The Shunammite woman’s land restored
8
📚Then Elisha spoke to the woman whose son he had restored to life 📖, saying, “Arise, and go with your household, and stay for a time wherever you can stay, for the LORD has called for a famine 📖; and also it will come on the land for seven years”. 2 📚And the woman arose and acted in accordance with the word of the man of God, and she went with her household and stayed in the land of the Philistines for seven years.3 📚And it came about at the end of the seven years that the woman returned from the land of the Philistines, and she went to cry out to the king for her house and for her land. 4 📚And the king 📖 was talking with Gehazi the servant of the man of God, saying, “Please tell me all the great things that Elisha has done”. 5 📚And it so happened that as he was telling the king how he had restored a dead body to life, that suddenly the woman whose son he had restored to life, cried out to the king for her house and for her land. And Gehazi said, “My lord, O king, this is the woman, and this is her son whom Elisha restored to life”. 6 📚And when the king asked the woman, she told him. So the king appointed an officer for her, saying, “Restore all that was hers, and all the produce of the field from the day that she left the land until now”.
Elisha’s mission to Hazael
7 📚And Elisha came to Damascus. And Ben-Hadad the king of Syria was sick, and it was told him, saying, “The man of God has come here.
8:7 In this foreign capital Elisha was famous for his miraculous deeds.⚜
8 📚And the king said to Hazael, “Take a present in your hand, and go, meet the man of God and ask the LORD through him, saying, “Will I recover from this disease?”
8:8 Interesting that this idolatrous king wanted to consult Jehovah the God of Israel. The story of Namaan, the commander of his army, perhaps had a profound effect on him.⚜
9 📚So Hazael went to meet him and took a present 📖 with him, some of every good thing in Damascus, forty camels’ loads, and came and stood before him and said, “Your son Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, has sent me to you, saying, “Will I recover from this disease?”
10 📚And Elisha said to him, “Go, say to him, ‘You may certainly recover 📖,’ however the LORD has revealed to me that he will surely die”. 11 📚And he fixed his gaze steadily, until he was ashamed. And the man of God wept.
12 📚And Hazael said, “Why is my lord weeping?” And he answered, “Because I know the evil that you will do to the children of Israel. You will set their strongholds on fire, and you will kill their young men with the sword, and will dash their children down, and rip open their pregnant women”.
8:12 2 Kings 10:32-33; 2 Kings 12:17; 13:3, 7; Amos 1:3-4. Hazael is a terrible warning of the depths to which a man can sink when he refuses the control of God (Jer 17:9).⚜
13 📚And Hazael said, “But what! Is your servant a dog that he would do this great thing?” And Elisha answered, “The Lord has revealed to me that you will be king over Syria”.
8:13 1 Kings 19:15. God would use Hazael’s elevation to the throne to punish His disobedient people.⚜
14 📚So he left Elisha and came to his master, who said to him, “What did Elisha say to you?” And he answered, “He told me that you would surely recover”. 15 📚And it came about the next day that he took a thick cloth and dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that he died, and Hazael reigned in his place.
Judah’s evil king Jehoram
16 📚And in the fifth year of Joram 📖 the son of Ahab king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah, Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah began to reign. 17 📚He was thirty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem. 18 📚And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel 📖, as the house of Ahab had done, for his wife was Ahab’s daughter 📖. And he did evil in the sight of the LORD. 19 📚Yet, for the sake of his servant David, the LORD would not destroy Judah, since he promised him to give to him, and to his descendants, a perpetual light.
20 📚In his days Edom 📖 revolted from under the hand of Judah, and made a king over themselves. 21 📚So Joram 📖 went over to Zair, and all the chariots went with him; and he rose at night and attacked the Edomites who surrounded him, and the captains of the chariots; and the people fled to their tents. 22 📚Yet Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah to this day. Then Libnah revolted at the same time.
23 📚And the rest of the acts of Joram and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah? 24 📚And Joram slept 📖 with his ancestors and was buried among his ancestors in the city of David 📖, and Ahaziah his son reigned in his place.
Judah’s evil King Ahaziah
25 📚In the twelfth year of Joram, the son of Ahab king of Israel, Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah began to reign. 26 📚Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he began to reign and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri 📖 king of Israel. 27 📚And he walked in the way of the house of Ahab, and did evil in the sight of the LORD, as the house of Ahab had done; for he was a son-in-law of the house of Ahab.
8:27 Verse 18; 2 Chron 18:1.⚜
28 📚And he went with Joram, the son of Ahab, to the war against Hazael 📖, king of Syria, in Ramoth-Gilead, and the Syrians wounded Joram. 29 📚And king Joram went back to Jezreel to be healed of the wounds which the Syrians had given him at Ramah 📖, when he fought against Hazael king of Syria. And Ahaziah the son of Jehoram, king of Judah, went down to see Joram, the son of Ahab, in Jezreel, because he was sick.