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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 362. Naaman and the Captive Maid
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Naaman and the Captive Maid
1. Few figures in the Old Testament impress us with a more living and human interest than that of Naaman the Syrian. He appears as one of the first gentlemen of Damascus, and Damascus was the Paris of the ancient East. It was famous as the chief centre of the Aramæan caravan traffic, and was consequently the commercial capital of a vast region of land. It was famous also for its beauty, and was well-named “the Pearl,” lying like a white star caught and glad to stay in the luxuriant wealth of green that everywhere surrounds it-an exquisite oasis rescued by the Abana from the edge of the tawny desert. From age to age it lies there, sphinx-like in its gaze across the desert, unheeding of the flight of time or the passing of the generations, sufficient to itself and absorbed wholly in its own wonderful life. Add to all this the fact that for the time being it was rejoicing in a victory over its Western rival Israel, and you have the very place where a man might be content with the earth, and, unlike Mohammed, wish for no other Paradise.
At the forefront of all this stands Naaman, wealthy, famous, victorious; popular alike with his king and with his servants, beloved and happy in his home. Yet upon him has come the terrific doom of leprosy, running its iron wedge deep into the golden dream. Suddenly the spell is broken and we seem to hear the sickening of the music, and to see the fountains dying and the sunshine fading out. From an enchantment, life has become a delirium. Everything has lost its reality, and the phantom world about him is full of mockery.
I do not think that Naaman in his popularity and success was a much-envied man. There was the fame and the power-and the leprosy. There was the honour-and the suffering. It is always so. There is always the other side of things. And if we could change personalities, we should have to be prepared to take not only the joys and the opportunities and the satisfactions of that other man's life, but also the martyrdoms, the bafflements, the burdens and the unlifting shadows. And remembering this may help to make us less envious and more sympathetic. No man's life-story can be told without naming the hard thing in it-sometimes the tragically hard thing. For some it is persistent ill-health-a body that is continually disappointing them, failing them, thwarting them. For some it is a nervous temperament that demands a cruel price for the fulfilment of daily demands-demands which others can meet with case, and even with pleasure. For this man it is the shadow of a cruel and devastating experience that must lie on his path to the last step of it; and for that it is some constitutional defect that has to be reckoned with in everything lie does. In short, Naaman the leper may be looked upon as typical of the widest and most familiar range of human experience.1 [Note: P. C. Ainsworth, The Pilgrim Church, 186.]
2. Naaman, honoured by the king, honoured by the people, living splendidly, going forth surrounded with a guard of honour whenever he appeared, is yet a broken man. One little ingredient in his cup has poisoned all the rest. “He was captain of the host of the king of Syria”; he was “a great man with his master, and honourable … he was also a mighty man of valour, but he was a leper.” The brief monosyllable “but” forms the bridge connecting the two parts of the picture, yet when we look at the two sides we see a most striking contrast. On one side all is bright and dazzling, on the other dark and dismal. For a time we rejoice with the conquering hero, but when we come to the mournful monosyllable our joy is turned into sadness.
Leprosy was the scourge of Eastern people-the great typical disease that admitted of no ordinary healing-everything that could be done had been done in Naaman's case, everything in vain. There was no hope of cure; there was only a looking forward to loathsome death.
