2 Kings 8:13 And Hazael said, But what, is your servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered… Hazael came to the prophet to inquire whether his master would recover from his sickness. The answer is ambiguous. So far as the disease itself was concerned, he might recover. Yet his days were numbered; and the purpose to kill him was already being formed in the heart of his hitherto faithful servant. The prophet saw before him not only the king's enemy, but also the man who would one way inflict dire evils upon Israel. The thought of the horrors about to come to his people made the man of God weep. Hazael asks the cause of his sorrow. Elisha tells him frankly, and in the plainest terms, what was in the no very distant future. Hazael starts back with horror when he sees in this prophetic mirror the image of his own baseness. "Is thy servant a dog?" The prophet seems to evade the question; and yet in his reply we have the full and complete explanation, if not to Hazael, at least to us, of all that occurred. "The Lord hath showed me that thou shalt be king over Syria." Is this man, then, a base and guilty hypocrite? Is he a man who hides under the cloak of pretended affection for his master and reverence for humanity his fiendish designs? The answer we give to these questions will determine for us the use to be made of this portion of sacred history. I am willing to take the man's own estimate of himself as being, on the whole, the best and the truest. I believe for the moment he was really appalled at the description of his future life; and that when he uttered this exclamation, he was unable to realise it possible that he should ever be guilty of the deeds named by the prophet. How, then, you may say, are we to account for the fact that he actually did all that Elisha foretold, if he was not a hypocrite? There are some who think the subsequent murder an accident, so far as Hazael was concerned. I fear this theory is destitute of proof. At all events, we have the record of his dealings with Israel fully corroborating the statements of the prophet. I. Hazael failed to take into account THE INFLUENCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES UPON HUMAN CHARACTER. There is a doctrine of circumstances utterly at variance, not only with the teachings of Scripture, but also with the experience and deepest convictions of mankind — a doctrine which asserts, or appears to assert, that circumstances make men, and that the only difference between the noblest saint and the basest criminal is a difference simply in the structure of the brain, and the character of the surroundings. Some men teach this, but no man believes it, or acts upon it, either in his feelings respecting his own deeds, or his judgments of the moral character of the actions of his friend. But we must, while rejecting a doctrine so monstrous, yet remember that, in a very real sense, circumstances have a power over character and life. II. CIRCUMSTANCES BRING MEN INTO NEW TEMPTATIONS NEVER FELT BEFORE. Hazael, King of Syria, or even with the throne within his reach, would be a very different person from Hazael, the honoured servant of his master. Hazael's language must not be regarded as hypocritical, but as the language of one who had not sounded the depths of his own character, and who knew nothing of the changes the altered circumstances would bring to him. III. My text seems to suggest that MUCH OF WHAT PASSES FOR VIRTUE AMONGST US MAY SIMPLY BE VICE NOT MANIFESTED BY CIRCUMSTANCES. How much do women who are sometimes boastful owe to the fact that the world is harder in its judgments on their sins than in the case of the other sex! How much to the fact that they are more protected by circumstances! Let conscience utter its voice! Not always because you were holier or truer to God than your brother; but because you were never exposed to his temptations, because in the providence of God you have been more protected from yourself or others. The rich man knows nothing of the temptations of the man hard pressed by circumstances, and hence his hard and unjust censures. The poor man, protected by his very poverty, knows not the temptations of those nursed in the lap of wealth; hence, when he hears of the sins of the other, he flatters himself on his superiority. He owes it not to his moral heroism, but to his surroundings. I have spoken much of the power of circumstances. Let no man think he is the creature of his surroundings. By God's grace he may rise above them and triumph over them, making his very passions minister to his success, and making his enemies his benefactors. (J. Fordyce.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Hazael said, But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered, The LORD hath shewed me that thou shalt be king over Syria. |
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