Not Defined by Power and Importance
Often our ability to listen and learn from someone is defined by who is powerful, who is influential, who is important. But what if history is not determined by importance? But what if history is determined by the will of the living God?
2 Kings 5 is a beautifully written story that has that view of the world. I’ve had such a delight sitting with this story. It’s laced with ironic reversals of power and influence and importance. Let’s see how God’s work will not be thwarted or defined by human sociology.
“Often our ability to listen and learn from someone is defined by who is powerful, who is influential, who is important.”
The Powerful Man with a Weakness
We’re going to look at this story verse by verse as a study in status, and we’re going to keep noticing high status and low status words so we can notice high status and low status people. Are you ready for a high status bingo?
“Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded. Because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier.” (2 Kings 5:1)
How many words there? It’s excessive. The author has overdone it in telling us this man is really high status. He’s a power man, he’s got swords, and he’s got influence.
And the words pile up almost excessively so that we feel the sting of that last element of the verse.
“He had leprosy.” (2 Kings 5:1)
There is something weak here.
There is something potentially low status about this man after all. This high status individual has a significant need, and it would seem there is no easy solution at hand.
The Powerless Catalyst
Notice how a collection of words about lacking power, influence, and status come next.
“Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife.”(2 Kings 5:2)
Why does the narrator introduce her right now? And why are these two opening verses, verse one and verse two, so crafted around either being great or being small?
Here is the girl who gave me the title “What Can an Enslaved Young Female Victim of Forced Migration Do?” It’s a very contemporary question, isn’t it?
“We sense that the story is going to challenge our understandings of power.”
We sense that the story is going to challenge our understandings of power. Indeed, the low status character is given the role in the narrative of the catalyst. She offers the piece of information that addresses the narrative’s problem, and she sets the trajectory for the story’s resolution.
“She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” (2 Kings 5:3)
Two Kings Playing Games
The next movement of the story plays into another subversion of power. The king of Aram doesn’t hesitate to send Naaman. The king of Israel finds his arrival deeply disturbing, feeling like Aram is picking a quarrel with him.
You can sense the taunting: “Heal him, and you will strengthen my best weapon to invade you more successfully, or fail, and I’ll know your gods are nothing and be emboldened to keep invading you.” The king of Aram has basically got the king of Israel at checkmate.
The Prophet Steps In
But then, while the powerful ones are playing their games of power, the story turns. And as readers of Samuel and Kings, we’ve come to see that real power in Israel is not found in the palace, and the throne, and in the bags of gold, but in wild hippies who wear camel hair and eat locusts. Crazy, marginalised prophets like Elijah and Elisha. It’s the marginalised one who steps in and speaks and commands and carries himself with a strange authority.
“We’ve come to see that real power in Israel is not found in the palace, and the throne, and in the bags of gold, but in wild hippies who wear camel hair and eat locusts.”
Like a king issuing edicts, he sends a message to the great king of Israel, and so Naaman visits the prophet’s house. And a messenger tells him what to do to solve two problems. One, to have the health of his skin returned to him, and two, using a word from Leviticus, to be cleansed.
Now, the king of Aram had set up a plan that had wonderfully humiliated the king of Israel, but now the tables are turning, and Naaman is feeling pretty humiliated himself.
Naaman’s Wounded Pride
Naaman wanted an audience with this prophet. Naaman wanted a public display. He wanted a bit of hand-waving, a bit of spectacle. He wants something more dignified. He wants the prophet to show himself to him.
But Naaman went away angry.
“I thought he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot, and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” (2 Kings 5:11-12)
Elisha has even offended Naaman’s sense of national pride. Naaman thinks, “My rivers are better than your rivers.” So he turned and went off in a rage.
Elisha has not treated Naaman as the high status person that he thinks he is, nor has he acknowledged the impressive place that he comes from.
So, the story turns again. The narrator has been teaching us to not look at the high status ones, but to look at the lowly ones. The catalyst for this wonderful story has been a powerless young girl. The proposal of the solution in this story has come from a marginalised prophet, who interestingly, is actually largely absent from the narrative. He’s hiding and just sending messages.
Low status characters continue the development, because now Naaman’s servants have to speak to him and placate him. They use high status language by calling him “Father,” but they urge him to humble himself and at least give a dip in the Jordan a try.
Restored Like a Child
This verse is stunning, isn’t it?
“So Naaman went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.” (2 Kings 5:14)
Two things happen. His flesh was restored, and he became clean. What sort of clean? Clean like that of a young boy.
“Isn’t that clever? The words of the small girl have opened a way for Naaman to be characterised now as a small boy.”
In Hebrew, the flesh being restored is a turning word. There’s a turning of status going on here, and isn’t it remarkable that the flesh of the valiant, great, well-regarded army commander is like that of a young boy, or we could translate small boy. Exactly the same two words that were used at the beginning of the story, just now lacking their feminine endings in Hebrew. Isn’t that clever? The words of the small girl have opened a way for Naaman to be characterised now as a small boy. How many high status kings or soldiers would be able to affect a healing and a transformation like that?
The High Man Made Low
Now, Naaman makes one more bid for power. He offers to pay for the cure, but Elisha will not be bought. Notice again, “I’m not going to play power games. I’m not going to be influenced by money.”
So then Naaman is recharacterised again. Now, in humbled terms. He is a worshipper, and he is a servant of a foreign king now. And much as he loves the rivers of Aram, he’s willing to grant that he needs a symbol of the truth, that God is to be found in Israel, not Aram. He’s going to take some soil back.
But perhaps more than that, what he needs to take back is the mercy of God, as his own cultural setting means he is still going to be in the temple of Rimmon. Notice how powerless he is. “When I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the Lord forgive your servant for this.” (2 Kings 5:18).
Proud Naaman’s imagination and heart have been captivated by the living God. And so, Elisha’s final word to him is rich and beautiful, especially when you realise he is talking to a powerful weapon of an enemy king. “Shalom to you. Peace and wholeness to you. I wish for you the experience of a world put right.”
What a Captured Girl Can Do
In a book written to expose the disastrous consequences of Israel wanting a king like the nations, the author provokes us to keep seeing the significance of the weak ones, and the marginalised ones, and the way a life lived captured by the Lord is how God’s power will be seen in the world. It’s people whose hearts have been captured by the Lord who will be the ones of influence, and power, and effect in the world.
“It’s people whose hearts have been captured by the Lord who will be the ones of influence, and power, and effect in the world.”
God’s purposes to transform and bring shalom don’t happen because the high stakes, strong ones do their stuff. Transformation and shalom begin in this story because a little girl who’s captured speaks up. It looks like she’s been captured by the Arameans, but really, she’s been captured, seized, held by a confidence that there is a God in Israel. She overflows with both kindness and courage as a result.
What can a captured little girl do? More than we might dare to imagine. Because our lives are not determined by power, influence and importance, but by the transforming kindness and peace of our living God.
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Image: Naaman’s Wife (1888) by Frank William Warwick Topham