by
Damien F. Mackey
“Then Hazael left Elisha and returned to his master. When Ben-Hadad asked,
‘What did Elisha say to you?’ Hazael replied, ‘He
told me that you would certainly recover’. But the next day he took a
thick cloth, soaked it in water and spread it
over the king’s face, so that he died. Then
Hazael succeeded him as king”.
Death of Ben-Hadad
But he had no apparent aspirations to the throne, and, as a commoner, he
certainly had no likely prospects of becoming the king of Syria.
When the prophet Elisha came to Damascus at the time when the Syrian king
was ill, he encountered Hazael, who had been sent by Ben-Hadad to enquire about
the king’s health prospects (2 Kings 8:7-10).
Elisha went to Damascus, and
Ben-Hadad king of Aram [Syria] was ill. When the king was told, ‘The man
of God has come all the way up here’, he said to Hazael, “Take a
gift with you and go to meet the man of God.
Consult the Lord through him; ask him, ‘Will I recover from this
illness?’”
Hazael went to meet Elisha,
taking with him as a gift forty camel-loads of all the finest wares of
Damascus. He went in and stood before him, and said, “Your son Ben-Hadad king
of Aram has sent me to ask, ‘Will I recover from this illness?’”
Elisha answered, “Go and say to
him, ‘You will certainly
recover.’ Nevertheless, the Lord has revealed to me that he
will in fact die.”
Here, the holy prophet appears to be playing a duplicitous game with
Ben-Hadad, himself one of the most duplicitous kings of the Old Testament.
The next passage has the stamp of an eye-witness account all over
it (vv. 11-12):
He stared at him with a fixed
gaze until Hazael was embarrassed. Then the man of God began to weep.
‘Why is my lord weeping?’ asked
Hazael.
‘Because I know the harm you
will do to the Israelites’, he answered. ‘You will set fire to their fortified
places, kill their young men with the sword, dash their little
children to the ground, and rip open their pregnant women’.
The parochial Elisha expresses not a word of sympathy for Ben-Hadad, an
idolatrous and long-time enemy of Israel. There is nothing at all to indicate
that the prophet had come to Damascus to visit, and to sympathise with, the
ailing king. Why would he? “Elisha went to Damascus, and
Ben-Hadad king of Aram [Syria] was ill” - two separate things.
But the prophet does weep for the dire fate of his own people (cf. John
11:35).
Hazael, for his part, is stunned by Elisha’s comment about him, and he queries
it (v.3): “Hazael said, ‘How could your servant, a mere dog, accomplish
such a feat?’”
It was common in ancient times for someone not of royal blood, who
ultimately became king, to refer to himself as ‘son of nobody’ (e.g. King
Nabonidus of Babylon), and that is basically what Hazael meant by labelling
himself ‘a mere dog’.
Elisha replied (v. 13): “‘The Lord has shown me that you will
become king of Aram’, answered Elisha”.
Hazael took Elisha’s prognostication to Ben-Hadad and then snuffed out
the king’s life, thereby becoming king as had been foretold (vv. 14-15):
Then Hazael left Elisha and
returned to his master. When Ben-Hadad asked, ‘What did Elisha say to you?’
Hazael replied, ‘He told me that you would certainly recover’. But the
next day he took a thick cloth, soaked it in water and spread it over the
king’s face, so that he died. Then Hazael succeeded him as king.
There is much discussion about whether or not Elisha lied to Ben-Hadad.
At first sight, it appears to be a blatant lie:
Will I recover from this
illness?’”
Elisha answered, “Go and say to
him, ‘You will certainly
recover.’ Nevertheless, the Lord has revealed to me that he
will in fact die.”
But Elisha was confining himself to answering only the specific question
of Ben-Hadad: ‘Will I recover from this illness?’
The answer to that question was, Yes, ‘You will certainly recover’.
The illness was not terminal.
The king’s
subsequent death was a different matter altogether, having nothing to do with
the actual illness. Elisha foresaw that as well.
How?
Undoubtedly
from the terms of The Sinai Commission (I Kings 19:15-18):
The Sinai
Commission
The Lord said to
[Elijah], ‘Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you
get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. Also, anoint Jehu son
of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel
Meholah to succeed you as prophet. Jehu will put to death any who
escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape
the sword of Jehu. Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose
knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him’.
The order of anointing
laid out in The Sinai Commission was: Hazael king over Aram; Jehu son of
Nimshi king over Israel; and Elisha son of Shaphat as prophet.
