And he settled his countenance stedfastly, until he was ashamed; and the man of God wept.
Elisha has come to Damascus. Hazael, the king's servant, stands before him with a question about his master's illness. Then the conversation stops. One man holds a stare until the other feels shame, and the prophet breaks into tears. Readers have long asked who was staring, and why a man of God would weep in front of a foreign official.
The verse does not say whose face was fixed, and commentators read it differently. One reading takes it as Hazael's — an act of pretended grief.
On hearing this, we read that Hazael "fixed his gaze and stared at him, until he was embarrassed." This was hypocrisy. Under the eye of the prophet, before the truthful mind of the man of God, the look on his face testified against him. He pretended sorrow at this prophecy of Benhadad's death.
Others read it the other way round. They fill in the pronouns: the prophet is staring, and Hazael cannot hold the look.
This deeply affected the prophet, and gave his face, so to speak, a look that Hazael could neither understand nor endure. "And he (Elisha) fixed his gaze and stared at him, until he (Hazael) was embarrassed. And the man of God wept."
On the second reading, the silence is not awkwardness but exposure. Hazael came with his master's question, and with something he had told no one.
But in the depths of his being something is already stirring — hidden desire, coveting, a plan, perhaps vague, but which waits only to be confirmed. Elisha has read his heart. His secret thoughts do not escape God's eye. Elisha's answer would be unclear to anyone else. To Hazael it has a meaning that speeds up his decision. His desire gives birth to sin… Under that intense gaze, which searched the hidden corners of his conscience, Hazael felt stripped bare and ill at ease… Searched to the depths of his heart, ashamed under God's gaze, he still does not give up his twisted will. He excuses it because God knows about it.
Shame is not repentance. A conscience can be stirred while the plan behind it stays in place.
Hazael, contemplating the murder of his master, feels uneasy in the presence of the man of God. His conscience makes him ashamed.
The tears are not for the sick king, and not even, in the first place, for the man in front of him. Elisha is looking past Hazael to what Hazael will do.
Elisha's answer makes clear what moves him to tears. It is not the illness of the king, or the wickedness of Hazael. It is the suffering that God's people will endure at Hazael's hands. Elisha closes his public ministry by weeping over a people who were unmoved by all his miracles of grace. So he foreshadows his far greater Master. In the closing days of His ministry of grace, He wept over the city that had rejected His grace and scorned His love.
Two sorrows are on display in the same room, and only one of them is real.
Here is the light of God shining through Elisha, making plain everything at work in a heart God has not renewed. Man in the presence of that light is as uncomfortable as he can possibly be. Hazael put on a show of grief. Elisha, with a heart overflowing with real sorrow, let his feelings out in a way no one could mistake. The servant of the Lord felt how serious the message was that he had to deliver. So it is today with every true servant of Christ. God stirs such sympathies in him, and they show themselves in a way the cold-hearted pretender cannot copy.
One writer ties these tears to something the chapter leaves out.
Elisha's commission required him to anoint Hazael and Jehu, who were to carry out judgment. Yet in the passage that tells of his meeting with Hazael, Hazael's anointing is passed over in silence. In fact, through the prophetic word God placed His rod in Hazael's hands. But the anointing could not be mentioned while the man of God, who had come in grace, was weeping bitterly over the evil that Hazael would do to the children of his people.
- Gaze. Someone holds the stare until shame sets in. Commentators differ: is the fixed face Hazael's pretended grief, or Elisha's steady look that Hazael could not endure?
- Exposed. That gaze lays bare the plan already stirring in Hazael. God's eye reaches thoughts no one else has heard.
- Unmoved. Hazael feels shame and keeps his will. He even uses God's knowledge of his plan to excuse it.
- Tears. Elisha weeps for the suffering coming on God's people, not for the dying king. He closes a ministry of grace as his greater Master closed His — in tears over those who refused Him.
- Grace. God hands Hazael the rod, but the chapter records no anointing. A man in tears announces the judgment, and that open sorrow still marks out the true servant from the cold-hearted one.