Leprosy occupies a peculiar position among diseases affecting the human race. It is the most ancient, the most exclusively human, and in the popular conception the most dreaded of all diseases. It is a universal malady, affecting all races and occurring in all climates and under all conditions of life. Although no race is immune, racial peculiarities, climate, and the hygienic habits of civilization undoubtedly modify its spread. Unlike the plagues and pestilences which formerly swept away entire populations and devastated countries and then disappeared for ever, leprosy has at certain periods of the world's history raged as a veritable epidemic and then subsided and apparently disappeared, but it has never become extinct. It has preserved its individuality through all the vicissitudes of time. It still survives and maintains its supremacy as the patriarch of diseases. Although leprosy has existed in all periods of the world's history and afforded abundant opportunities for its observation and study, it is the reproach of medical science that, in some respects, it is to-day the most mysterious and obscure of all diseases, especially in its modes of communication, its variable virulence, and its faculty of remaining latent for a long period and then reawakening into activity. It is not necessary to enter into an analysis of the arguments used pro and con as to the identity of the leprosy of the Bible with modern leprosy. While it is certain that nothing corresponding to the objective features of tubercular leprosy can be found in the Mosaic descriptions, there is a general consensus of opinion among authorities that the leprosy of the Bible is nerve leprosy, such as is met with in India and in Palestine at the present day. Many commentators believe that the affection of Job was tubercular leprosy. Certainly the description of the disease with which Job was afflicted presents striking resemblances to this form of the disease. The fact that Job, Naaman, and others mentioned as being stricken with leprosy were restored to health when suffering from a disease recognized as incurable does not necessarily militate against this view. In the Old Testament Scriptures both good and evil were attributed to Divine agency, and it is not surprising that leprosy was regarded as a manifestation of Divine life and punishment for sin, and the cure in any case was regarded as miraculous and the work of Divine intervention.1 [Note: P. A. Morrow, in Twentieth Century Practice of Medicine, xviii. 616.]
3. At last a ray of hope enters. A little maid, brought away captive out of the land of Israel, tells of a prophet there who possesses a charm even for the plague of leprosy. She was just a young girl, whose very name is unknown, who occupied a comparatively obscure position in life, who had her trials and her difficulties to encounter in the midst of strangers; but she was, nevertheless, the very hinge and mainspring of the wonderful events which are here narrated. But for her we should never have heard of Naaman the Syrian; but for her the king of Syria would never have heard of Elisha the prophet; but for her the victorious general would never have been healed of his leprosy; but for her he would never have renounced the idols of his country, or learned to worship the only true God. The history of that little maid, amidst her sorrows and her trials, was being shaped by the overruling hand of God for His own glory, and the good of her fellow-creatures.
No outward lot could well be more unfortunate than hers. Many of us know what it is to leave our homes. We have felt the heart-sinking, such as no other sorrow brings, when the wrench of parting with all the tender surroundings and all the mute associations of our childhood is followed by the feeling that we are amongst strangers and must stand alone; but she had far more to bear than this. Torn from slaughtered relatives and a ruined home; placed among people of a strange face and language, who looked upon her countrymen with contempt; not a servant, but a slave, a victim to tyranny and blows and cruelty, she yet kept alive in her heart the knowledge of the God of Israel, and the memory of His wonder-working prophets; she knew that in her captivity and loneliness He had healed her sorrow; she believed that He could heal the disease and misery of her master-“Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! then would he recover him of his leprosy.”
The existence of insignificant people has very important consequences in the world. It can be shown to affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many evil tempers from the selfish, and many heroisms from the sympathetic, and, in other ways, to play no small part in the tragedy of life.1 [Note: George Eliot, Adam Bede.]
When, Syria, all thy waters
Run voiceless to the main,
The least of Israel's daughters
Shall rend her captor's chain:
Not for lost home appealing
Rose that sweet exile's prayer,-
“O happy land of healing,
Would that my lord were there!”
Proud disputants for power,
See whom her God, to view,
Rich in His kingdom's dower,
Sets in the midst of you!
With Jordan's washings seven,
Take, leprous soul defiled,
Bathed with the dews of heaven
The flesh of that young child!
O blessed childhood's teaching,
We know not where it strays,
Beyond the Prophet's preaching,
Above the Temple's praise!
Like coral ridges lifting
Rich streaks of verdure bright
From sea-waifs idly drifting,
Or whirl'd by sea-bird's flight.2 [Note: Herbert Kynaston.]
