… You were estranged from the national life of Isra'el . You were foreigners to the covenants embodying
God's promise. You were in this world without hope and without God. (13)
But now, you who were once far off have been brought near through the
shedding of the Messiah's blood.
We are in the ninth century BCE. Joram the son of
Ahab rules in a Samaria besieged by Ben-Hadad the Aramean king. This is the
same Ben-Hadad who sent Naaman to Israel to be healed of leprosy (2 Kings 5). During
a siege people living in villages and encampments around the city took refuge
within the walls inside. Not all the people though as according to the Torah,
lepers had to live in special quarters outside the city (Leviticus 13:46), and
even in a case of siege, they were not allowed inside. Once all the people were
in, all the invading armies had to do was to cut off food and water supplies.
Famine and starvation followed and the city fell like a ripe fruit.
The siege induced famine in
Samaria was desperate 2 Kings 7). Prices sky-rocketed and as was prophesied,
people cannibalized their young trying to survive (Deuteronomy 28:53). Outside
the gate were four lepers literally caught between a rock and a hard place. On the
one side a city that rejected them, on the other side the Syrian armies. Some
people have suggested that those four lepers were Gehazi, Elishah’s servant who
contracted leprosy by lusting after Naaman’s rewards (2 Kings 5:27) and his
four sons.
One day these lepers said to
themselves, "Why are we sitting here until
we die? If we say, 'Let us enter the city,' the famine is in the city, and we
shall die there. And if we sit here, we die also. So now come, let us go over
to the camp of the Syrians. If they spare our lives we shall live, and if they
kill us we shall but die" (2 Kings 7:3-4). So they arose at twilight to go to the camp of the Syrians. But when
they came to the edge of the camp of the Syrians, behold, there was no one
there. … And when these lepers came to
the edge of the camp, they went into a tent and ate and drank, and they carried
off silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them. Then they came back and
entered another tent and carried off things from it and went and hid them. Then
they said to one another, "We are not doing right. This day is a day of good
news (same word used
in Hebrew for Gospel: Besora). If we are
silent and wait until the morning light, punishment will overtake us. Now
therefore come; let us go and tell the king's household" (2Kings
7:5-9).
Lepers are the disfranchised
of society and this story reminds of the Master’s special concern for lepers.
Crossing Samaria on His way to Jerusalem ten lepers cried out to the Master
saying, "Yeshua, Adon, have
mercy on us." We are all lepers in the sight of God and as the four
lepers in our story, we have cried to the Son of David for help and found the good
news of God’s victory over the enemy of our soul. We are now responsible to
share it with all, even with those who showed no mercy to us.
P. Gabriel Lumbroso
www.thelumbrosos.com
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