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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
8:7-15 Hazael Murders Ben-hadad. The house of Omri has now held the throne of Israel since 1 Kings 16:23, and in spite of Elijah's prophecy in 1 Kings 21:21-24 about its end, one now reads of Ahab's second apostate son holding on to his kingdom with the help of Elijah's successor (e.g., 2 Kings 3:1-27; 6:9-10). Has Elijah sabotaged God's plan by failing to anoint Hazael and Jehu (1 Kings 19:15-18)? It turns out that the answer is no. Hazael is now introduced, to be followed shortly by Jehu.
8:8-9 meet the man of God. Ben-hadad II consults Israel's God about his future in much the same way that King Ahaziah of Israel earlier consulted Baal-zebub of Ekron (see note on 1:2). It appears to have been customary when consulting prophets to offer some payment, in this case an extravagant gift of forty camel loads of goods (cf. 1 Sam. 9:1-9; 1 Kings 14:1-4; 2 Kings 5:1-6). The messenger Hazael enters the narrative mysteriously. Readers are not told his lineage, nor even his role (servant? officer?). He comes from nowhere--a mere "dog," as he puts it in 8:13. A fragmentary Assyrian text on a basalt statue of King Shalmaneser III refers to him similarly as the "son of nobody," doubtless reflecting lowly, nonroyal origins.
8:10 say to him, "You shall certainly recover." This is what the Hebrew text says. But the word translated "to him" (Hb. lo) is sometimes to be read as the negative word "not" (the Hb. word lo’ has virtually the same sound as the almost identical Hb. word lo). If this is the case, then Hazael is to say to Ben-hadad, "You will certainly not recover," and Hazael would have lied to the king (v. 14). But if the Hebrew of Elisha's statement does indeed mean "You shall certainly recover," it could have been a truthful prediction about the course of Ben-hadad's sickness that was still negated when Hazael murdered him--i.e., Ben-hadad could have recovered had Hazael not murdered him. Alternatively, some have suggested that Elisha's statement was in fact deceptive, to lull the king into a false sense of security, so that he would be unprepared for Hazael's attack.
8:11 he fixed his gaze. The text does not identify "he" and "him" in this verse. Most interpreters understand the first "he" to be Elisha, who "fixed his gaze" on Hazael, staring at him but also seeing with prophetic vision what Hazael would do in the future. Hazael does not know how to respond and is embarrassed, and then Elisha weeps. An alternative interpretation is that Hazael remains dazed by what he has heard and so he stares at Elisha, until Elisha's weeping breaks into his reverie.
8:15 Hazael became king. Hazael came to power in Syria at some point between the Assyrian Shalmaneser III's campaign in the west in his fourteenth year (), when it is known that Ben-hadad (a throne name; his personal name was Adad-idri) was still on the throne, and the campaign of Shalmaneser's eighteenth year (), which records Hazael as king. He reigned for about as one of Israel's most bitter enemies.
