2 Kings 8

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

The Shunammite's land restored

¹ Now Elisha had spoken to the woman whose son he had restored to life, saying, "Arise and go, you and your household, and sojourn wherever you can sojourn; for Yahweh has called for a famine, and it shall also come upon the land for seven years." ² So the woman arose and did according to the word of the man of Elohim; she went with her household and sojourned in the land of the Philistines seven years. ³ And at the end of the seven years the woman returned from the land of the Philistines; and she went out to appeal to the king for her house and for her field. ⁴ Now the king was talking with Gehazi, the servant of the man of Elohim, saying, "Please tell me all the great things that Elisha has done." ⁵ And while he was telling the king how he had restored the dead to life, see, the woman whose son he had restored to life came appealing to the king for her house and for her field. And Gehazi said, "My lord, O king, this is the woman, and this is her son whom Elisha restored to life." ⁶ When the king asked the woman, she told him. So the king appointed an officer for her, saying, "Restore all that was hers, and all the produce of the field from the day that she left the land until now."

Hazael and Ben-hadad

⁷ Then Elisha came to Damascus. Ben-hadad the king of Aram was sick, and it was told him, saying, "The man of Elohim has come here." ⁸ And the king said to Hazael, "Take a gift in your hand and go to meet the man of Elohim, and inquire of Yahweh through him, saying, 'Shall I recover from this sickness?'" ⁹ So Hazael went to meet him and took a gift in his hand, of every good thing of Damascus, forty camels' load; and he came and stood before him and said, "Your son Ben-hadad king of Aram has sent me to you, saying, 'Shall I recover from this sickness?'" ¹⁰ And Elisha said to him, "Go, say to him, 'You shall surely recover.' But Yahweh has shown me that he shall surely die." ¹¹ And he fixed his gaze on him and kept it there until he was ashamed; and the man of Elohim wept. ¹² And Hazael said, "Why does my lord weep?" And he answered, "Because I know the evil that you will do to the children of Israel: their strongholds you will set on fire, and their young men you will kill with the sword, and their little ones you will dash in pieces, and their pregnant women you will rip open." ¹³ And Hazael said, "But what is your servant, a dog, that he should do this great thing?" And Elisha answered, "Yahweh has shown me that you will be king over Aram." ¹⁴ Then he departed from Elisha and came to his master, who said to him, "What did Elisha say to you?" And he answered, "He said to me, 'You shall surely recover.'" ¹⁵ But on the next day he took the coverlet and dipped it in water and spread it over his face, so that he died. And Hazael reigned in his place.

Jehoram king of Judah

¹⁶ In the fifth year of Joram the son of Ahab king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah, Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah began to reign. ¹⁷ He was thirty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem. ¹⁸ And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as the house of Ahab had done, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife; and he did evil in the sight of Yahweh. ¹⁹ Yet Yahweh was not willing to destroy Judah, for the sake of David His servant, as He had promised him to give a lamp to him and to his sons always. ²⁰ In his days Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah and set up a king over themselves. ²¹ Then Joram crossed over to Zair, and all his chariots with him. And he rose by night and struck the Edomites who had surrounded him and the commanders of the chariots; and the people fled to their tents. ²² So Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah to this day. Then Libnah revolted at that same time. ²³ Now the rest of the acts of Joram, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? ²⁴ And Joram lay down with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the City of David; and Ahaziah his son reigned in his place.

Ahaziah king of Judah

²⁵ In the twelfth year of Joram the son of Ahab king of Israel, Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah began to reign. ²⁶ Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Athaliah the daughter of Omri king of Israel. ²⁷ And he walked in the way of the house of Ahab and did evil in the sight of Yahweh, as the house of Ahab had done, for he was a son-in-law of the house of Ahab. ²⁸ He went with Joram the son of Ahab to war against Hazael king of Aram at Ramoth-gilead; and the Arameans wounded Joram. ²⁹ And King Joram returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Arameans had inflicted on him at Ramah, when he fought against Hazael king of Aram. And Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah went down to see Joram the son of Ahab in Jezreel, because he was sick.

Notes

• 8:4 Gehazi was last seen leaving Elisha with tsara'at (5:27). The stories of Elisha are not always told in order of time, and many think this conversation took place earlier; others think the king spoke with Gehazi in spite of his condition. Either way, the woman arrives at the very moment Gehazi is telling her story, and her land is given back: the timing itself is the point of the account.
• 8:10 The TRB follows the traditional reading (qere), lo, "to him." The written Hebrew (ketiv) has lo, "not," which sounds the same: "Say, 'You shall surely not recover.'" On the traditional reading Elisha's two sentences fit together: the sickness itself would not kill Ben-hadad, yet he would die, as verse 15 shows.
• 8:13 "Dog" was a word of deep self-abasement, as when Mephibosheth said, "What is your servant, that you should look upon a dead dog such as I am?" (2 Samuel 9:8). Hazael's words can be read as genuine shock or as false modesty from a man who already wanted the throne; "this great thing" may mean a mighty deed as much as a crime. Elisha does not anoint him, as Elijah had been told to do (1 Kings 19:15); he tells him what Yahweh has shown him.
• 8:15 The Hebrew does not name who took the cloth, but the flow of the story and its last words point to Hazael. An inscription on a statue of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III seems to fit: it says that Hadadezer of Damascus "disappeared" (that is, died) and that Hazael, "son of a nobody," seized the throne, which means a man not of the royal line. Many identify this Hadadezer with the Ben-hadad of this chapter, though not all agree.
• 8:22 Edom had been under Judah since David (2 Samuel 8:14), ruled by a deputy in Jehoshaphat's day (1 Kings 22:47). Its revolt recalls Isaac's word to Esau, father of Edom: "you shall serve your brother; but when you break loose, you shall tear his yoke from your neck" (Genesis 27:40). Verse 21 is hard in Hebrew; it seems that Joram broke out of an encirclement by night, but his army fled home. Libnah, a town in the lowland near the Philistines, broke away too.
• 8:26 Athaliah is the "daughter of Ahab" of verse 18, and here "daughter of Omri," the founder of the dynasty. The Hebrew word bat, "daughter," can also mean a granddaughter or female descendant, so most understand her as Ahab's daughter and Omri's granddaughter. Through this marriage the house of Ahab reached into the house of David, and she will try to wipe out the royal line of Judah (11:1).

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