2 Kings 8: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Elisha warns the woman whose son he raised to leave the country before a seven-year famine, and when she returns the king of Israel orders her house, land, and lost income restored. Elisha then goes to Damascus, where the sick king Ben-hadad sends Hazael to ask whether he will recover; Elisha weeps over the harm Hazael will do to Israel and tells him he will be king, and the next day Hazael smothers Ben-hadad and takes the throne. The rest of the chapter turns to Judah: the eight-year reign of Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat, the revolt of Edom and Libnah, and the one-year reign of his son Ahaziah, who joins Joram of Israel in battle against Hazael at Ramoth-gilead.

Claim by Claim

1. 8:1
   • Elisha spoke to the woman whose son he had restored to life.
   • Elisha told her to arise and go, she and her household.
   • Elisha told her to live as a foreigner wherever she could live as a foreigner.
   • Elisha said the LORD had called for a famine.
   • Elisha said the famine would come upon the land for seven years.
2. 8:2
   • The woman arose.
   • The woman did according to the word of the man of God.
   • She went with her household.
   • She lived as a foreigner in the land of the Philistines for seven years.
3. 8:3
   • At the end of seven years the woman returned from the land of the Philistines.
   • She went out to cry to the king for her house and for her land.
4. 8:4
   • The king was speaking with Gehazi, the servant of the man of God.
   • The king asked Gehazi to relate to him all the great things Elisha had done.
5. 8:5
   • While Gehazi was telling the king how Elisha had restored a dead person to life, the woman whose son Elisha had restored to life was crying to the king for her house and for her land.
   • Gehazi said to the king that this was the woman.
   • Gehazi said this was her son whom Elisha restored to life.
6. 8:6
   • The king asked the woman about it.
   • The woman told the king.
   • The king assigned to her one official.
   • The king ordered that all that was hers be restored.
   • The king ordered that all the produce of the field from the day she left the land until now be restored.
7. 8:7
   • Elisha came to Damascus.
   • Ben-hadad king of Aram was sick.
   • Ben-hadad was told that the man of God had come there.
8. 8:8
   • The king said to Hazael to take a gift in his hand.
   • The king told Hazael to go meet the man of God.
   • The king told Hazael to inquire of the LORD through him.
   • The king told Hazael to ask whether he would recover from this illness.
9. 8:9
   • Hazael went to meet Elisha.
   • Hazael took a gift with him.
   • The gift was of every good thing of Damascus.
   • The gift was a load of forty camels.
   • Hazael came and stood before Elisha.
   • Hazael said that Ben-hadad king of Aram, called Elisha's son, had sent him to Elisha.
   • Hazael asked on Ben-hadad's behalf whether he would recover from this illness.
10. 8:10
    • Elisha told Hazael to go and say to Ben-hadad that he would surely recover.
    • Elisha said the LORD had shown him that Ben-hadad would surely die.
11. 8:11
    • He set his face steadily and fixed it until the other was ashamed.
    • The man of God wept.
12. 8:12
    • Hazael asked why his lord was weeping.
    • Elisha answered that it was because he knew the evil Hazael would do to the children of Israel.
    • Elisha said Hazael would set their fortresses on fire.
    • Elisha said Hazael would kill their young men with the sword.
    • Elisha said Hazael would dash their little children to pieces.
    • Elisha said Hazael would rip open their pregnant women.
13. 8:13
    • Hazael asked what his servant, a dog, was, that he should do this great thing.
    • Elisha said the LORD had shown him Hazael as king over Aram.
14. 8:14
    • Hazael departed from Elisha.
    • Hazael came to his master.
    • His master asked him what Elisha said to him.
    • Hazael answered that Elisha told him he would surely recover.
15. 8:15
    • On the next day Hazael took a thick cloth.
    • He dipped the cloth in water.
    • He spread the cloth over Ben-hadad's face.
    • Ben-hadad died.
    • Hazael reigned in his place.
16. 8:16
    • In the fifth year of Joram son of Ahab king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being king of Judah, Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat began to reign as king of Judah.
17. 8:17
    • Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he began to reign.
    • He reigned eight years in Jerusalem.
18. 8:18
    • Jehoram walked in the way of the kings of Israel.
    • He did as the house of Ahab had done.
    • The daughter of Ahab was his wife.
    • He did evil in the sight of the LORD.
19. 8:19
    • The LORD was not willing to destroy Judah.
    • The LORD spared Judah for the sake of David his servant.
    • The LORD had said he would give David a lamp for his sons for all days.
20. 8:20
    • In Jehoram's days Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah.
    • The Edomites made a king over themselves.
21. 8:21
    • Joram crossed over to Zair with all the chariots.
    • He rose by night.
    • He struck the Edomites who surrounded him and the captains of the chariots.
    • The people fled to their tents.
22. 8:22
    • Edom has been in revolt from under the hand of Judah until this day.
    • Libnah revolted at that same time.
23. 8:23
    • The rest of the acts of Joram and all that he did are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah.
24. 8:24
    • Joram slept with his fathers.
    • He was buried with his fathers in the city of David.
    • Ahaziah his son reigned in his place.
25. 8:25
    • In the twelfth year of Joram son of Ahab king of Israel, Ahaziah son of Jehoram began to reign as king of Judah.
26. 8:26
    • Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he began to reign.
    • He reigned one year in Jerusalem.
    • His mother's name was Athaliah.
    • Athaliah was the daughter of Omri king of Israel.
27. 8:27
    • Ahaziah walked in the way of the house of Ahab.
    • He did evil in the sight of the LORD, as the house of Ahab did.
    • He was a son-in-law of the house of Ahab.
28. 8:28
    • Ahaziah went with Joram son of Ahab to war against Hazael king of Aram at Ramoth-gilead.
    • The Arameans wounded Joram.
29. 8:29
    • King Joram returned to Jezreel to be healed of the wounds the Arameans had inflicted on him at Ramah.
    • The wounds were received when he fought against Hazael king of Aram.
    • Ahaziah son of Jehoram king of Judah went down to Jezreel to see Joram son of Ahab.
    • Ahaziah went down because Joram was sick.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

