NOTES for Ki2 5:13

From what arises man’s distrust of God or the distrust of the man of God? Probably, the reasons can be many. But there is one that we meet, it seems, mostly than others. It is about love to all which is extraordinary, extravagant, striking imagination. It is hardly that the Syrian who had come to Elisha did not know who the prophets are and what can be expected from them. The prophets in that period were not only among the Jews, they were many in the pagan world, where they usually augured in the name of the supreme gods of their pantheons, mostly on behalf of the sun god or of the thunder god. And almost always these prophets, either, made certain miracles, often of completely magic character, or proposed to those who address to them the participation in very extravagant even in the sight of the contemporaries rites connected with the service of these gods, in the name and in the person of whom they acted.

Naaman thus understood that the God of the Jews is bigger than the gods of the other peoples, that He is more powerful and superior to them. And, certainly, he expected from the prophet of such a God something extraordinary, something that in his eyes had to correspond to the greatness of the God, the servant of whom was Elisha.

Elisha the meantime suggests to him just to wash in the Jordan. Such proposal seems a mockery to the high-ranking Syrian: are the rivers in Syria few for him, and which ones again - this Jordan is nothing, the summer in the upper course it is more similar to the brook! But the servants and aides advise him not to hurry: what if?

Indeed, the prophet is a man of God, what he says at least worth consideration. What if all this was not a joke? And here is the important. What if? If really it is God, Who helped this strange prophet? What if the prophet was right? And Naaman then decides. And he obtains the healing. Because he trusted after all the God of Elisha, the God of Israel, though not immediately. And such trust never remains without answer.