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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 360. Gehazi
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Literature
Clark, De Witt S., in Sermons on the International Sunday-School Lessons, xxiv. (1904) 303.
Edersheim, A., The History of Israel and Judah, vi. (1885) 125, 145.
Finlayson, T. C., The Divine Gentleness (1874), 85.
Gibbon, J. M., in Men of the Bible: Some Lesser-known Characters (1904), 115.
Jenkinson, A., A Modern Disciple (1892), 153.
Johnson, G. B., The Beautiful Life of Christ, 72.
Kelman, J., Ephemera Eternitatis (1910), 198.
Kemble, C., Memorials of a Closed Ministry, i. 197.
Liddon, H. P., Sermons on Old Testament Subjects (1891), 270.
Maclaren, A., Expositions: 2 Samuel, etc. (1906), 352, 373.
Merry, W. W., in Oxford University Sermons (1901), 303.
Mills, B. R. V., The Marks of the Church (1901), 155.
Mitchell, S. S., The Staff Method (1904), 3.
Neale, J. M., Sermons Preached in a Religious House, i. (1874) 113.
Parker, J., City Temple Pulpit, v. (1901) 175.
Pearse, M. G., The Bramble King (1900), 56.
Peck, G. C., Vision and Task (1905), 145.
Rawnsley, R. D. B., Village Sermons, ii. (1853) 60.
Riach, W. L., Naaman the Syrian Soldier (1901), 112.
Webster, F. S., Elisha the Prophet of Vision, 50, 67.
Young, D. T., Neglected People of the Bible (1901), 129.
Young, D. T., The Travels of the Heart, 3.
Christian Treasury, xxi. (1865) 217 (A. Thomson).
Christian World Pulpit, v. (1874) 349 (G. B. Ryley); xxii. (1882) 315 (J. Parker).
Churchman's Pulpit: Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, xi. 452 (T. C. Finlayson), 455 (E. Thring), 457 (G. S. Drew).
Clergyman's Magazine, vi. (1889) 170; viii. (1890) 218.
Dictionary of the Bible, ii. (1899), 118 (J. Strachan).
Preacher's Magazine, xiv. (1903) 245 (W. G. Horder).
1. Gehazi is one of those men whom later ages have accepted as a type. His very name has come to be representative of a particular character. As Job stands with us for the innocent sufferer, Jacob for the man of shrewd bargains, Solomon for the sage, and Daniel for the righteous judge, so does Gehazi stand for the courteous liar. We might call him the Ananias of the Old Testament; and we might further note that his sin, like that of Ananias, was followed by a sudden and signal judgment. The imagination pictures him an abject figure, a convicted swindler, who shrinks from the presence of his master, branded with the mast terrible bodily curse with which a man can be visited, and with a load of moral infamy which neither lapse of time nor depth of charity has ever been able to efface. But he cannot have been all bad and always bad. He is evidently a rather commonplace type of sinner, who could understand his master's power and rough strength, but not any finer or more spiritual qualities. He is self-important and more or less vain, and beneath these surface characteristics there is a strain of covetousness, developing into a besetting sin.
2. We know little of him, and it is easy to say too much. One might well wish to connect Gehazi with many or most of the stirring scenes in Elisha's life; but the chronology of the various incidents is too confused to allow us to do this with certainty. Yet this seems clear, that his is the tragedy of a man ruined by familiarity with sacred things. He belonged to very serious times, and never realized their importance; he had the great example of his master ever before his eyes, and wholly missed its significance. We see in him an utter want of appreciation of moral proportion, a confusion between substance and shadow, a condition of mind in which great things dwindle or pass out of sight, while the whole horizon is blocked by petty considerations and small selfish interests. He dwelt with a hero yet was a poltroon. He lived with a saint yet was a knave. He was the associate of a prophet yet was a petty thief.
You can scarcely conceive of anything more debasing or hardening to a human soul than to keep up a profession of religion, or assume an attitude of superior sanctity, merely to throw dust in the eyes of others, and thus secure a confidence, credit, or favour which would not otherwise be obtained. The minister of the gospel who uses his position to gratify his own covetousness,-who takes advantage of the respect shown him for his Master's sake, in order to secure ends of which he knows that Christ would not approve,-what is he but a Gehazi? And any man who employs his connection with a Christian Church in order to worm himself into a confidence which he does not at all deserve, or to get a place in a “will” to which he is not at all entitled, or to obtain a loan which he never intends to repay,-what is he, too, but a Gehazi? Better open your shop in a neighbourhood of infidels, and get your living amongst them by selling honest goods at an honest price, than begin to value your connection with a Christian Church chiefly because it brings you custom and helps to fill your till. Better become bankrupt over and over again, than begin to value your profession of Christian faith chiefly as a means of eking out your commercial credit.1 [Note: T. C. Finlayson.]