8:1

"The LORD" in small capitals stands for the personal name of God in Hebrew, four consonants usually written YHWH. Jewish readers said "the Lord" aloud instead of pronouncing it, and English Bibles keep that practice by printing LORD. The woman is the wealthy Shunammite of 2 Kings 4, who gave Elisha a room and whose son he revived. "Live as an outsider" translates a word for settling in a place where you are a resident foreigner: you can stay and work, but you hold no land and have no legal standing of your own.

8:2

"The man of God" is a standard title for a prophet, used throughout these chapters as a plain synonym for Elisha. The Philistines occupied the coastal plain southwest of Israel, with cities such as Gaza, Ashdod and Ekron. They were Israel's long-standing rivals, which is part of the point: the famine drove her to take shelter among enemies.

8:3

Land left empty for years could be taken over by neighbors or claimed by the crown. She is not begging for charity but bringing a legal appeal, and the king in this period heard such petitions in person.

8:4

Gehazi is Elisha's personal attendant. In 2 Kings 5 he is struck with a skin disease for extorting a gift, which would normally bar him from the royal presence; so either this conversation happened before that, or the narrator has grouped Elisha's deeds by subject rather than in strict order.

8:6

"Officer" translates a Hebrew word for a senior court official; the same word is often rendered "eunuch," since such officials frequently were. The order covers not only the property but the crops harvested from it during her seven-year absence, which the occupiers must now pay over.

8:7

The kingdom the King James calls "Syria" is Aram, an Aramaean state centered on Damascus, northeast of Israel. It is not modern Syria, though the territory overlaps. Aram was Israel's chief military rival in this period. "Ben-hadad" means "son of Hadad," Hadad being the Aramaean storm god. Several Damascus kings bore the name.

8:8

To "enquire of the LORD" is to seek an oracle: a formal request for a yes-or-no answer from a god through a prophet. Kings did this before battles and in illness. Ben-hadad is a foreign king consulting Israel's God through Israel's prophet, which the narrator reports without comment.

8:9

"Your son" is diplomatic language, not family. In treaty and letter-writing of the period, the lesser party addressed the greater as "father" and called himself "son." A king of Aram styling himself Elisha's son is a marked show of deference. Forty camel loads is a state-scale gift; whether the number is exact or a round figure for "a great many" cannot be told from the wording.

8:10

The Hebrew here has a famous double reading. The consonants as written spell "say: you shall not recover"; the traditional reading aloud takes the same consonants as "say to him: you shall certainly recover." Ancient scribes preserved both. Either way the second half of the verse states the outcome plainly, and Hazael reports only the reassuring half.

8:11

The Hebrew does not say who stares and who becomes ashamed or embarrassed; the words allow Elisha to be the one who holds the stare, or Hazael, and the discomfort could belong to either man. Translations differ. "Ashamed" in older English covers being disconcerted or put out of countenance, not only guilt.

