city to resist the advance of Israel under the leadership of Joshua. She was therefore not only condemned to fall “before the captain of the Lord’s host,” and amid the much ceremony with which we are all familiar--the annihilation was accompanied with a terrible curse. The man who ventured to rebuild Jericho was to lay the foundation in his first-born, and in his youngest son to set up the gates. Josephus describes the district in his day as quite a fairyland, with its palms and roses, and fragrant balsams and thickly dotted pleasure grounds--a perfect garden and paradise of Eastern beauty. At the period of the text, however, things were very different. The spring was still suffering from the old doom pronounced against Jericho, it was noxious, unfit for drinking, prejudicial to the soil: “The men of the city said unto Elisha “--who was at this time residing here in the sacred college--“Behold. I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my Lord seeth, but the water is naught, and the ground barren.”
1. The Gospel is “a new cruse” for the world. Christianity comes not in “the oldness of the letter” and the law, but in “the newness of the Spirit.” The Gospel, too, begins at the origin of the evil--the heart--that is “the spring of the waters.” What is needed is “a clean heart and a right spirit”; the poison is at the fountain-head, and must be dealt with there. Once again, like the salt in the cruse, how unlikely and insufficient at first sight the simple Gospel appears for the world’s conversion. The words with which Elisha accompanied tile casting in of the salt, and the consequent working of the miracle, are very noticeable: “Thus saith the Lord,” exclaimed the prophet, “I have healed these waters.” How the change was effected, we cannot tell. Means were employed to show that God in His greatest works has a place for the instrumentality of man. Elisha “cast in” the salt.
2. In the redemption of a lost world, God has room for the energies of believing men. “As ye go, preach.” “Sow beside all waters.” But God is the grand agent. The power of the healing waters comes from the Great Physician. “The new cruse” and “the salt” in it, both are God’s sufficient honour for poor sinful men to be their administrators--let God be “All in All.” There was no mistaking the result of the Divine interposition by the hand of Elisha in relation to the bitter waters of Jericho. “Thus saith the Lord, there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land.”
3. The figure is that of the Gospel again, both in its influence on society at large and the individual believing heart. Put “the new cruse” and “the salt” once really in, and a new heart leads to a new life, and the world at large, once its springs are really touched, feels it through all its tributaries and ramifications. What has Christianity not done for the social life of man? It has abolished polygamy. It has put honour on the marriage tie. It has created lazar-houses for the sick, and asylums for the penitent profligate. What has it not done for the cause of civil liberty? It has struck the fetters from the negro. It has proclaimed freedom of conscience. What has Christianity not done for the commercial enterprise and the outward prosperity of the world? The missionary is the pioneer of the merchant. (H. J. Howat.)
Cleansing the fountain
Elisha began his work as a leader of the church of his time by a deed of mercy. Elisha made no claim that he had healed the waters himself, and he did not pretend that there was any power in the salt to work the change. He was simply God’s minister, and the salt was used simply as a symbol of God’s presence in the cleansing of the fountain. We have in this cleansing of the fountain suggested to us: that a man’s surroundings may be very pleasant, and his temporal circumstances such as to cause the envy of his neighbours, and yet his life may be embittered and his career utterly despoiled because of some malady of the spirit that takes away his peace, and ruins his happiness. Elisha assumed that it would be useless to change the water in the stream, for the evil fountain left unchanged would continue to pour forth its poisoned waters. So he went to the spring, and cast in the healing salt at the fountain-h cad. We are reminded of the words of Jesus where He declares that “A good man, out of the good treasure of heart, bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil mare out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.” And again our Saviour says, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies”: and He adds, “These are the things which defile a man.” The poisonous stream of conduct is poured forth because the heart is evil. It is one of Aristotle’s axioms that the goodness or badness of anything is determined from its principle: hence it is that we call that a good tree that hath a good root, that a good house that hath a good foundation, that good money that is made of good metal, that good cloth that is made of good wool; but a good man is not so called because he has good hands, a good head, good words, a good voice, and all the lineaments of his body similar and composed, as it were, in a geometrical symmetry, but because he has a good heart, good affections, good principles of grace, whereby all his faculties, both of body and of soul, are always in a readiness to do that which is right. Plutarch tells us that Apollodorus dreamed one night that the Scythians took him and tortured him, and as they were putting him to death in the boiling cauldron, his heart said unto him, “It is I that have brought thee to this sorrow; I am the cause of all the mischief that hath befallen thee.” And it is certainly true that the heart of man is the forge and the anvil where all the actions of his life are hammered out. You must give your whole heart to God and obey Him in every way, or else all pretensions to religion are hypocrisy. The secret of Christianity’s great power in the world is in this transformation of the heart. Elisha made sure that the water in the stream would be clean and pure, by cleansing the fountain. Christ makes sure that the new life of the man who truly comes to Him shall be good, by cleansing the heart. (L. A. Banks, D. D.)