4. We take it for granted that the captive, in proportion as he clings to the fatherland and the religion of his youth, will regard his captors with a stern aloofness. It is the tendency of human nature to balance the humiliation of misfortune by a colossal pride, and to take vengeance on those who inflict the humiliation by regarding them secretly with scorn. And if, in the heartsore of absence, the little serving-maid had looked with cold eyes upon the people who had caused her sorrow; if she had even taken a certain joy in the discovery that her masters had their troubles too; if she had cherished the thought of her ancestral faith with a sense of proprietorship, and reflected that in her own dear land there were a fountain open for uncleanness and a man of God who could speak healing words, we could not have found fault with her. But that is not the attitude of this Hebrew maid. In its stead we have a beautiful unselfishness in the midst of her sufferings. No angry feeling could crush her instinctive compassion. And when she saw her master decaying before her eyes with that dreadful disease which is irremediable, and the likest sin of all physical complaints, she forgot that this was the captain of the host that had warred against her country, and of the bands that had carried her from home. She forgot that he was an enemy and a master who claimed an absolute and tyrannical right in her small person. She only saw that he was a martyr to his living death, and that all his unquestioned valour was useless to contend against an insidious foe. A woman is always a woman before she is a patriot. And a young girl may well be pardoned if she cannot bring the rancour of national animosities to choke the wells of pity in her heart.
I think I see more now the misery of a large portion of my countrymen. I see it and feel it. It makes me groan, and I long and sigh to be in a situation where I could labour incessantly for their benefit. No, I would not care about comfort or enjoyment if I could only do this.… Often, too, I get wearied, and worn out with the sight of so much misery, and most of all, degradation, sometimes baseness and wickedness. This is the worst to bear. I frequently aspire after doing something great.… Yet I care not for honour or praise if I could only really do something to benefit my fellow-creatures. If I were a man I would not work for riches or to leave a wealthy family behind me No, I think I would work for my country, and make its people my heirs.1 [Note: Memoir of Anne J. Clough, by her Niece, 36.]
5. And alongside this beautiful spirit of unselfishness there is a childlike faith. There is no suggestion of doubt in her utterance; she has none. She was not therefore hampered with the fear of the consequences if Naaman should follow her advice and return unhealed. She cannot, from prudence or deference, keep silence; and suddenly in her mistress's presence she breaks into an exclamation. It is not advice that she gives. It is a prayer that she utters. The little maid has taken her master's cause as her own. Hers is a child's faith, but it is a true faith, as profound as it is simple. And it is a fine certificate of character, a testimony of the trustworthiness and uprightness of this Hebrew servant girl, that her advice was not only listened to but acted upon.
The first characteristic of childhood, is faith-faith whose outward form is trust. It speaks well for the beauty of the human quality of faith that it is so lovely a thing to us when we see it pure in childhood. No pleasure is so great as that which we receive, when in their hours of joy, still more when sorrow or disease attacks them, we see the light of our children's faith in us in their eyes. We grant to it as we recognize it what we should grant to nothing else-we cannot hold back from its often mute request anything which is not wrong for us to give.2 [Note: Stopford A. Brooke.]
6. Reports of Elisha's doings-his fame, his miracle-working power-had no doubt travelled northwards to the Syrian capital, but it was on the strength of the Hebrew maid's word that action was taken. The king himself felt it would be worth a trial in order to save the commander-in-chief of the Syrian army, the biggest asset of the nation alike in peace and in war. Upon what the Hebrew maid said, the monarch wrote a letter to the king of Israel. And so it came to pass that Naaman's splendid chariot, with its long train of guards and servants, rolled away from beautiful Damascus, past the Lebanon defiles, and, fording the Lebanon torrents, came to the king of Israel at Jezreel.
As heathens, and especially as Syrians, neither Naaman nor Benhadad would see anything strange in the possession of such magical powers by a prophet of Israel. Similarly, it was quite in accordance with heathen notions to expect that the king of Israel could obtain from his own prophet any result which he might desire. A heathen king was always the religious as well as the political chief of his people, and to command the services and obedience of his own prophet would seem almost a matter of course.1 [Note: A. Edersheim, The History of Israel and Judah, vi. 152.]