2 Kings 5:1-14--Naaman Healed of Leprosy

2 Kings 5:1-14
English Standard Version

Naaman Healed of Leprosy
5 Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the LORD had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. 2 Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman's wife. 3 She said to her mistress, “Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” 4 So Naaman went in and told his lord, “Thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel.” 5 And the king of Syria said, “Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.”

So he went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten changes of clothing. 6 And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” 7 And when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider, and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me.”

​8 But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king, saying, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.” 9 So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha's house. 10 And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” 11 But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, “Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the LORD his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. 12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” So he turned and went away in a rage. 13 But his servants came near and said to him, “My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” 14 So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.

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Before we get started with studying this passage today, let's go to a New Testament passage where Jesus alludes to today's passage (as well as a passage from 1 Kings that we studied not that long ago).  Jesus cites these passages as both historically accurate and authoritative (something that Jews should have learned a lesson from).

Luke 4:16-30
English Standard Version

Jesus Rejected at Nazareth
16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,


18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph's son?” 23 And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘“Physician, heal yourself.” What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’” 24 And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. 25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, 26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. 29 And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. 30 But passing through their midst, he went away.

I start here because Jesus essentially makes the claim that the Jewish people He was speaking too weren't all that different spiritually from the idolatrous people in the Northen Kingdom of Israel during the time of 1 Kings and 2 Kings, and just like the LORD chose to spread out His blessings to God-fearing Gentiles in Old Testament, He was about to send His apostles out to the whole world with the gospel message that was to the Jew first, and then also to the Gentile.  God's plan from the beginning has been to save a remnant from every tribe, tongue and people group.

This story gives us a great picture of sin and we'll even see next time how there are charlatans who will pervert the gospel for their own gain (I don't want to get ahead of myself, but if you are reading from other translations, they may have grouped these two passages together because they are so closely related).  In this case, Naaman, the captain of the Syrian army, who were enemies of Israel, heard from the king of Syria that there was a prophet in Israel, Elisha, who might be able to help heal him of his leprosy.  This is not the disease that we think of today as "leprosy," but a painful, debilitating, sometimes flesh-eating disease that would make the person look and smell like they were decomposing from the outside in.  They were covered in open sores which the unclean dogs would want to lick and because they would have neuropathy as part of their symptoms, rats would eat the fingers and toes of the lepers that lived in the leper colonies.  Lepers had to isolate themselves away from society as the disease was highly contagious and had no cure.  So, you can imagine how this might be a huge issue for the king of Syria if the commander of his army caught this disease.

However, we see the influence of idolatry here that the king and Naaman thought that the LORD's favor was something that could be bought.  It's one thing to bring an offering to the LORD because of how great He is, even being ready to give a gift for something you believe by faith, but it is altogether another thing to try to "bribe" the LORD.  More on that in tomorrow's passage as we do a disservice to the gospel when we abuse it to make ourselves rich--we are acting like the false prophets of the pagan gods.  All that is "context" and "background" for today's passage.

The king of Syria and Naaman heard about Elisha from a servant girl that they took captive in battle (the LORD works in mysterious ways).  The girl has faith that if Namaan could just get to "the prophet in Samaria," that he could be healed of his leprosy.  The king of Syria sends Namaan with an official delegation to the king of Israel as if the king of Israel could compel Elisha to do something (remember that false prophets worked for pagan kings, so the Syrian king thinks that Elisha works for the king of Israel).

A large gift (read as "bribe") in the form of silver, gold, and fancy clothes is put together for Namaan to offer as payment to the king of Israel and to Elisha for this "favor."  The king of Israel laughed at the thought of all this saying, "Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me."  The translation of this is that no amount of money was enough for the king of Israel, a mere man, to be able to cure and incurable disease and his only assumption of why the king of Syria would do this to him would be as an excuse to make war against him--he could think of no rational reason, so he tried to think of a slightly irrational reason.

Elisha heard of this and how the king responded, he sent word to the king to have Namaan sent to him (in Israel the kings listened to the true prophets of the LORD, not the other way around).  Elisha tells Namaan to go wash himself in the Jordan River seven times and he will be clean.  Now the Jordan River is not the cleanest of rivers....it runs for the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, so there's lots of stuff that has washed down-river.  Namaan was angry with this instruction because it was "too easy" and "I could have done that at home" and "the water at home is better."  These are the same kinds of objections that we get when sharing the gospel with people--part of the offensiveness of it is that it is too simple (especially because we don't do anything to earn our own salvation--in this case, the gifts that Namaan and the king of Syria were worthless).  Namaan wanted Elisha to wave his hand over him or speak some magic incantation--he did not want to be told to go wash in the river to get clean.  Wasn't he special enough to Elisha to give him some special treatment?  Isn't washing in the river what "normal" people do to get clean?  Namaan had no special status before God and there is only one Way for all of us--"I AM the Way the Truth, and the Life.  No man comes to the Father except by Me." (John 14:6)

Namaan's servants had to come to him and say that he needed an attitude adjustment.  If Elisha had asked him to do something hard, he would have done it, but since Elisha's request was simple, he would not do it.  That was silly and immature, and showed that he wanted to show himself superior, and really wasn't interested in getting well.  Then Namaan was humbled by the words of his servants, and he went and did as Elisha had instructed him, and after he had washed in the Jordan River seven time, he was completely healed.  (Notice that at no point did Elisha take any of the offering sent by the king of Syria, nor did he seem to want it--that will be important tomorrow).