A ‘preview’ of Mary in 2 Kings 5

by Damien F. Mackey A most important person now emerges in the narrative, a person of absolutely the lowest status in the entire story, but whose charitable intervention on behalf of Na’aman will have cosmological ramifications. That person is a “little girl”, a “servant”, as was Mary of Nazareth (Luke 1:38): ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord’, whose intervention in history became its defining moment: ‘Be it done unto me according to thy word’. We read the account of the Syrian captain, Na’aman, his miraculous cure from leprosy and his conversion to Yahweh, in 2 Kings 5. Na’aman, whose name means “pleasant”, was a famed military captain, who had assisted his Syrian master-king, Ben-Hadad [I], by winning “great victories” for him. Legend even has it that it was Na’aman who had drawn his bow at a venture and had struck king Ahab of Israel with a fatal arrow shot. This Na’aman, however, was terribly afflicted with a skin disease, or “leprosy”. As sometimes happens in the Scriptures - and indeed also in history down through the ages - the Lord seems to be ‘driving the war chariots’ of the ‘baddies’, in this case Aram (or Syria), against those who are meant to be the ‘goodies’, in this case, Israel. For it is the Lord, we learn, who is giving victory to the Syrians. The same would happen later, at the time of the prophet Isaiah, when Sennacherib’s “Assyria” would be described as “the rod of My anger”, God’s punishment over and over again against his apostate people. Not that these Syrians, or these Assyrians, would have been the least bit aware of how they were being employed in, or conscripted into, Yahweh’s service, their minds bent entirely upon their own personal glory and conquest. This, God’s seeming blessing upon the deeds of the wicked has much troubled the godly types down through history, those like Job and Jeremiah, for instance. ‘Why do the wicked prosper?’ We have seen it again in our modern era, with tyrants seemingly going from strength to strength, all of their ambitions coming to fruition. Totally self-reliant, full of hubris, they never appear to give a single thought to God. Some of these will eventually collapse in a sad heap (like Hitler), but others will seem to go on and on, for decades, with no hope of change in sight. There are also rare occasions, like in the case of king Nebuchednezzar ‘the Great’- another of those enemy kings of Israel being powerfully upheld by the Lord - when the tyrant will undergo a significant change of heart (metanoia). In the days of Samuel, the enemy Philistines would succeed (though much to their own discomfiture) in capturing the Ark of the Covenant, owing to the graft and corruption of Israel’s leading priests at this time. It befell King David to retrieve the sacred object. The era of Na’aman was a time of similar wickedness throughout Israel, with king Ahab in charge, urged on by that ‘baddest’ of all wives, Queen Jezebel. That may be the most likely explanation as to why the Syrian armies, capably led by Na’aman, were being allowed by the Lord to run riot, as if He himself had taken over the helm. Na’aman, a proud Syrian worshipper of his own gods, the greatest of them being Rimmon, would have been, just like the blasphemous Assyrian king, Sennacherib, blissfully unaware of the Lord’s designs upon him, which will, in the case of Na’aman, go well beyond providing him with military victories for Ben-Hadad’s Syria. Thus see e.g. my article: Akhnaton’s Theophany (1) (DOC) Akhnaton's Theophany | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu A most important person now emerges in the narrative, a person of absolutely the lowest status in the entire story, but whose charitable intervention on behalf of Na’aman will have cosmological ramifications. That person is a “little girl”, a “servant”, as was Mary of Nazareth (Luke 1:38): ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord’, whose intervention in history became its defining moment: ‘Be it done unto me according to thy word’. It happened that the Syrians had, in one of their raids, captured an Israelite girl, who “had been given to Na’aman’s wife as a maid”. The girl’s rôle will be crucial. In her kindness and forgiveness, the girl will tell her mistress: ‘I wish my master [Na’aman] would go to see the prophet [Elisha] in Samaria. He will heal him of his leprosy’. The girl’s wish, expressed to her mistress, had opened the door to a miracle. Compare the (Israelite) Jewish Mary at Cana again, concernedly pointing the guests to, not a prophet