2 Kings 5-8

Common English Bible

Naaman is healed

5 Naaman, a general for the king of Aram, was a great man and highly regarded by his master, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. This man was a mighty warrior, but he had a skin disease.^{[a] 2} Now Aramean raiding parties had gone out and captured a young girl from the land of Israel. She served Naaman’s wife.

³ She said to her mistress, “I wish that my master could come before the prophet who lives in Samaria. He would cure him of his skin disease.” ⁴ So Naaman went and told his master what the young girl from the land of Israel had said.

⁵ Then Aram’s king said, “Go ahead. I will send a letter to Israel’s king.”

So Naaman left. He took along ten kikkars of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten changes of clothing. ⁶ He brought the letter to Israel’s king. It read, “Along with this letter I’m sending you my servant Naaman so you can cure him of his skin disease.”

⁷ When the king of Israel read the letter, he ripped his clothes. He said, “What? Am I God to hand out death and life? But this king writes me, asking me to cure someone of his skin disease! You must realize that he wants to start a fight with me.”

⁸ When Elisha the man of God heard that Israel’s king had ripped his clothes, he sent word to the king: “Why did you rip your clothes? Let the man come to me. Then he’ll know that there’s a prophet in Israel.”

⁹ Naaman arrived with his horses and chariots. He stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. ¹⁰ Elisha sent out a messenger who said, “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan River. Then your skin will be restored and become clean.”

¹¹ But Naaman went away in anger. He said, “I thought for sure that he’d come out, stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the bad spot, and cure the skin disease. ¹² Aren’t the rivers in Damascus, the Abana^[b] and the Pharpar, better than all Israel’s waters? Couldn’t I wash in them and get clean?” So he turned away and proceeded to leave in anger.

¹³ Naaman’s servants came up to him and spoke to him: “Our father, if the prophet had told you to do something difficult, wouldn’t you have done it? All he said to you was, ‘Wash and become clean.’” ¹⁴ So Naaman went down and bathed in the Jordan seven times, just as the man of God had said. His skin was restored like that of a young boy, and he became clean.

¹⁵ He returned to the man of God with all his attendants. He came and stood before Elisha, saying, “Now I know for certain that there’s no God anywhere on earth except in Israel. Please accept a gift from your servant.”

¹⁶ But Elisha said, “I swear by the life of the Lord I serve that I won’t accept anything.”

Naaman urged Elisha to accept something, but he still refused. ¹⁷ Then Naaman said, “If not, then let me, your servant, have two mule loads of earth. Your servant will never again offer entirely burned offerings or sacrifices to any other gods except the Lord. ¹⁸ But may the Lord forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master comes into Rimmon’s temple to bow down there and is leaning on my arm, I must also bow down in Rimmon’s temple. When I bow down in Rimmon’s temple, may the Lord forgive your servant for doing that.”

¹⁹ Elisha said to him, “Go in peace.”

But when Naaman had gone some distance from Elisha, ²⁰ Gehazi (who was the servant of Elisha the man of God) thought, My master let this Aramean Naaman off the hook by not accepting the gift he brought! As surely as the Lord lives, I’ll go after him and accept something from him. ²¹ So Gehazi pursued Naaman.

Naaman saw him running after him, so he got down off his chariot to meet him. He said, “Is everything okay?”

²² Gehazi answered, “Yes, but my master sent me to say, ‘Two young men who are members of a group of prophets have just now come to me from the hills of Ephraim. Give them a kikkar of silver and two changes of clothing.’”

²³ Naaman said, “By all means, take two kikkars!” He encouraged Gehazi to accept them. He tied two kikkars of silver up in two bags, along with two changes of clothes. Naaman gave them to two of his servants, and they carried them in front of Gehazi. ²⁴ When Gehazi arrived at the elevated fortress,^[c] he took the items from them and stored them in his house. Then he sent the servants away, and they left. ²⁵ Gehazi then went and stood before his master.

Elisha said to Gehazi, “Where did you come from, Gehazi?”

“Your servant didn’t go anywhere,” Gehazi replied.

²⁶ Elisha said to him, “Wasn’t my heart going along with you^[d] when the man got off his chariot to meet you? Is this the time to accept silver, clothes, olive trees, vineyards, sheep, cattle, or male and female servants? ²⁷ Naaman’s skin disease will now cling to you and to your descendants forever!” And Gehazi left Elisha’s presence, flaky like snow with skin disease.