Elisha healing the water, and the means he used
What a true picture is here delineated of things on earth! What a living sample of its present state! Look where you will, go where you please, there is something pleasant and something unpleasant. May we not hereby learn how sin has defaced this fair creation, so that nowhere can perfection be seen. And now, therefore, the Lord will bring good out of evil. He will make this city a resting-place for his prophets.
I. In what part of the waters did Elisha exert his power? It was the spring. This conveys a deep spiritual truth. We can easily perceive that, had Elisha’s attention been directed to the water only a few yards from the fountain-head, his labour would have been for nought. As fast as he sweetened the running water, the bitter fountain would still pour out its venom. But we do not so readily see and allow that, except the corruption of human nature be attacked at the fountain-head, the heart, all other remedial measures can only work a passing effect, since the bitter stream of innate depravity will still run out.
II. The means Elisha used. “And he said, Bring me a new cruse,” etc. Salt is a conspicuous article in Scripture. It was a pledge of fidelity, and is so still in the East. If you once cat salt with an Arab, his life is pledged for your life, Some few grains of salt and bread pass the lips, and then the words are used--“By this salt and bread I will not betray thee”; and in the Book of Chronicles we read--“The Lord God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David by a covenant of salt” (2 Chronicles 13:5). Salt was also a sign cf maintenance. Thus, in the Book of Ezra, the adversaries of Judah, in stating their case to Artaxerxes the king, say, “Now because we have maintenance from the king’s palace” (Ezra 4:14), which is literally, as rendered in the margin, “because we are salted with the salt of the palace”--i.e., supported at the king’s charge. When a native of the East means to say he is fed by any one, he uses the expression, “I eat such an one’s salt.” Salt was also a constant accompaniment of the ceremonial law. “Every sacrifice shall be salted with salt,” are the words of Jesus; and it is in this sense that we find our Lord and His apostles using salt figuratively for grace, saying, “If the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith will ye season it? “ (Mark 9:49; Mark 9:1). Thus the means used by Elisha to heal the waters point to another deep spiritual truth--they remind every one of this inquiry, Have ye salt in yourselves? Is grace working in your heart, “mortifying your evil and corrupt affections, and inclining you daily to exercise all virtue and godliness of living”? But there is another feature in the means here used which may convey a useful hint--they were contrary to nature, contrary to any means that man would have employed to produce a like effect. Salt, we know, renders water bitter and nauseous instead of sweet and pleasant to drink, and naturally, therefore, the salt would have served but to increase the brackishness of the fountain. The fact, then, of Elisha using a remedy opposed to the effect wanted, not only went to make the miracle more evident, more palpable, but it also confirmed a stumbling truth--namely, that grace and nature are contrary the one to the other--that the ways of God (so far as seen in this fallen world) and the ways of man in curing an evil are altogether different; both will use means, but the means which it pleases Jehovah to use are not those which man would choose or even think of. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8). Surely these opposites--these unlikely means fetching a good end--are meant to teach us something. What can it be? They were intended to humble man, and to bring him into submission to the righteousness of God. “God chooses foolish things of the world,” or things foolish in the world’s sight, to “confound the wise” (1 Corinthians 1:27). (G. L. Glyn.)
The pleasant and the painful
I. Life as it is. That is, with the pleasant and the painful associated. Now, this is a picture of every man’s life.
1. It is so materially. How much we have in this material world that is pleasant to our senses, and healthful and strengthening to our bodies; but amidst all there is the painful. There are malarial swamps, pestilential winds, roaring earthquakes, and poisonous minerals and plants, etc. etc.
2. It is so intellectually. There is much in the region of intellect that is pleasant--bubbling springs of thought, tempting regions of inquiry, bright visions and hypotheses bespangling the heavens. But with all this there is much that is painful--dense clouds of ignorance hanging over the scene, hideous doubts howling in the ear, terrific chasms yawning at the feet.
3. It is so socially. How much in social life is pleasant--the friendly grasps, the affectionate greetings, the sweet amenities of those with whom we meet and mingle. But with all this there is much that is painful--social unchastities, hypocrisies, frauds, insolences.
4. It is so religiously. The religious, where the idea of God fills the horizon, there is the infinitely pleasant But in this wonderful region how much of the painful do we experience, what temptation to doubt, what infidelity and blasphemy often assail us, and bring over us the horror of a “great darkness”.
II. Life as it might become. The painful and the pleasant separated. Elisha here separates the painful from the pleasant. Two remarks here.
I. The separation was a happy one. He did not take away the pleasant from the painful, but the painful from the pleasant.
2. The separation was a supernatural one. “And he said, Bring me a new cruse,” etc. The Gospel is the true” cruse” for separating the painful from the pleasant in the experience of human life. Thank God for the pleasant in your life. Seek earnestly that Gospel cruse whose salt alone can rid your life of all that is deleterious and distressing. (Homilist.)