of Israel in this case, but to Jesus Christ himself, the King of all prophets: ‘Do whatever He tells you’. Wine, lacking at the marriage feast, will now be drawn as the finest wine, drawn from water. Incredibly, Na’aman, who, as the narrative informs us, was an extremely proud man, takes this information from a young and foreign slave girl, and goes with it to the great king himself, Ben-Hadad. Just as incredibly, the king of Syria has no problem with his captain traipsing off to Samaria to seal the deal. This may have been during one of those occasions when a truce prevailed between the two countries. What it does strikingly reveal, it seems, is the tremendous confidence that the king of Syria has in his right-hand man, Na’aman. But, whatever the political situation at the time, the un-named king of Israel goes into a panic. ‘Am I God that I can cure leprosy?’ Who could blame him? Elisha, who must have been on fairly good terms with this particular king of Israel, asks him, ‘Why are you upset? Send Na’aman to me, and he will learn that there is a true prophet here in Israel’. Indeed, ‘Na’aman … will learn’ that; but not without his first having to undergo an intense inner struggle. This Na’aman was, as we have learned, a highly competent military commander. He was disfigured by leprosy, a cure for which he was apparently so desperately seeking that he had even resorted to taking the advice of a young slave girl. A bit like a superstitious punter who will latch on to almost anyone’s tips for some success at the races. Na’aman’s outward disfigurement was a sign of his inward disfigurement of superstitious pride. Desperate for a cure, he nonetheless romped up to Samaria in full military pomp, with horses and chariots. The cure was to be on his own terms, a quick blessing from the prophet, and then a return to life as normal. Moreover, he was loaded down with lavish presents. This, he may have reasoned, ought to coax the prophet into swinging things his way. Elisha was there to tell him that it does not work like that. Well, actually Elisha was not there to tell him. The fearless Elisha, for whom nothing was too hard, and who feared no one, having heard the noisy thunder of horses and chariots marching his way, did not like the way that Na’aman was shaping up. So the prophet did not even come out to greet the Syrian captain. Elisha’s first lesson. Instead, he sent “a messenger” to tell Na’aman, tersely: ‘Go and wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River. Then your skin will be restored, and you will be healed of your leprosy’. This was not what Na’aman had wanted to hear, and he let it be known. Going off in a huff, he exclaimed: ‘I thought that he would at least come out for me. I thought that he would just wave his hand over the leprous spot and I would be cured’. Anyway, he mused, the impressive rivers of Damascus, with their abundant waters from Syria’s gods, are far more potentially healing than Israel’s miserable Jordan River. There is much more to Na’aman’s chagrin than may be apparent to modern, western minds when encountering this biblical passage. Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg and co-author, Lisa Loden, have explained it in terms of the significance that an ancient people’s river had for them with its connection with life, fertility, agriculture, their gods, and so on (“The Syrian in Israel’s War Story (Naaman and the Gospel)”, preachitteachit.org. In short, the authors explain: “… [Na’aman] was asked to do nothing less than betray the faith of his fathers. He was being asked to be willing to acknowledge that there was a possibility that Israel’s God could do something that the Syrian god [Rimmon] was unable to do”. It was left to our Israelite slave girl to rescue Na’aman from his own folly. ‘Surely, if the prophet had asked you to do something difficult, you would have done it’. Na’aman yields once again to the advice of this wise girl, goes off and immerses himself in the Jordan River, as Elisha had first told him to do, and his flesh becomes as clear as that of a child. Catholics generally, and most unfortunately, do not take the simple advice of the Jewish maiden (Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima) who told us to do the Five First Saturdays, or Communion of Reparation, with specific points of instruction. This is what heaven wants, but many like to do things their way – possibly even the harder way. Immerse yourself in the Five First Saturdays, and you can come away spiritually re-invigorated, made new again - just as Na’aman was.