But presumably, when
Elisha came to Damascus, he had already been anointed by Elijah and told by him
that Hazael was to become King of Aram (Syria). Elijah may have delegated the
task of anointing Hazael as king to his successor prophet, Elisha.
Consequently, Elisha had come to Damascus to see how things currently stood.
A burning question now
arises: Why had the Lord chosen a pagan Syrian commoner to become king, and
to eradicate pagan Baal worship?
A secondary question might
be: Why did Elijah prefer for Elisha to engage with Hazael?
And various other questions
arise as well. For instance, why would Ben-Hadad have so earnestly, with lavish
presents, sought out the prognostication of Elisha, a Hebrew prophet? Elisha
was no venal Balaam, who had made a fortune soothsaying for gullible pagan
kings like Balak of Moab.
Who was this Hazael the
Syrian?
Firstly, we know that Hazael
was an historical reality.
The relevant part reads:
Tel Dan Stele - New World
Encyclopedia
….
[. And] Hadad made me—myself—king.
1. And Hadad went in front of
me[, and] I departed from ...........[.................]
2. of my kings. And I killed
two [power]ful kin[gs], who harnessed two thou[sand cha-]
3. riots and two thousand
horsemen. [I killed Jo]ram son of [Ahab]
4. king of Israel, and I
killed [Achaz]yahu son of [Joram kin]g
5. of the House of David.
….
Biblical parallels
The Tel Dan inscription
apparently coincides with certain events recorded in the Old
Testament,
though the poor state of preservation of the fragments has engendered much
contention on this issue. The most direct parallel between the Tel Dan writings
and the Bible presumes that the author is indeed Hazael. In this case, "my
father" refers to Ben-Hadad II, whom the Bible speaks of as being ill
prior to Hazael's accession to the throne. While the Bible attributes the
killing of Joram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah to the military commander and
future king of Israel Jehu, the Tel Dan inscription
gives the credit to its own author. One way of interpreting this discrepancy is
that Hazael may have seen Jehu as his agent. Alternatively, Hazael may simply
have claimed credit for Jehu's deeds, or the Bible may attribute to Jehu deeds
actually done by Hazael.
In the Bible, 2
Kings 8:7-15
tells how the Israelite prophet Elisha appointed Hazael to
become king of Syria in order to punish Israel for her sins. While war raged
between Syria on one side and the combined forces of Israel and Judah on the
other, the present Syrian king, Ben-Hadad, lay ill in Damascus. To obtain a favorable
prognosis, he sent Hazael with a generous gift to Elisha, who happened to be in
the area:
Hazael went to meet
Elisha, taking with him as a gift of forty camel-loads of all the finest wares
of Damascus. He went in and stood before him, and said, "Your son
Ben-Hadad king of Aram has sent me to ask, 'Will I recover from this
illness?'" Elisha answered, "Go and say to him, 'You will certainly
recover'; but the Lord has revealed to me
that he will in fact die."
Elisha then prophesied
that Hazael himself would become king and wreak havoc against Israel,
predicting that "You will set fire to their fortified places, kill their
young men with the sword, dash their little children to the ground, and rip
open their pregnant women." Hazael returned to Ben-Hadad and reported:
"He told me that you would certainly recover." The next day, however,
Hazael murdered Ben-Hadad by suffocating him and succeeded him as king.
Elisha soon commanded the
Israelite commander Jehu to usurp the throne
of Israel. Jehu immediately complied, killing both Joram of Israel and his
ally, Ahaziah of Judah, in the process (2 Kings 8:28 and 2 Kings 9:15-28). Jehu
was hailed by the biblical writers as a champion of God who destroyed the
Temple of Baal in the Israelite
capital of Samaria and did away with
the descendants of King Ahab—including Joram, his
mother Jezebel, and 60 of his kinsmen.
However, the Tel Dan Stele
appears to put events in a very different light, with Hazael himself claiming
credit for the deaths of Joram and Ahaziah. In any case, the biblical account
admits that Jehu's army was defeated by Hazael "throughout all of the
territories of Israel." This makes Hazael's capture of Tel Dan—the site of
a major Israelite shrine—very likely. ….
I think that delegation
may be the key here.
Elijah had anointed Elisha
to succeed him as prophet, and may also have sent him to Damascus in his place.
Elisha, for his part, would sometimes delegate his servant, Gehazi, to take
care of business. And Hazael may have commanded Jehu to slay those kings, but
had, as his superior, perhaps, taken the credit for it.
The reason why the lord
had chosen Hazael the Syrian was that he was now a full-on convert to Yahwism,
owing to Elisha’s miraculous intercession for him, as Na’aman, the leper, having
been ‘baptized’ in the holy waters of the River Jordan.
