A good way to start the Next 500 Entries, I think:


The Second Book of Kings? Can any good thing come out of the Tanakh (Old Testament)? Well — as my favorite disciple might say, "Come and see!"*

Again, I feel that sometimes — indeed, most of the time — commentary can be superfluous to particular miniature portraits in the Tanakh and the New Testament. This time, I want to point at some bits about this story that struck me personally, but again, I invite you to ponder the narrative on your own. Christian, if you cannot see the surprising relevance of this passage to the life you are supposed to be leading this very day, this week, well... nothing I can add is going to cause the moral to dawn on you.

This passage was touched upon (in another context) in an iTunes podcast of Ravi Zacharias, to whose preaching I am attracted by the more intellectual slant he takes, and the sometimes surprising angles he takes on various bits. Of course, every time I pick up a new evangelical favorite, there is a certain probation period I have to suffer through, waiting for them to commit some God-awful act or actions. I've been lucky — Mr. Zacharias is thus far merely a solid expositor.

Anyhoo — the passage: Israel's Northern Kingdom is in tatters, and teetering. The prophet Elisha (often seen by laypersons as a sort-of poor man's Elijah) is running rampant, delivering words from God to whomever will hear. As we open the pages, the Arameans have made camp, throttling Samaria, and its denizens are truly desperate. The economy is beyond collapsed, and food is basically gone. Yet there comes a day when Elisha says (I am paraphrasing) that the very next day, food will be both cheap and plentiful.

Many are understandably skeptical.

Cut to outside the city gates. We encounter yet another miniature portrait (like Gideon meeting the Angel in the Threshing-Room, or Jesus on the beach with Peter and John, or Mary fussing over Jesus so that he will make more wine for the wedding) that make me wonder about the Bible as a work of religious literature. This story seems, more often than not, not about the Great People, but about the small:

There were 4 men, lepers, outside the city gate.

They said to one another, "Why should we sit here, waiting for death? If we decide to go into the town, what with the famine in the town, we shall die there. If we just sit here, still we die. Come — let us desert to the Aramean camp. If they let us live, we shall live; and if they put us to death, we shall only die."

It is hard to argue with their logic.

They set out at twilight for the Aramean camp.

But when they came to the edge of the camp, no one was there.

The LORD had caused the Aramean camp to hear a sound of chariots... the din of a huge army. ...and they fled headlong in the twilight, abandoning their tents and horses and asses — the camp, just as it was — as they fled for their lives.

The oddly-fonted "LORD" always catches my attention, indicating as it does merely the place where the Jewish scribe would write God's name, were it considered polite or appropriate to do so. Yet instead, we find the elliptical "YHWH," or similar deferential label, the scribes never deigning to write His name. More than a few modern Jewish blogs use "G-d" in a similar fashion.

A reference to a being, a person, whose name is even so "other," or holy, that it may be known, but not written. Fascinating.

Something happened in that camp, from some source not fully comprehensible.

When those lepers came to the edge of the camp, they went into one of the tents and ate and drank; then they carried off silver and gold and clothing from there and buried it. They came back and went into another tent, and they carried off what was there and buried it.

Ka-CHING! Jackpot!

Then they said to one another,

"We are not doing right. This is a day of good news, and we are keeping silent! If we wait until the light of morning, we shall be guilty."

"Come; let us go and inform the king's palace!"

Take note of the sudden and surprising gospel advice in this back-water book of the Old Testament.

The enemy keeping the Israelites at bay had suddenly been turned into an empty camp, a Potemkin Village — and more: the enemy's camp had been turned from an instrument of horror and suffering (read the previous chapter in 2nd Kings for an inkling of what the siege imposed on the citizenry) into the very tool of salvation and restoration.

Though the citizens were afraid of the camp, there was nothing there to fear anymore. It was an illusion.

I will admit that my chosen screen-name, "Wry Mouth," fits in at least one way: I have an unnaturally high appreciation for irony, and so certainly, I am attracted to that characteristic of the God in the Bible. Our God seems to find it quite interesting to use the weak to match up against the strong, or the loser to win, or the villain to unwittingly save his victims in the act of trying to destroy them.

And here again, four lepers are chosen — outcasts, and even they knew they were outcasts. Yet they'd formed their own little community, and as they act upon their reasoning they become the instruments through which God delivers some very welcome news to many long-suffering people.



* cf. John 1:46, where Philip simply mimics Jesus' earlier comment in John 1:39.