NOTES for Ki2 5:1-15
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.