What is known of Gehazi is told in three narratives.
2. In the sequel to the story, when the lady, bereft of this child of promise, came in haste to the retreat at Carmel and cast herself at the prophet's feet in a passion of grief, Gehazi's commonplace mind was shocked at this liberty taken by a woman. From a spurious zeal for his master's honour, from false notions of what was or was not becoming-the consequences of his utter want of spiritual insight and sympathy-Gehazi would have thrust her away. He was absolutely incapable of understanding the impulses of deep feeling. But Elisha stretched his hand over her tenderly. “Let her alone,” he said, “her soul is bitter within her”; and, when she had revealed the cause of her grief, Elisha at once sent Gehazi with his staff, the rod of his authority, the sacred symbol of the prophet, to lay it upon the child. And Gehazi went in haste, crept to the still room, and laid the rod upon the child, and waited and listened. But all was in vain. Virtue had perished out of Elisha's staff; it had become in the grip of Gehazi but a common stick. He literally obeyed his master's behest, and laid the staff upon the face of the child, but the mightiest instruments are weak when selfishness and coldness wield them.
The worst of it is that men do not realize their potentialities. So often, while they possess the false self-confidence which makes them conceited, they lack the other self-confidence which makes men strong. So often intellectual ability is mistaken for spiritual power. For example, in the case of a Minister of Religion, the learned, studious man, the thoughtful reader of many and profound books, is not by these means necessarily made a power in his work. True, he possesses the tools of his trade, and without his tools little can be done. But tools need behind them the man; they will not act of themselves. It is a vast mistake to suppose that the real success of such a man's life depends wholly on his knowledge and intellectual attainments. Before these he needs the subtle Spiritual Force which alone can make these tools to be mightily effective in his hands. The masculine powers of service and of work need a motive, driving energy. In a word they are practically useless without Spiritual Power.1 [Note: C. D. Lampen, Spiritual Power, 124.]
Every stage of life brings its opportunity and its temptation. Continually we are confronted with the two roads: the broad way to destruction, the narrow path to life. We must decide on which we will walk. Every day there is presented to us some opportunity, some advantage, some opening towards truth, goodness, success, heaven, which we may either improve or despise, but which will never occur again. Now behind all these special opportunities of life stands the great economy of Redemption: the Divine Love, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the agency of the Holy Ghost, the means of grace; all given, instituted by Almighty God, that each one of us might live his best life, and find the true path, and rise superior to all that would tempt and destroy. See how it was with Gehazi. Elisha stood as the expression of this fact of God's redeeming love and grace. He was God's witness to that age. He bore his testimony on behalf of the spiritual life, and against the sins of Israel. He declared God's message to the nation, and to every individual member of it. Gehazi came under the influence of Elisha. It was his great opportunity. He heard the word of God from the lips of this great prophet. The way of purity and righteousness was set before him in the daily life of his master. He heard the call to throw his life definitely on the side of God and goodness. He was continually reminded by all the acts of Elisha what his life ought to be. And thus Gehazi, like each one of us, had his great chance. He saw what he could be; the ideal of his own life was there embodied and realized in the life of the man of God with whom he lived. He was surrounded by all these sacred influences that he might not take the downward path, that he might choose the good and live. The opportunity was given to him, and urged upon him. There was no mistake about it. The way to glory and honour and immortality and eternal life was pointed out, and he was called to walk in it. And what was the result? What was the issue of it all? It was this: when the crisis came, when the temptation reached Gehazi which would reveal definitely and finally which path he should choose, what he would do with life, on which side he elected to stand, in that solemn and awful moment Gehazi turned a traitor to his trust; he rejected the counsel of God against himself, he sold his birthright, he lied, he cheated, he deceived, he became a vagabond, “he went out from the presence of Elisha a leper as white as snow.”1 [Note: A. Jenkinson, A Modern Disciple, 158.]
2. Gehazi looked on in amazement at the prophet's refusal. He could not feel the power of Elisha's spiritual motives in sparing Naaman and letting him go free of payment. Gratuitous services were not in harmony with his mercenary spirit, Look which way he would, the money that had been lost, the gain that had not been made, was ever alluring his debased soul. Elisha's refusal was incredible; all the oracles of the nations expected gifts. The man's commercial instincts were in despair at such unheard-of waste of chances.
