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Naaman and the House of Rimmon
The figure of Naaman is set in strong contrast with those of Elisha and Gehazi. These two are types of holiness and sordidness. Naaman stands apart, courtier and man of the world, in touch and sympathy with the breadth of human life. His is a pleasant figure, like his name, which means “Pleasantness.” He is such a representative gentleman of Damascus as we meet in the pages of Tancred. Everything we read of him is attractive, and characteristic of “a good fellow and a dashing officer.” The frank manner, the generous heart that is not without its touch of hot temper, the ready gratitude and the warm friendships, make a wholly lovable and delightful sketch of the man.
It is for such men that questions of casuistry and compromise arise, making life at once difficult and fascinating. It was a comparatively easy matter for Elisha and Gehazi to go on their ways-the one “splendidly unhindered,” the other vulgarly unscrupulous. But Naaman is by far the most interesting of the trio. It is true that our ideas of him are more or less conjectural. We know few of the facts and circumstances of his life. We have to divest ourselves of many ideas and associations before we can get back to where he stood. Yet it is evident that there are always some whose contact with Jehovah sends them to the desert, and others whom it sends back into the world, and that Naaman is in the latter class. Just because he returns to the world, we see him moving on a wider and more perplexing field. He finds himself “on the dangerous edge of things,” where he has to face practical questions of far greater subtlety than those which confront such men as the other two.
We are to fight, not only against the world around us, but the world within us, and in proportion as we overcome the world within us, we shall be able to exert a good influence on those around us. There is such a thing as morbid scrupulosity; there is a disease among professing Christians, one that sees small things appear large, and large things appear small; but Jesus never loses the right balance. A Christian should be like a safety-lamp, able to go into noxious vapours, and yet remain separate from them, by prayer, humility, and the love of Christ-he himself giving light, and yet being in safety, undisturbed, untouched by them.1 [Note: Adolph Saphir, in Memoir by G. Carlyle, 373.]
1. It was probably with a thin vein of curiosity running through a thick crust of scepticism and contempt that this proud but sorely stricken man had turned to the Jewish prophet, as a man given up by his physicians turns to what is called a “quack,” easing the strain upon his pride with the reflection that, if the issue left him no better, it could leave him no worse. But now he was cured and made whole. The healthy blood coursing through his veins sent a delirious sensation of joy pulsating through his being. His flesh, “like unto the flesh of a little child,” left him in no more doubt about his physical salvation than he had who, centuries later, said: “Whereas I was blind, now I see.” Naaman, too, could say: “Whereas I was diseased, now I am whole”; and we are quite prepared to be told that under the immediate influence of this wondrous change he said to Elisha: “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel: and thy servant”-mark the altered tone in the man-“thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the Lord,” and that he wanted to load Elisha with gifts. Part of the real charm of the story consists in the consistency with which Elisha maintained the character of an incorruptible prophet; his wants were so simple that he stood above the temptation of a bribe, and he steadily refused all largess. Then Naaman asked to be allowed to take a few sacks of Caanan's earth, that in his own land he might build a fit altar to Jehovah. Among the Semites it was the universal custom to regard each god as attached to, and limited by, the land where he was worshipped. Consequently the very earth and, stones of that land were sufficient to draw the god to the prayer of a worshipper; and they were necessary, for only on some part of his own land could he act. Other earth was looked after by other gods. Thus, among those tribes, not only did the saints, but the gods themselves, “take pleasure in her stones,” and “her very dust to them was dear.”
It is easy to denounce this, as Matthew Henry does in his antithetic way: “He had spoken lightly of the waters of Israel, and now he overvalues the earth of Israel.” Yet the story does not say that the request was refused, and we gather that it was conceded. It was a heathen superstition, and yet, like other heathen superstitions, it expressed a deep and abiding human instinct behind the error. In later times a Jewish synagogue was raised by Jews in Persia, all of whose stones and earth had been brought from Jerusalem. Soil from the Holy Land was brought in the Middle Ages for the Campo Santos of Italy: and it is a very pathetic picture that is presented by those old-fashioned ships carrying earth across the seas for the covering of the beloved dead.1 [Note: J. Kelman, Ephemera Eternitatis, 209.]
2. The house of Rimmon presents a different and a more complex situation than the two mules' burden of earth. The phrase has become the very synonym for religious compromise, and prejudices the case from the outset.
(1) While Naaman was making his confession and the declaration based upon it, his thoughts were recalled to the life he had momentarily left and to which he must return. He would have to go back to Syria and with its mighty king bow himself in the house of Rimmon; bow to that which was now to him a vain idol, and nevermore a god. As the thought of the future loomed and darkened in his mind he knew better than to cherish illusions about it. His restored health would be an object of hatred to the priests of the popular religion, and his new conviction, or change of religion, so much fanaticism to the well-bred worldliness of Syria. Hence with sadly cadenced tones, with very tears in his words, he made appeal to the prophet: “In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant; when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, when I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing.”