8:12

These four acts (burning fortified towns, killing the fighting-age men, killing the children, cutting open pregnant women) form a set phrase in the ancient world for the total destruction of a population, used both in Israelite writings and in the boastful inscriptions of neighboring kings. It describes what conquering armies did, and was understood as the worst that could be said of a war.

8:13

Calling yourself a dog was a standard formula of self-abasement in letters and speech of the period: dogs were scavengers, not pets, and the word stood for someone of no account. Hazael's question is ambiguous in Hebrew. It can mean "I am too insignificant to accomplish anything so great," or "how could someone as low as I am do something so monstrous", the same word covers both "great deed" and "outrageous deed."

8:15

The Hebrew does not name the person who takes the cloth; it simply says "he." Most readers take it as Hazael, though the sentence could in principle be read as a servant acting, or even as Ben-hadad's own attendants. The object is a woven covering (the word is used elsewhere of a mattress or netting) which, soaked and laid over the face, would suffocate a sick man while leaving no mark.

8:16

The chronology here is tangled, and the two names make it worse: Joram and Jehoram are the same Hebrew name, one being a shortened form of the other. From this point the chapter has a Joram/Jehoram ruling the northern kingdom of Israel (Ahab's son) and a Jehoram/Joram ruling the southern kingdom of Judah (Jehoshaphat's son) at the same time. The remark that Jehoshaphat was still king of Judah when his son began to reign suggests a period when father and son ruled jointly; some ancient manuscripts leave the phrase out.

8:18

After Solomon's death the kingdom split in two: Israel in the north, ruled by a succession of dynasties, and Judah in the south, ruled by David's descendants in Jerusalem. "The way of the kings of Israel" means the northern kings' practices, which the writers of Kings uniformly condemn. "The house of Ahab" means Ahab's dynasty and family. The daughter of Ahab named here is Athaliah (verse 26).

8:19

"A lamp" is a set image for a surviving heir who keeps a family line alight, the way a household lamp was kept burning rather than let go out. The promise referred to is the one made to David in 2 Samuel 7, that his line would continue on the throne.

8:20

Edom lay south and east of Judah, around the region south of the Dead Sea. It had been subject to Judah since David's conquest and was governed by a deputy rather than its own king; setting up a king is the formal act of independence. Control of Edom also meant control of trade routes to the Red Sea.

8:21

Zair's location is unknown; some take it as a form of the name Zoar, southeast of the Dead Sea. The verse is compressed and its outcome unclear: Jehoram breaks out of an encirclement by night, but "the people fled to their tents" is the standard idiom for an army dispersing and going home, so the campaign achieved nothing, as the next verse confirms.

8:22

"To this day" is the writer's own time, long after the events, not the reader's. Libnah was a town in the lowlands near the Philistine border; its revolt means Judah was losing control on two frontiers at once.

8:23

This refers to official court records kept by the kings of Judah, a source the writer expects his readers could consult. It is not the biblical books of 1 and 2 Chronicles, which were written later and drew on similar material.

8:24

"Slept with his fathers" is a set phrase for dying, usually a death that was not violent; "buried with his fathers" is separate and literal, meaning burial in the ancestral tomb. The City of David is the oldest quarter of Jerusalem, the ridge David captured, where the royal tombs lay.

8:26

Hebrew "daughter of" can mean any female descendant. Athaliah is called Omri's daughter here, but Omri was Ahab's father and Athaliah is elsewhere tied to Ahab's household, so she is most likely his granddaughter; the text itself does not settle it. Omri founded the northern dynasty that Ahab inherited, and the family was well enough known abroad that Assyrian records call Israel "the house of Omri" for generations afterwards.

8:27

"Son-in-law of the house of Ahab" is used loosely for a relative by marriage. Ahaziah's mother was of Ahab's family, so by descent he was Ahab's grandson; the phrase marks the alliance between the two royal houses rather than a precise relationship.

8:28

Ramoth-gilead was a fortified town east of the Jordan, on the disputed border between Israel and Aram, and changed hands repeatedly. Ahab had died attacking the same town (1 Kings 22).

8:29

"Ramah" here is a shortened form of Ramoth-gilead, the place named in the previous verse; it is not the Ramah in the territory of Benjamin near Jerusalem. Jezreel was the northern kings' second residence, in the valley of the same name, about twenty-five miles north of Samaria. A wounded king would withdraw there to recover away from the front.