How differently the same sight affected the man who lived near God and the one who lived by sense! Elisha had no desires stirred by the wealth in Naaman's train. Gehazi's mouth watered after it. Regulate desires and you rule conduct. The true regulation of desires is found in communion with God. Gehazi had a sordid soul, like Judas; and, like the traitor Apostle, he was untouched by contact with goodness and unworldliness. Perhaps the parallel might be carried farther, and both were moved with coarse contempt for their master's silly indifference to earthly good. That feeling speaks in Gehazi's soliloquy. He evidently thought the prophet a fool for having let “this Syrian” off so easily. He was fair game, and he had brought the wealth on purpose to leave it. Profanity speaks in uttering a solemn oath on such an occasion. The putting side by side of “the Lord liveth” and “I will run after him” would be ludicrous if it were not horrible. How much profanity may live close beside a prophet, and learn nothing from him but a holy name to sully in an oath!2 [Note: Alexander Maclaren.]
3. So Gehazi ran after the chariot of the departing stranger; and as he ran, he invented a plausible lie: “My master hath sent me, saying, Behold, even now there be come to me from Mount Ephraim two men of the sons of the prophets: give them, I pray thee, a talent of silver, and two changes of garments.” Naaman at once gave him more than he had requested, and sent two servants back with the present to the house of Elisha. There Gehazi relieved them of their burden, which he at once stored in the secret hiding-place known as the Tower on the Hill, and quietly presented himself before his master. The question was at once put: “Whence comest thou, Gehazi?” and in accents of injured innocence the ready lie was uttered: “Thy servant went no whither.” Adding another lie to his daring theft, he stood before the man of God a consummate villain. The great work had been done and God's glory had been declared; and now Gehazi had betrayed the cause of God, sold the honour of the Lord, and turned traitor to his master. He had just seen the most wonderful thing in all the world, the dawn of faith in a human soul; but the only impression which it left with him was the fancied vision of himself clad in coloured silk.
No man can be covetous at heart for long without his covetousness finding some embodiment in his life. True, it will not necessarily embody itself in falsehood and theft, but there will be danger of its leading on even to these vices. The commercial world is only too full of illustrations of this danger. Many a man has begun by just being too fond of money, too desirous of making a show in the world, too anxious to get gain; and he has ended by obtaining goods on false pretences, or by forging some document, or embezzling some money, or using false weights and measures, or telling lies to cheat the revenue, or tampering with figures in a cash-book, or misleading and defrauding his creditors, or representing goods to be what they are not, or robbing widows and orphans who have trusted their money to his keeping, or using some other of the thousand and one methods by which human beings trick each other for gain. And, alas! we sometimes find that such fraud has been going on where we would never have expected it; that some member of a Christian Church, whom everybody has believed to be devout and upright, has been living-it may be for years even-the life of a liar and a thief. Talk of the lofty graces of Christianity! Why, it sometimes seems as if we had need to come back again to the grand old simple virtues of honesty and truth.1 [Note: T. C. Finlayson.]
4. With an eye from which fire flashed, and in words that scathed the scoundrel at whom they were flung, Elisha denounced Gehazi's conduct. Then came the dreadful words of doom that turned him to a living sarcasm, the white leprosy covering the black falsehood of the heart; and he crawled back to that Tower to look upon his silk and his silver, and to gaze desperately down the tainted line of his posterity. His punishment was severe, but it must be felt to be a sentence of meet retribution. The Syrian had become an Israelite in heart and spirit, and he was healed of his leprosy in Israel's waters. The Israelite had become heathen in heart and spirit, and he and his were struck with the leprosy of the Syrian, whose money he had coveted for himself and his family.
Much of Phillips Brooks' time during his tour in Europe and India in 1882-3 was given to writing in his note-book the thoughts or impressions he was receiving. Everywhere are interspersed suggestions for sermons, such as: “We are not called upon to set in opposition the two great conceptions of the results of conduct, one of which thinks of them as inevitable consequences naturally produced, and the other as the rewards and punishments meted out by the superior insight and justice of a ruling Lord. Each conception has its value which we cannot afford to lose in seeking for the total truth. The first gives reasonableness and reliability to the whole idea. The second preserves the vividness of personality. The time was when the second conception monopolized men's thought. In the present strong reaction from the second to the first conception, it would be a great loss if we let the second be denied or fade into forgetfulness.”1 [Note: A. V. G. Allen, Phillips Brooks: Memories of his Life, 381.]
5. It is not enough to point to Gehazi's fate as a startling piece of poetical justice so called. It is not enough to speak of him as a foolish, mistaken, unlucky man. He is all that; but he is much more. He is a great failure. Contrast him as he stands before us now with what he might have been, with what he was intended to be. He is one who has made shipwreck of great chances and promising opportunities. His temptation came suddenly and unexpectedly, as temptations generally do. It was all over in an hour, and he had fallen from respect and honour into ruin and disgrace: but the trial would not have worked out in that fatal and overwhelming way had there not been inward weakness and rottenness. Gehazi had not been growing silently into a good man in the service of Elisha. He was, like Judas the betrayer, very near to the light and the truth, in daily intercourse with one who could have saved him; but it was doing him no good; and when the temptation came, he fell, without a struggle, down into shameful ruin. His discipleship had taught him absolutely nothing. Light was in the world for him, and he “loved darkness rather than light.” He does not seem to have gained an inkling of what makes life worth living. To him the prophet was a common man, and the times were common times. Elisha was his paymaster and nothing more. The great events in the midst of which he was living suggested nothing beyond the chance of personal gain.
