2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c - Naaman is cleansed
5:1 Naaman, commander
of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with
his master because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man,
though a mighty warrior, suffered from a skin disease.
5:2 Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife.
5:3 She said to her mistress, "If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his skin disease."
5:7 When
the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, "Am I
God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a
man of his skin disease? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a
quarrel with me."
5:8 But when Elisha the man of God heard that
the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king,
"Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn
that there is a prophet in Israel."
5:9 So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house.
5:10 Elisha
sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times,
and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean."
5:11 But
Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he
would surely come out and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God
and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the skin disease!
5:12 Are
not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the
waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?" He turned and
went away in a rage.
5:13 But his servants approached and said to
him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something
difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said
to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?"
5:14 So he went down and
immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the
man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and
he was clean.
5:15c Then he returned to the man of God, he and all
his company; he came and stood before him and said, "Now I know that
there is no God in all the earth except in Israel."