Elisha's service is not confined to Israel and the Land. Thus we read he " came to Damascus," and is found amongst the Gentiles. Benhadad, the king of Syria, is sick. In his sickness he recognizes and honors the man of God. In his prosperity the king had sent a great host to capture him: in his sickness he sends a great gift to honor him. In health he seeks to encompass him for his destruction: in sickness he seeks to propitiate him for his assistance. Driven by need he recognizes and owns the God that hitherto he had despised. Such is man, and such our hearts. The world, when faced with some dire calamity, will, in an outward way, recognize and turn to God. Alas! even the believer may walk carelessly, with little reference to God, when all things run smoothly, and circumstances are prosperous, and health is good. But in our troubles we have to turn to God, and well it is that we do turn to God and have such a God of grace to turn to; though far better, like Enoch of old, to walk with God, and thus, like the Apostle be able to say, " I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need."
Elisha was evidently one who, in his day, walked with the Lord, and received communications from the Lord. Thus he can say, in answer to the messenger, " Thou mayest certainly recover." There was nothing fatal in the disease. Howbeit, the prophet adds, " The Lord hath showed me that he shall surely die." Thus Elisha intimates that Benhadad is going to die, though by other means than the sickness.
As he delivers this message the prophet is visibly affected. Foreseeing all the misery that is coming upon the people of God, he weeps. Hazael, contemplating the murder of his master, feels uneasy in the presence of the man of God. His conscience makes him ashamed. He inquires, " Why weepeth my lord? Elisha's answer clearly shows that he is not moved to tears by the illness of the king, or the wickedness of Hazael, but on account of the suffering that God's people will endure at the hands of Hazael. Elisha closes his public ministry by weeping over a people who were unmoved by all his miracles of grace. Thus he foreshadows his far greater Master who, in the dosing days of His ministry of grace, wept over the city that had rejected His grace and spurned His love. One, too, who could say to the women of Jerusalem, " Weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck."
In like spirit, Elisha, knowing the future career of Hazael, foretells the depths of evil and cruelty to which he will sink. " I know," says the prophet, " the evil thou wilt do unto the children of Israel: their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women with child."
Hazael protests that he is not a dog that he should act with such callous brutality. Probably his protest is entirely sincere. Such deeds might have been foreign to his thoughts, and even abhorrent to his feeling at the moment. He did not know his own heart. He was not aware that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. As with ourselves, too often, he little realized the depth of wickedness and cruelty in the heart that is held in check by many a safeguard until, suddenly aroused by circumstances which give the occasion, it blazes forth in all its horror. Instead of asking, " Is thy servant a dog?" far better would it have been for Hazael, as for ourselves, to take the ground of the Syrophenician woman who owned that she was indeed a dog, only to discover that there is grace in the heart of God even for a dog (Mark 7:24-3024And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid. 25For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet: 26The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. 27But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. 28And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. 29And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter. 30And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed. (Mark 7:24‑30)).
In Hazael's history the immediate circumstances were ripe to manifest the wickedness of his heart. Thus Elisha simply answers, " The Lord hath showed me that thou shalt be king over Syria." Without further word, Hazael " departed from Elisha, and came to his master." He acts the hypocrite before the king, giving part of Elisha's message, but keeping back the fact that he would surely die. The opportunity has come for this murderer. As prime minister he has access to the king, and the illness offered a favorable opportunity to an unscrupulous man to usurp the throne. The idea of wielding great power, as the reigning monarch, had such irresistible attraction to Hazael that he is ready to contemplate even murder to gain his end. The sickness and weakness of the king made murder appear so easy. The sickness would be such a simple way to cover the murder. All would know that the king was ill, and fearing he might not recover had sent a prime minister to the prophet to inquire if he should die. No one need know what Elisha had said to Hazael. What more easy than to take a thick damp cloth and suffocate the helpless king, already weakened by sickness, and then give out to the world that the sickness had terminated fatally.
So it came to pass; the prime minister becomes a murderer, and the murderer a usurper of the throne. The man that reaches a throne by murder will not hesitate to seek to maintain that throne by violence and cruelty. As Elisha foresees Hazael will carry the fire and the sword among the people of God.