And Hazael said, Why does my lord weep? And he said, Because I know the evil that thou wilt do to the children of Israel their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou kill with the sword, and wilt dash in pieces their children, and rip up their women with child.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And Hazael said, But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? And Elisha said, Jehovah has shewn me that thou wilt be king over Syria.
Elisha has just told Hazael, a Syrian official, the cruelty he will one day inflict on Israel. Hazael recoils at the thought, but the prophet answers that the throne of Syria is coming to him anyway.
Hazael is not arguing about the facts. He is arguing about himself, and one commentator takes his shock as real.
Hazael protests that he is not a dog to act with such cold brutality. His protest is probably completely sincere. Such deeds may have been foreign to his thoughts, and even disgusting to his feelings at the time. He did not know his own heart... He little realised the depth of wickedness and cruelty in a heart that is held in check by many safeguards. Then circumstances stir it, give it the occasion, and it blazes out in all its horror... Far better for Hazael, as for us, to take the place of the woman who owned that she was indeed a dog, only to discover that there is grace in the heart of God even for a dog (Mark 7:24-30).
The comparison Hazael reaches for is meant to be the lowest thing he can think of. One writer points out that it does not go low enough.
Hazael protested — was he a dog, to act so wickedly? But a dog would not do those things: he was much worse than a dog.
Another writer senses ambition hiding under the humble word.
You can sense, more than prove, that the destruction of Israel is an important thing to Hazael. It is easy for him to call himself a dog about such a deed, but he still has the ambition to accomplish it.
Not everyone takes the outburst at face value. Commentators differ: was Hazael fooling himself, or putting on an act?
But it was very different with Hazael. First came a hypocritical show of grief — "the look on their faces bears witness against them." Then came an outburst of indignation that he should be thought capable of such crimes... He failed to deceive the man of God. So he returns to his master, gives him a false version of the prophet's message, and at once, in the most heartless way, fulfils Elisha's prediction.
If Hazael did mean his protest, how could he carry such evil and never notice it? One writer answers that his circumstances, not his character, had been holding it down.
He was ignorant both of the deceitfulness and the desperate wickedness of the heart. He did not know how many checks there are in the things around us, and in the position we hold, to stop that wickedness breaking out. It goes unsuspected, because it lies dormant until circumstances rouse it. Hazael, as prime minister, had tasted power. His master's illness now offered him the step from the responsible power of a minister to the unaccountable power of a usurper... Does the slave, groaning under his oppressor's yoke, suspect that oppression is in his own heart? If he changed places with his oppressor, would it not break out in action?
Hazael's question has become shorthand for the confidence that says "not me." One writer hears the same instinct in Peter.
One day Peter confessed his Master as "the Christ, the Son of the living God." Suppose someone had then told him that he would one day disown Him with oaths and curses. He would have been inclined to reply in another man's words: "What is your servant, who is but a dog, that he should do this great thing?" But he did it all the same.
The same reflex shows up whenever Scripture lists what the flesh is capable of, and the reader refuses to see himself in the list.
Perhaps some of our readers have not yet learned the hopeless evil of the flesh — their own flesh. To such it may be shocking to find the offensive things named in Colossians 3:5 described as "your members."
The prophet does not argue with Hazael's view of himself. He tells him what God has shown him, and the last missing piece drops into place.
Finally Elisha reveals to him why he has been sent to Damascus... The elements that make up this darkened soul are now complete. All the vague desires and ambitions of his mind settle. The king may recover, but he will die. I will be king in his place and will torment Israel. From the thought to carrying it out is only one step. This is how God prepares the rod that will chasten His people, until the moment He breaks the rod itself.
- Denial. Hazael's "am I a dog?" is a man measuring his future by his present feelings, and getting it wrong.
- Ignorance. He did not know his own heart. What looked like character was circumstance holding the evil down.
- Opportunity. Move a man from restrained power to unaccountable power, and what was dormant acts — at once, in his case.
- Mirror. Peter's denial shows the same reflex in a real believer. The question is not whether we are better than Hazael, but whether we know ourselves.
- Grace. Better than protesting the name is owning it. The woman who admitted she was a dog found grace in God's heart even for a dog.