(2) Rimmon was one of the many Baals, and Baal in general was the apotheosis of the fructifying powers of nature. In later times the cult was connected with that of Adonis, the story of the year, the summer triumph and the winter death of the sun. The Baals were lords of the wind and weather, the rain and sunshine, the air and clouds, the thunder and storm. Especially was Baal the sun god, source of the abundance of light and heat, that led the seeds to ripeness in the fertile earth. The name Rimmon, signifying the pomegranate, has the suggestion of all this in its luscious fulness, and is peculiarly appropriate for the divinity that presided over the sweet and rich life of Damascus. So this “prince of the power of the air” stood for nature and the life of the earth. The cult was not so much a worship as an appreciation of the world in all its fulness. God, to the Damascus worshipper, was “the view”-He was anything a man liked. Further, Rimmon was the particular Baal of Damascus, and the ritual had a large element of politics in it. Worship was not a matter of private faith any more than it was a matter of spiritual communion. It was essentially a civic and national act. The gods were representative members of the nation, and their worship was official and political in its significance, involving before all else loyalty to the throne and customs of the land.
So the question that faced Naaman was whether he would retire from the world into asceticism and private life, or whether he would remain in the world and serve Jehovah. He no longer worshipped the world, for he had looked beyond it and seen the face of God. But he still appreciated its charm, and he still enjoyed its labours. He chose the latter course. As to the detail of ritual, we can imagine him saying to himself that a God so great in healing would be great also in understanding, so that the act of compromise was in one way an act of faith.
No one can think of Naaman without recalling Tom Brown's judgment, “I can't stand that fellow Naaman, after what he'd seen and felt, going back and bowing himself down in the House of Rimmon.… I wonder Elisha took the trouble to heal him.” Who does not honour the boy and thank God for him? And yet the matter is not so easy as that, and when Tom comes to face a man's difficulties, he will find that the short cut is not always the true solution, but may sometimes be only a refusal to face all the facts. There are illegitimate compromises, but there are also wise and good ones, which may save conscience from growing pedantic, and lives from being wasted over trifles not worthy of them. They may save men also from the inordinate vanity of those who imagine that to shout “No compromise” is to secure a monopoly of honesty and courage.1 [Note: J. Kelman.]
(3) So far as Naaman was concerned, and, taking the position from his point of view, we are not very much surprised that he asked this concession to it. Our difficulty is the fact that it was granted. The request we can understand, but what about the answer? After having put the pride of this Syrian through a discipline so severe, to accede to what looks like an overture to the old life, instead of admonishing him to avoid the very appearance of idol-worship, has, on the face of it, the look of a dangerous compromise. How, then, are we to understand this answer? We need not interpret it as either approving or disapproving of the thing behind the request. Elisha recognized the difficulties of the position in which Naaman was placed, and his answer, “Go in peace,” is but another way of saying, “Go back to Syria, and there be all you can.” Not that he compromised with idolatry, but that he refrained, and wisely refrained, from demanding the impossible in circumstances where the possible would be terribly hard. If, when Naaman got back to Syria, he put the best there was in him into the determination to be what in the joy of his cleansing he had vowed before Elisha, he did mighty things. Life had to be lived after the vow, and, as the joy toned down, the difficulties would increase.
On one occasion Dr. Barnardo was considering one of those thorny, troublesome questions which so often confronted him, where prudence and policy seemed to urge in one direction, the dictates of duty in another. “What would you do if you were called upon to decide this matter?” he suddenly asked, turning to a gentleman who was present. He who was questioned considered a moment. “I think I should do so and so,” he answered. The suggestion seemed good. It struck a middle course, and appeared to clear away the difficulty, but it was unmistakably a compromise with the sterner side of duty. The Doctor pondered. “Yes,” he said, “that is the easy way out of it; but, you know, I never take the easy way.” And that was true of his whole career. He never took the easy way.1 [Note: Memoirs of the Late Dr. Barnardo, 284.]
(4) There was nothing dishonourable or cowardly about Naaman's action in bowing in the house of Rimmon; he could do no other if he were to do his duty; it was only a question of how much or how little circumstances would let him do. He was not trying to spare himself, or to do secretly what he was afraid to do publicly; he was not holding on to offices and emoluments which were tenable only at the price of hypocrisy and pretence; he was doing the best that it was in his power to do. People often talk as though it were the simplest thing in the world to find out what is the right thing to do in every given instance; it is nothing of the sort; it is often very hard indeed, and we can grow morally only by the earnestness with which we endeavour to search the matter out in every given case. There is always a practical right in every choice, let the ideal right be what it may. The ideal right is always beyond our power to give expression to in its fulness; our present earthly conditions do not permit of it; but the practical right, the one right thing possible to do in every given instance, is what God expects from us. It was right that Naaman should remain captain of the host of Syria even at the cost of bowing in the house of Rimmon when he could not help it, and it may be right that we should serve God where we are and as we are, even at the cost of feeling our comparative helplessness to remedy the ills around us.
Professor Henry Jackson, replying to the criticism that Henry Sidgwick was a man who “sat on the fence,” said that it was a complete mistake. “The man who ‘sits on the fence' is one who, whether he has or has not definite convictions, is reluctant to declare himself.… Sidgwick's conclusions were often compromises, and might change surprisingly; but they were always exactly thought out, confidently affirmed, and eagerly defended.” At the same time the fact cannot be overlooked that, in matters of policy, Sidgwick's mind was liable to great and scrupulous oscillations, which bewildered supporters and opponents alike; this arose partly from a genuine and deep-seated diffidence, and still more from a conscientious dread of not doing full justice to the opinions of those with whom he began by disagreeing.1 [Note: A. C. Benson, The Leaves of the Tree, 51.]