Naaman Is Healed

A great general stands waist-deep in a muddy river. He has ducked under six times. Nothing has changed. He takes a breath, and goes under for the seventh time.

Naaman is commander of the army of Aram, Israel's powerful neighbour to the north. He is a brave soldier and a great man, highly respected by his king, because through him the Lord had given Aram victory. But Naaman has a serious skin disease, the kind the Bible calls leprosy, and no amount of power or money can cure it. In his house there is a young girl who was captured from Israel in a raid. She serves Naaman's wife. And one day she says, “If only my master would go to see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his disease.”

Word reaches the king of Aram, who sends Naaman off with a letter for the king of Israel and a fortune in gifts: ten talents of silver, six thousand pieces of gold, and ten sets of fine clothes. The letter says, “I am sending my servant Naaman to you, so that you may cure him.” The king of Israel reads it and tears his clothes in panic. “Am I God, to kill and to bring back to life? He's trying to pick a fight with me!” But Elisha hears about it and sends a message. “Let the man come to me, and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.”

So Naaman arrives with his horses and chariots and stops at Elisha's door. Elisha doesn't even come out. He sends a messenger. “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your skin will be restored and you will be clean.” Naaman is furious. “I thought he would surely come out to me, stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me. Aren't the Abana and the Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn't I wash in them and be clean?” And he turns and storms off in a rage.

But his servants come after him. “My father,” they say, “if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, wouldn't you have done it? How much more, then, when he simply tells you, wash and be clean?” Naaman stops. He thinks about that. Then he goes down to the Jordan and dips himself in it seven times, just as the man of God said. And when he comes up the seventh time, his skin is restored, clean and healthy, like the skin of a young child.

Naaman goes back to Elisha, and this time he stands before him. “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel.” He begs Elisha to accept a gift. Elisha refuses. “As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing.” Naaman asks for two mule-loads of earth to take home, so that he can worship the Lord on it, and Elisha sends him off: “Go in peace.” But Elisha's servant Gehazi can't let the treasure go. He chases after Naaman, invents a story, and asks for silver and clothing. Then he hides it and lies to his master. Elisha says, “Didn't my spirit go with you?” And Naaman's disease comes upon Gehazi. The outsider who humbled himself went home clean. The insider who grabbed went away with the disease.

Why would Naaman want to carry dirt home? In the ancient world, many people believed that a god belonged to a particular land, and could only be properly worshipped on that god's own soil. So Naaman asks for Israelite earth to take back to Aram, so that he can worship the Lord in a foreign country. One more detail is worth knowing. The Hebrew word translated leprosy covered a whole range of skin conditions, as the law in Leviticus shows, and not only the illness we call leprosy today.

Naaman is healed. You'll find it in Second Kings, chapter 5. A great man had to stop expecting greatness, listen to a servant girl and his own servants, and do one simple, humble thing. So here's the question to carry with you. Is there something simple God is asking you to do that pride is keeping you from doing?