While Bernard and Francis thus stood together [as Bernard distributed all his property to the poor], it happened that a priest came by, from whom Francis had bought stone for the restoration of San Damiano. This priest, whose name was Silvester, had sold the stone cheap-perhaps on account of the good object it was to be devoted to. When he now saw so much money given away to the poor he approached and said to Francis: “The stone which you in your time bought from me, you paid for only poorly.” Incensed at the covetousness of the priest, Francis suddenly reached down into the money, which Bernard had in the lap of his cloak, and without counting the amount, poured it out into the priest's hand as he asked: “I wonder if you are now satisfied, Sir Priest?” But Silvester thanked him coldly and went away. As the legends tell, this occurrence was none the less the beginning of a new life for the avaricious priest. He began to draw comparisons between his own avarice and the contempt for property and gold shown by these two young laymen, and the words “No one can serve two masters” began to ring like a judgment in his soul over the life he had hitherto led; after a further delay he too had to come to Francis, and beg him to receive him among the Brethren.1 [Note: J. Jörgensen, St. Francis of Assisi, 65.]
Avarice-this vice has one terrible power in it: life tends to strengthen it. It is the vice of old age in the sense that the experiences of life are often taken as an excuse-and a powerfully plausible one-for niggardliness. It calls itself prudence; it withers the love of better and nobler things and renders all work valueless (Purg. xix. 121-123). The vital power goes out of every effort; so these sinners lie prostrate on the ground, useless and unprogressive. Their faces are set now, as in their life below, earthward. Like the fallen angels described in Paradise Lost, who, even in heaven, looked not upward to God but downward to gain:
Mammon led them on;
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From heaven; for e'en in heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
In vision beatific.1 [Note: W. Boyd Carpenter, The Spiritual Message of Dante, 168.]
Happy was it for Gehazi, if, while his skin was snow white with leprosy, his humbled soul was washed white as snow with the water of true repentance.2 [Note: Bishop Hall.]
The heinousness of Gehazi's guilt lies in the words Corruptio optimi pessima. When religion is used for a cloke of covetousness, of usurping ambition, of secret immorality, it becomes deadlier than infidelity. Men raze the sanctuary, and build their idol temples on the hallowed ground. They cover their base encroachments and impure designs with the “cloke of profession, doubly lined with the fox-fur of hypocrisy,” and hide the leprosy which is breaking out upon their foreheads with the golden petalon on which is inscribed the title of “holiness to the Lord.”
John succeeded Macarius, abbot of Alexandria, a.d. 394. St. Macarius, knowing his great foible, had said to him, “Brother, your great temptation is avarice. Resist it, or be assured the lot of Gehazi will be yours also.” Instead of profiting by this advice, as soon as Macarius was dead, and John succeeded to the abbacy, he appropriated to himself the revenues which belonged to the poor, and became a leper, covered with elephantiasis, “qu'on ne trouvait pas en tout son corps la largeur d'un doigt qui n'en fût gâté.”1 [Note: Les Petits Bollandistes (1880), Jan. 2.]
2. How, then, has this tragedy of Gehazi come to pass? Every one knows the answer of the man in the street, then and now. “Oh,” he would laugh, “the nearer the church the farther from grace.” And in that answer there is a terrible and searching truth. All contact with holy things is inevitably of the nature of a crisis: familiarity with them is dangerous and exacting. It is the old danger of touching the ark of God; it is the danger which Meredith sees still when he sings-
We are face to face with a very terrible fact here. All ministers especially, and all who engage in work about religion and its ordinances, must surely stand in awe of the dangers of familiarity. Yet this is a danger also for all who habitually hear or read or think of holy things, or handle them in the Sacraments. If faith be shallow and love half-hearted, if the wonder of this approach be not day by day renewed, and all rival passions that war against the soul suppressed, then will come the sure vengeance of sacred things profaned, and familiarity will sink into contempt. But familiarity needs not thus to sink. If the soul's surrender be complete, the wonder will not only last but will increase, and each day of sacred service will break with the freshness of a new revelation. For the treasures of faith are inexhaustible, and the returns of God to the faithful are fresh as the dew of each new morning1 [Note: J. Kelman, Ephemera Eternitatis, 204.]