An ax head floats

6 The members of the group of prophets said to Elisha, “Look, the place where we now live under your authority is too small for us. ² Let’s go to the Jordan River and each get a log from there. Then we can make a place to live there.”

Elisha said, “Do it!”

³ One of them said, “Please come with us, your servants.”

Elisha said, “Okay, I’ll go.” ⁴ So he went with them. They came to the Jordan River and began cutting down trees. ⁵ One of them was cutting down a tree when his ax head fell into the water. He cried out, “Oh, no! Master, it was a borrowed ax!”

⁶ The man of God said, “Where did it fall?” He showed Elisha the place. Elisha then cut a piece of wood, threw it into the river there, and the ax head floated up. ⁷ “Lift it out,” Elisha said. So the man then reached out and grabbed it.

Aramean attacks are stopped

⁸ Aram’s king was fighting against Israel. He took counsel with his officers, saying, “I’ll camp at such-and-such a place.”

⁹ The man of God sent word to Israel’s king: “Beware of passing by this place because the Arameans are going down there.” ¹⁰ Then Israel’s king sent word to the place the man of God had mentioned to him. Time after time, Elisha warned the king, and the king stayed on the alert.

¹¹ Aram’s king was extremely upset about this. He called his officers and said to them, “Tell me! Who among us is siding with Israel’s king?”

¹² One of his officers said, “No one, Your Majesty! It’s Elisha the Israelite prophet who tells Israel’s king the words that you speak in the privacy of your bedroom.”

¹³ He said, “Go and find out where he is. Then I will send men to capture him.”

They told him, “He is in Dothan.” ¹⁴ So the king sent horses and chariots there with a strong army. They came at night and surrounded the city.

¹⁵ Elisha’s servant got up early and went out. He saw an army with horses and chariots surrounding the city. His servant said to Elisha, “Oh, no! Master, what will we do?”

¹⁶ “Don’t be afraid,” Elisha said, “because there are more of us than there are of them.” ¹⁷ Then Elisha prayed, “Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he saw that the mountain was full of horses and fiery chariots surrounding Elisha. ¹⁸ The Arameans came toward him, so Elisha prayed to the Lord, “Strike this nation with blindness.” And the Lord struck them blind, just as Elisha asked. ¹⁹ Elisha said to them, “This isn’t the right road or the right city. Follow me, and I’ll lead you to the man you are looking for.” But he took them to Samaria!

²⁰ When they arrived in Samaria, Elisha said, “Lord, open the eyes of these men so they can see.” The Lord opened their eyes, and they saw that they were right in the middle of Samaria! ²¹ When he saw them, Israel’s king said to Elisha, “Should I kill them, my father? Should I?”

²² He said, “No, don’t kill them. Did you capture them with your own sword or bow? Do you have the right to kill them?^[e] Put food and water in front of them so they can eat and drink and return to their master.” ²³ So the king gave them a great feast, and they ate and drank. Then the king let them go, and they returned to their master. After that, Aramean raiding parties didn’t come into Israel anymore.

Ben-hadad attacks Samaria

²⁴ Now it happened later that Aram’s King Ben-hadad gathered all his forces and went up to attack Samaria. ²⁵ The siege lasted so long that there was a great famine in Samaria. A donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of silver and a quarter kab of doves’ dung^[f] for five shekels. ²⁶ Israel’s king was passing by on the city wall when a woman appealed to him, “Help me, Your Majesty!”

²⁷ The king said, “No! May the Lord help you! Where can I find help for you? From the threshing floor or the winepress?” ²⁸ But then the king asked her, “What’s troubling you?”

She answered, “A woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we can eat him today; we’ll eat my son tomorrow.’ ²⁹ So we cooked and ate my son. The next day I said to her, ‘Hand over your son so we can eat him.’ But she had hidden her son.”

³⁰ When the king heard the woman’s story, he ripped his clothes. And as he passed by along the wall, the people could see that he was wearing mourning clothes underneath. ³¹ He said, “So may God do to me, and more, if the head of Elisha, Shaphat’s son, remains on his shoulders today!”

³² Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. The king sent a messenger on ahead, but before the man arrived, Elisha said to the elders, “Do you see that this murderer has sent someone to cut off my head? Watch for when the messenger comes, then close the door and hold it shut against him. The sound of his master’s feet is right behind him, isn’t it?”

³³ While Elisha was still speaking with them, the messenger^[g] arrived and said, “Look, this disaster is the Lord’s doing. Why should I trust the Lord any longer?”

7 Elisha said, “Hear the Lord’s word! This is what the Lord says: At this time tomorrow a seah^[h] of wheat flour will sell for a shekel at Samaria’s gate, and two seahs of barley will sell for a shekel.”

² Then the officer, the one the king leaned on for support, spoke to the man of God: “Come on! Even if the Lord should make windows in the sky, how could that happen?”

Elisha said, “You will see it with your own eyes, but you won’t eat from it.”

The siege is broken

³ Now there were four men with skin disease^[i] at the entrance to the city. They said to each other, “What are we doing sitting here until we die? ⁴ If we decide, ‘Let’s go into the city,’ the famine is there, and we’ll die in the city. But if we stay here, we’ll die just the same. So let’s go and surrender to the Aramean camp. If they let us live, we’ll live. If they kill us, we’ll die.” ⁵ So they set out in the evening to the Aramean camp, and they came to the edge of the camp. But there was no one there because ⁶ the Lord had made the Aramean camp hear the sound of chariots, horses, and a strong army. They had said to each other, “Listen! Israel’s king has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to come against us!” ⁷ So they had got up and fled in the evening, leaving their tents, horses, and donkeys. They left the camp exactly as it was and ran for their lives.

⁸ So these men with skin disease came to the edge of the camp. They entered a tent where they ate and drank. They carried off some silver, gold, and garments, and they hid them. Then they returned and went into another tent. They took more things from there, went away, and hid them. ⁹ But then they said to each other, “What we’re doing isn’t right. Today is a day of good news, but we’re keeping quiet about it. If we wait until dawn, something bad will happen to us. Come on! Let’s go and tell the palace.” ¹⁰ So they went and called out to the gatekeepers, telling them, “We went to the Aramean camp, and listen to this: No one was there, not even the sound of anyone! The only things there were tied-up horses and donkeys, and the tents left just as they were.” ¹¹ The gatekeepers shouted out the news, and it was reported within the palace.

¹² The king got up in the night. He said to his servants, “Let me tell you what the Arameans are doing to us. They know we are starving, so they’ve left the camp to hide in the fields. They are thinking, The Israelites will come out from the city, and then we’ll capture them alive and invade the city.”

¹³ But one of his servants answered, “Please let some men take five of the horses that are left, and let’s send them out to see what happens. They are in the same situation as the large number of Israelites who are left here; they are no better off than the large number of Israelites who’ve already perished.”^{[j] 14} So they chose two chariots with their horses.

The king sent them after the Aramean army, saying, “Go and see!” ¹⁵ So they went after the Arameans as far as the Jordan River. The road was filled the whole way with garments and equipment that the Arameans had thrown away in their rush. The messengers returned and reported this to the king.

¹⁶ Then the people went out and looted the Aramean camp. And so it happened that a seah of wheat flour did sell for a shekel, and two seahs of barley sold for a shekel, in agreement with the Lord’s word. ¹⁷ But the king had put the officer whom he leaned on for support in charge of the city gate. The people trampled the officer at the gate, and he died. This was just what the man of God said when the king had come down to him. ¹⁸ Because when the man of God said to the king, “At this time tomorrow two seahs of barley will sell for a shekel at Samaria’s gate, and one seah of wheat flour will sell for a shekel,” ¹⁹ the officer had answered the man of God, “Come on! Even if the Lord should make windows in the sky, how could that happen?” Then Elisha had said, “You will see it with your own eyes, but you won’t eat from it.” ²⁰ That’s exactly what happened to him. The people trampled him at the city gate, and he died.

The woman from Shunem

8 Elisha spoke to the woman whose son he had brought back to life: “You and your household must go away and live wherever you can, because the Lord has called for a famine. It is coming to the land and will last seven years.”

