2 Kings 5:15-27--Gehazi's Greed and Punishment

2 Kings 5:15-27
English Standard Version

Gehazi's Greed and Punishment
15 Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and he came and stood before him. And he said, “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel; so accept now a present from your servant.” 16 But he said, “As the LORD lives, before whom I stand, I will receive none.” And he urged him to take it, but he refused. 17 Then Naaman said, “If not, please let there be given to your servant two mule loads of earth, for from now on your servant will not offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god but the LORD. 18 In this matter may the LORD pardon your servant: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, when I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, the LORD pardon your servant in this matter.” 19 He said to him, “Go in peace.”

But when Naaman had gone from him a short distance, 20 Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said, “See, my master has spared this Naaman the Syrian, in not accepting from his hand what he brought. As the LORD lives, I will run after him and get something from him.” 21 So Gehazi followed Naaman. And when Naaman saw someone running after him, he got down from the chariot to meet him and said, “Is all well?” 22 And he said, “All is well. My master has sent me to say, ‘There have just now come to me from the hill country of Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets. Please give them a talent of silver and two changes of clothing.’” 23 And Naaman said, “Be pleased to accept two talents.” And he urged him and tied up two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of clothing, and laid them on two of his servants. And they carried them before Gehazi. 24 And when he came to the hill, he took them from their hand and put them in the house, and he sent the men away, and they departed. 25 He went in and stood before his master, and Elisha said to him, “Where have you been, Gehazi?” And he said, “Your servant went nowhere.” 26 But he said to him, “Did not my heart go when the man turned from his chariot to meet you? Was it a time to accept money and garments, olive orchards and vineyards, sheep and oxen, male servants and female servants? 27 Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and to your descendants forever.” So he went out from his presence a leper, like snow.

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Naaman has come away from this experience a changed man.  Not only is he clean on the outside, but he seems to have also been cleansed of his idolatrous heart.  He truly wanted to offer Elisha a gift now to thank him, but Elisha would not take it--Elisha knew better than to even give the appearance of evil that this miracle was in some way transactional like the "miracles" that the false prophets performed.  Naaman tried to insist on making Elisha accept his gifts, but Elisha refused all the more.  Only then do we start to really see how the LORD used this to change Naaman's heart.  He now starts to call himself "your servant" (he has been humbled), he proclaims that there is no other God other than the God of Israel, and he desires to worship and sacrifice to no other gods when he returns to Syria.  In fact, he knows that the very soil in Syria is polluted by idolatry, so he asks that he might take two mule-loads of earth from Israel back to Syria with him so that he could build an earthen altar acceptable to the LORD (without the use of any iron tools), so that he could make sacrifices to the LORD.  Elisha finds Naaman's request acceptable and gives him the earth he's requested and sends him back on his way with all the gifts that he had brought--we are supposed to see here that the two mule-loads of earth are more valuable than all the gold, silver and fancy clothes that Naaman had offered because they represent that Naaman now has a broken and contrite heart that is ready to worship the LORD.

Naaman is concerned though that his duties to the king of Syria will still require him to escort the king into the pagan temple of Rimmon and that he will be forced to bow down before the idols there.  He asks for forgiveness in this matter because he knows that the LORD hates idolatry.  It would be hard for Naaman to be like Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah (Daniel's three friends) who would not bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's golden image.  Perhaps the LORD did indeed give Naaman the courage to not bend the knee when the king went to the hours of Rimmon to worship, and perhaps the LORD answered the prayers of Naaman for the heart of his master the king to be changed and turned away from idolatry so that he too would worship the LORD.

Naaman did not get very far before we see that there is one other heart in play here, and it is the heart of Elisha's servant Gehazi.  We were only introduced to him by name in the previous chapter when the Shunammite woman came to ask Elisha to bring her son back from the dead.  We have some idea from this passage why it may have been that the LORD did not involve Gehazi in the miraculous resurrection of the son of the Shunammite woman.  Apparently, Gehazi can't get his mind off of the gifts that the king of Syria and Naaman wanted to offer to Elisha and doesn't understand why Elisha wouldn't accept them.  In his mind, it is Elisha, not the LORD, the worked the miracle, and Elisha deserves to be compensated for his work that he did.  Gehazi covets that which Elisha has already released and tells himself that he is just running after Naaman to get something for Elisha (but we all know that Gehazi is going to get something for himself).

Gehazi lies and says that just as Naaman was leaving, some poor people of Ephraim who were sons of prophets arrived at Elisha's house and they needed a talent of silver and two changes of clothes.  Gehazi must have been pretty proud of himself for not asking for any of the gold.  Naaman happily offers two talents of silver for such a noble cause and gives the clothes that were requested as well.

When get gets back to the house he sends everyone else out for he knows he needs to hide the silver and clothes--already his conscience is eating at him and he knows he needs to tell lie on top of lie to cover up this sin.  Once he is done, the LORD sends Elisha to confront him with a simple question, "Where have you been, Gehazi?"  It's just like the questions that the LORD asked of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  The LORD already knew the answer (and probably had already told Elisha what Gehazi had been up to), but the purpose of the question was to make Gehazi examine himself and give him a choice to confess or to continue to lie.  Gehazi lies and says that he has been "nowhere"--you know that's a lie when someone says that because they've already been somewhere, even if that somewhere was right where they were supposed to be.  It's only when they say they have been "nowhere" that you know they've been somewhere where they weren't supposed to be and they are trying to hide it.

Elisha said that his heart knew the moment that Naaman turned from his chariot to meet Gehazi what was going on, and Elisha says that it was not the right time for them to accept gifts from the hand of Naaman and the king of Syria.  Now the LORD is going to judge Gehazi and the leprosy that afflicted Naaman would now cling to Gehazi, and he would not be the one who would be unclean and in terrible suffering.  He would be the one that would need to come to the point where he would realize he needed not only external cleansing, but to be made clean on the inside, for Gehazi had also "worshiped" the material possessions that this world had to offer and refused to trust the LORD to take care of him.  Worse than that, Gehazi has now planted the seed in the mind of Naaman and definitely the king of Syria, that Elisha is just like all the other prophets (false prophets) that they know and are prophets for hire that engage in blessings and miracles for the right price (and curses and plagues against their enemies for the right price too, as we saw in Numbers with Balaam the "prophet" for hire that was paid to curse the children of Israel).  We deal with this so much today that there are "ministers" of a false gospel that are only in it for the money and they ruin it for the rest of us that preach the true gospel and want nothing more than for people's hearts to turn and for those who are born again to worship the LORD for who He is and what He has done.  That was what was going on here, but it was possibly spoiled by the greed of Gehazi.