2 Kings 7:8-10 (Read 2 Kings 7:3-20 for the context)
When the [four] lepers came to the edge of the [Syrian] 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. 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.” So they came and called to the gatekeepers of the city and told them, “We came to the camp of the Syrians, and behold, there was no one to be seen or heard there, nothing but the horses tied and the donkeys tied and the tents as they were.”
Luke 2:8-18
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.
What has the modern State of Israel to do with the four leperous men of Samaria in 2 Kings 7?
To answer that click-bait-esque question, the backdrop to 2 Kings 7 needs to be rehashed.
Thus, four lepers are sitting outside the gate of Samaria (2 Kings 7:3). An impure lot they are, cast out of life in the city. The lepers are lepers! The scene was set in motion in 2 Kings 6 with the Syrians (Arameans) from Damascus coming in full force to besiege the Israelite capital city of Samaria. Apparently, the Syrians piled onto a seven-year long famine in Israel (cf. 2 Kings 8:1) and made matters much worse with their siegeworks. It got so bad that donkey heads and dove dung became exotic luxuries. Hearkening back to the conflict between two women and a baby in Solomon’s day, with the sorry exception that the presenting woman in this story approaches the king to request that he dispense a perverse judgment to make the other women give up her child so that she can eat it! Utter depravity prevailing in the beleaguered city. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it gets worse in that the king didn’t even think to call on God for help! Apparently, the prophet Elisha was present in the city, and the king never called upon the man of God! Instead, he wanted to take Elisha’s head off to make a donkey hors oeuvre. Enter now, our four lepers!
The lepers reason among themselves: “We can’t pass through the gate of Samaria. We can’t get no food here. If we stay here, we die. The Syrians have food. Who knows? They may feed us, or they may kill us. Either way, we get dead. Let’s go!” As they get to the Syrian camp, they find it empty, and the food, treasure and supplies scattered all about. Not a Syrian soldier in sight. At first, the lepers go hog wild gathering up, greedily, everything they can get their scabby arms around. Like Gollum and his “Precious,” they hide the goods away. But then the pesky conscience intervenes (7:9): “They said to one another, ‘We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news. 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.’” And they do and Israel is saved. God scared off the Syrians with the sound of approaching hoofbeats. Saved by the expedition and subsequent report of Good News… from four lepers!
This story of the salvific lepers in 2 Kings 7 has not been well received by everyone in Israel today. One of their popular poets, Rachel Bluwstein (1890-1931), penned a scathing poem on the scandal of Good News "from the lips of a leper." One rabbi called it. “A bold statement of refusal to accept a tainted miracle.” Take a look.
For a long while, the dreadful enemy
Brought Samaria to siege;
Our lepers to her brought tidings.
To her brought the tidings of freedom.
As Samaria besieged, the entire land,
The famine is unbearable.
But I do not want to receive news of redemption
From the lips of a leper.
The pure will bring news and the pure will redeem,
And if his hand won’t be there to redeem,
Then I will choose to die from the suffering of the siege,
On the eve of the day of the great tidings.
In other words, she’d rather be dead than be saved by impure lepers!
Rabbi Ahron Soloveitchik is another contemporary Israeli who has grappled with the scandal the poet bemoans. However, his concern is aimed at the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, a rather unusual founding it was for a people known in the main for their persevering monotheism. Therefore, he reaches a different conclusion regarding the infamy of the four lepers. He likens the lepers to the Zionist founders of the modern Israel. These men, such as Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion were raised in good Jewish homes, but all of them ultimately rejected God and the traditions of their catechetical upbringing in Judaism. Judaism to them was purely a matter of ethnicity. The founding of Israel was a pragmatic, political, secular phenomenon, with the religious element only arising as an addendum subsequent to the 1967 Six Day War.
The rabbi reasons that, like the four impure lepers, those Zionist founders were spiritually impure. However, he declared that no Jew can be excluded from the grace of God. A Jew, even though he has sinned, remains a Jew. And there is an innate tendency toward altruism even in the heart of spiritual lepers. God doesn’t exclude any Jew from salvation. He may therefore designate even spiritual outcasts as the messengers of relief and deliverance for the people of Israel. Just as those undesirable, impure lepers saved Israel in that day, in like manner those impure Jews in 1948 achieved a spectacular salvation for a new Jewish nation. (See Alex Israel, II Kings: In A Whirlwind [Maggid, 2019] pp.129-131).
Isn’t it interesting how this seemingly insignificant story from 2 Kings 7 has so captivated its readership over the millennial span in so many ways— both positive and negative?
The four lepers make me think, not of the founding fathers of the modern State of Israel, but of another group of underestimated, undervalued men. I think of the Christmas Story in Luke 2— that group of rag-tag shepherds in a place known to this day as the Field of Vigilance (Beit Sahour)— watching over their flocks “on a cold winter’s night that was so deep.” Being happened upon by the angelic host as the empty Syrian camp happened upon the lepers, with the Good News, not just for Israel, but for the entire world: “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11). Their words— “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us”— rings with the same redemptive urgency that poured forth “from the lips of a leper.” Except this time, this salvation announced through lowly shepherds, would last.
I don't know if Rachel Bluwstein ever composed a derogatory poem on the salvation announced from those impure shepherds, but regardless of whether she did or didn't spew ink in that direction, isn’t Bible study fun?!