² So the woman went and did what the man of God asked. She and her household moved away, living in Philistia seven years. ³ When seven years had passed, the woman returned from Philistia. She went to appeal to the king for her house and her farmland. ⁴ The king was speaking to Gehazi, the man of God’s servant, asking him, “Tell me about all the great things Elisha has done.” ⁵ So Gehazi was telling the king how Elisha had brought the dead to life. At that very moment, the woman whose son he had brought back to life began to appeal to the king for her house and her farmland.

Gehazi said, “Your Majesty, this is the woman herself! And this is her son, the one Elisha brought to life!”

⁶ The king questioned the woman, and she told him her story. Then the king appointed an official to help her, saying, “Return everything that belongs to her, as well as everything that the farmland has produced, starting from the day she left the country until right now.”

Hazael becomes king

⁷ Now Elisha had gone to Damascus when Aram’s King Ben-hadad became sick. The king was told, “The man of God has come all this way.”

⁸ So the king said to Hazael, “Take a gift with you and go to meet the man of God. Question the Lord through him: ‘Will I recover from this sickness?’”

⁹ So Hazael went out to meet Elisha. He took along forty camel-loads of Damascus’ finest goods as a gift. He came and stood before Elisha and said, “Your son Ben-hadad, the king of Aram, sent me to you to ask, ‘Will I recover from this sickness?’”

¹⁰ Elisha said to him, “Go and tell him, ‘You will definitely recover,’ but actually the Lord has shown me that he will die.” ¹¹ Elisha stared straight at Hazael until he felt uneasy.^[k] Then the man of God began to cry.

¹² Hazael said, “Master, why are you crying?”

“Because I know what violence you will do to the Israelites,” Elisha said. “You will drive them from their forts with fire. You will kill their young men with the sword. You will smash their children and rip open their pregnant women.”

¹³ Hazael replied, “How could your servant, who is nothing but a dog, do such mighty things?”

Elisha said, “The Lord has shown me that you will be king over Aram.” ¹⁴ Then Hazael left Elisha and returned to his master.

“What did Elisha say to you?” Ben-hadad asked.

“He told me that you will certainly live,” Hazael replied. ¹⁵ But the next day he took a blanket, soaked it in water, and put it over Ben-hadad’s face until he died. Hazael succeeded him as king.

Jehoram rules Judah

¹⁶ In the fifth year of Israel’s King Joram, Ahab’s son, Jehoram, the son of Judah’s King Jehoshaphat, became king.^{[l] 17} He was 32 years old when he became king, and he ruled for eight years in Jerusalem. ¹⁸ He walked in the ways of Israel’s kings, just as Ahab’s dynasty had done, because he married Ahab’s daughter. He did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes. ¹⁹ Nevertheless, because of his servant David, the Lord wasn’t willing to destroy Judah. The Lord had promised to preserve a lamp for David and his sons forever. ²⁰ During Jehoram’s rule Edom rebelled against Judah’s power and appointed their own king. ²¹ Jehoram^[m] along with all his chariots crossed over to Zair. He got up at night to attack the Edomites who had surrounded him and his chariot commanders,^[n] but his army fled back home. ²² So Edom has been independent of Judah to this day. Libnah rebelled at the same time. ²³ The rest of Jehoram’s deeds and all that he accomplished, aren’t they written in the official records of Judah’s kings? ²⁴ Jehoram died and was buried with his ancestors in David’s City. His son Ahaziah succeeded him as king.

Ahaziah rules Judah

²⁵ Ahaziah, the son of Judah’s king Jehoram, became king in the twelfth year of Israel’s King Joram,^[o] Ahab’s son. ²⁶ Ahaziah was 22 years old when he became king, and he ruled for one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah; she was the granddaughter of Israel’s King Omri. ²⁷ He walked in the ways of Ahab’s dynasty, doing what was evil in the Lord’s eyes, just as Ahab’s dynasty had done, because he had married into Ahab’s family. ²⁸ Ahaziah went with Joram, Ahab’s son, to fight against Aram’s King Hazael at Ramoth-gilead, where the Arameans wounded Joram. ²⁹ King Joram returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds the Arameans had given him at Ramah in his battle with Aram’s King Hazael. Then Judah’s King Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram, went down to visit Joram, Ahab’s son, at Jezreel because he had been wounded.