The prophet Elijah may thus
have sent Elisha to the Syrian owing to this earlier vital connection between
the pair.
Hazael fits as Na’aman in
terms of contemporaneity; as a commander of the Syrian army; a
trusted right-hand man of the king; offering generous presents (cf.
2 Kings 5:15; 8:7-9).
Moreover, if Jewish legend
is correct, it may have been Na’aman who had fatally shot with an arrow
Elijah’s arch-enemy, King Ahab of Israel:
“According to Rabbinic
teaching, Naaman was the archer who drew his bow at a venture and mortally
wounded Ahab, King of Northern Israel.
This event is alluded to in 2 Kings 5:1: "for through him GOD had granted
victory to Aram" (2 Kings 5:1)”.
King Ahab and his wife,
Zezebel, were determined Baalists (I Kings 16:31-33):
And as if it had
been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, he
took as his wife Jezebel daughter of King Ethbaal of the Sidonians, and went
and served Baal, and worshipped him.
He erected an
altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. Ahab also
made a sacred pole. Ahab did more to provoke the anger of the Lord,
the God of Israel, than had all the kings of Israel who were before him.
One may
object that, if Hazael was Na’aman, why does Hazael give praise to the god,
Hadad, in the Tel Dan inscription,
Hadad made me—myself—king.
And Hadad went in front of
me
when he had said to Elisha
(v. 17), ‘… please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair
of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and
sacrifices to any other god but the Lord’.
King David, as Dadusha,
had also acknowledged Hadad (Adad) in his Victory Stele.
Since David and (now)
Na’aman were both monotheistic, serving Yahweh, perhaps they transferred the local
name of Hadad, the supreme god of the Syrians, to the Supreme God. With the
Syrians, the god Sin can also be rendered as El, a name that belonged both to
the God of Israel but was also applied to the Moon god, Sin.
Another possibility, in
the case of Dadusha (David), is that his eventually apostate son, Solomon, Dadusha’s
son Ibal-piel, had later erected the monument on behalf of his father.
Pharaoh Akhnaton would
have similar sorts of ambivalence difficulties when attempting to present
monotheism to the Egyptians, using the concept of the Aton, which had already emerged
back in the Twelfth Dynasty.
Conversion can bring with
it practical difficulties.
Even today it can mean, in
some places, immediate execution.
And for Hazael, as
right-hand man to the king, there was this awkward problem, which he tells to
Elisha (vv. 18-19):
‘But may
the Lord forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master
enters the temple of Rimmon to bow down and he is leaning on my arm and I
have to bow there also—when I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may
the Lord forgive your servant for this’.
‘Go in peace’, Elisha
said.
As to why King Ben-Hadad would
have so earnestly, with lavish presents, sought out the prognostication of
Elisha, a Hebrew prophet? - well, he had been the one who had permitted his
trusted official, Na’aman, to seek a cure from the prophet (5:5-6):
‘By all means, go’,
the king of Aram replied. ‘I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So
Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand
shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing. The letter that he took to
the king of Israel read: ‘With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to
you so that you may cure him of his leprosy’.
Consequently
the Syrian king, Ben-Hadad, would have seen, first-hand, the effect of the
miracle cure upon his loyal servant, Na’aman.
Nevertheless,
the same Na’aman (Hazael) would kill Ben-Hadad as he lay helpless upon his
sick-bed.
Did
the prophet Elisha deliberately put the idea of regicide into his mind, knowing
that it had been decreed at Sinai that Hazael was to become the King of Aram [Syria]?:
‘Nevertheless, the Lord has revealed to me that he will in
fact die’.
Elisha was no shrinking violet. Had not it also been decreed at Sinai
that, “Elisha
will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu”. That holy priests were
capable of killing recalcitrant kings is apparent from the example of the great
Samuel, in the case of King Agag of the Amalekites (I Samuel 15:32-33).
Hazael now knew that it
was God’s will that he become king over the Syrians.
And he may well have known
even that Ben-Hadad had long ago been on the Lord’s to-kill list, but that King
Ahab had, like King Saul, failed (I Kings 20:42); “He said to the king, “This
is what the LORD says: ‘You have set free a man I had determined should die.
Therefore it is your life for his life, your people for his people’.””
Na’aman/Hazael, who might
already have been responsible for the death of King Ahab, will now finish what
Ahab had been expect to do, finish off Ben-Hadad.
The wheels of The Sinai
Commission were now in notion.
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