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Syrophenician woman (Matthew 15:23); and so do we in our mistaken notions of
what is becoming or unbecoming too often hinder souls from personal contact with
our LORD. But Elisha would not suffer Gehazi, for he knew that her soul was in
anguish, although as God had not made him to know its cause, he was ignorant of
what its issue would be.
It is this, we feel persuaded, which explains much in the conduct of Elisha - such as
his first mission of Gehazi, which otherwise would seem strange, if not
unintelligible. But surely never was Elisha more humbled than on the eve of the
greatest miracle wrought by his hands; never did the poverty of his humanity, as
merely an instrument in the hand of God, appear in more clear light than by the side
of the help which Jehovah was about to send. And Elisha himself gave vent to these
feelings when he spoke with such sorrow of Jehovah having hidden it from him, and
not revealed it.^180
But this we may say, that never was legend so constructed. To every thoughtful
reader such purely human traits of felt weakness and of ignorance not only of the
future, but of the present and the past, must carry instructive conviction of the truth
of this narrative, full of the miraculous though it be.
The first words which the Shunammite spoke to Elisha revealed the state of the case.
They were not an entreaty of help; they contained not even a suggestion of it. And
yet they were the strongest appeal that could have been made, since they laid hold on
the faithfulness of God to His word and promise. The commission of the prophet to
Gehazi to hasten on and lay Elisha's staff upon the face of the dead child seems at
first difficult to understand. It is quite true that this was not an ordinary staff, but, as
it were, the symbol of prophetic authority and rule, with all that this implied, like the
staff of Moses (comp. here Exodus 4:17; 17:5, 9; Numbers 20:8, 9). But it is
impossible to believe that Elisha expected either that the staff would restore life to
the dead, or that Gehazi would be able to perform such a miracle; or, on the other
hand, that Elisha acted under misapprehension, as Nathan had spoken to David when
still uninstructed as to the will of God (2 Samuel 7:3, etc.); or else that the prophet
could have imagined that the child was not really dead. Nor can we accept the
suggestion sometimes made that Elisha had full well known Gehazi would not
succeed, but had still sent him, in order to show - either to Gehazi, or to the
Shunammite, or to Israel generally – that miracles were not magic, and that neither a
Gehazi nor even a prophet's staff could produce them. It is difficult to use moderate
language in rejecting suggestions which imply that Elisha had purposely employed
what he knew to be useless measures in order to teach some abstract lesson, or that
he could have done so at a moment of such agony and suspense. Kindred views in
regard to God's dealings with us when under severe affliction are, indeed, too often
entertained by Christians. They should give place to more enlightened conceptions of
(^)