The Army Smitten With Blindness.
IT SEEMS singularly inappropriate to us that
Elisha, the man of God, should have acted as a spy on behalf of the King of Israel, and informed him where the Syrian armies were encamped. Yet so it was, and ' the King of Syria was sore troubled.' When his whereabouts had been discovered, horses and chariots, and a great host were sent to capture him.
' Alas, my master! How shall we do ? ' cried' his servant, as well he might!
But it is curious to note that although the young man's eyes were opened, no use was made of the 'horses and chariots of fire,' which he saw surrounding the prophet. Indeed, the object of the vision seems only to reproach the servant for his lack of faith and to remind him of the power of the Unseen.
Instead, the entire host were smitten with a kind of blindness, so that they did not recognize either Elisha or the country which surrounded them, and quietly allowed themselves to be led by the man of God straight into Samaria, where the King of Israel was in residence.
The King's eager request : 'My
Father, shall I smite them, shall I smite them ? ' is natural enough under the circumstances. Now indeed had God delivered the enemy into his hand! We can readily understand his disappointment therefore when Elisha reminded him that they were, in effect, prisoners of war, and as such could claim his protection. His subsequent action of giving them a banquet and sending them back to Syria unharmed, without first having demanded a ransom, must have seemed mere foolishness to the onlooker; but the wisdom of the prophet was made manifest in that the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel.