Main news for 5 March 2026

King James Version (en)

2 Kings, Chapter 5, verse 13

⁸ Elisha, sending him to Jordan, cureth him

¹³And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?

NOTES

People have different attitudes toward their illnesses: some think about them all the time, while others try to forget about them. Some complain, while others keep silent and pretend they are not sick. But almost everyone still wants...

Why does distrust of God or distrust of a man of God arise in a person? There can be many reasons. But there is one that appears to occur more often than others. The issue is...

Why does distrust of God or distrust of a man of God arise in a person? There can be many reasons. But there is one that appears to occur more often than others. The issue is love for everything unusual, extravagant, and striking to the imagination.

It is hardly possible that the Syrian who came to Elisha did not know who prophets were and what could be expected of them. Prophets in those times existed not only among the Jews; there were many of them in the pagan world as well, where they usually spoke in the name of the supreme gods of their pantheons, most often in the name of the sun god or the thunder god. And almost always these prophets either demonstrated certain miracles, often of a quite magical character, or offered those who turned to them participation in rites that were very extravagant even in the eyes of their contemporaries, connected with the service of the gods in whose name and on whose behalf they spoke. But Naaman had heard about the God of the Jews that He was greater than all the gods of other peoples, that He was more powerful and higher than they. And he expected from the prophet of such a God something unusual, something that in his eyes had to correspond to the majesty of the God whose servant Elisha was. Elisha, however, offers him only to wash in the Jordan. To the high-ranking Syrian such a proposal seems mockery: does he not have enough rivers in Syria, and what rivers, not to be compared with this Jordan, which in its upper course in summer looks more like a stream.

But his servants and assistants advise him not to rush: what if? After all, the prophet is a man of God; what he says is in any case worth listening to. What if all this is not mockery at all? This is where the main thing lies. What if? What if the God of this strange prophet will still help? What if the prophet is right?

And Naaman decides. And receives healing. For he did trust the God of Elisha, the God of Israel, though not at once. And such trust never remains unanswered.

When speaking and thinking about God and spiritual life, we almost always immediately associate both with religion. But are we right to think so...

When speaking and thinking about God and spiritual life, we almost always immediately associate both with religion. But are we right to think so? If a connection between spiritual life and religion really does exist, what is it? There is no denying that a religious person always thinks about God and keeps Him in mind (in the case of the Syrians of Elisha’s time, it would be more appropriate to speak of gods, but that does not change the essence of the matter: in any event, these are the higher powers before which a person feels the sacred awe that underlies every religion). But how does religious consciousness see God?

Judging by Naaman’s reaction to the information he received about the prophet who could heal him, he was undoubtedly a religious man. He reveals faith not only in gods (and the God of Israel was most likely for him one of the many gods he knew about), but also in miracles (otherwise he would never have gone to Israel to be healed), and even in the existence of special people who have a special relationship with the gods and therefore possess a special power capable of healing any illness.

Yet Naaman’s conception of this power, like his conception of the gods, is still highly naturalistic. He thinks that it is somehow physically connected with the prophet’s hands, which must touch his sores in order to heal them. For him, God is not will or spirit but power, energy, in short, nature: a nature higher than the one of which we are part, perhaps, but nature nonetheless, and one shares in it according to the laws of nature rather than the logic of spiritual action. He tries to understand where the instrument that sets this supernatural energy in motion is, and he is indignant, thinking himself deceived, when he does not see it.

He returns to wash only on the advice of his servant, reasoning simply that he has nothing to lose anyway and that a prophet is a prophet and will not speak idly. It is then, quite unexpectedly and illogically from Naaman’s point of view, that the miracle occurs: by a single act of His will and without any instrument, God heals a man who could not believe that God needed no magic wand. He does not need one because He is not a magician but a loving Creator, whose creation is absolutely obedient to His love.

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