James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary
2 Kings 8:7
BENHADAD
‘Benhadad the king of Syria was sick.’
The life and death of Benhadad has much to say to us—
I. Let us look at one of the two men who took part in that bedside scene which no eye beheld but the all-seeing eye of God.—Benhadad was a man of vast power, ruling over a wealthy and warlike country, a man who loved pleasure, and did not know what it was to be obliged to deny himself in any luxury on which he set his heart. He was a bitter enemy of God’s people; and as licentious as he was cruel. He had as little belief in God as he had in virtue, for he was not only a scoffer at God’s existence—he openly and daringly defied him. There can be no doubt of it—he had by a long course of sin and self-indulgence become a hardened and thoroughly depraved man: insomuch that God sent to tell him that for his persevering iniquity he was ‘appointed to utter destruction.’
II. It is not in that light he appears in the chapter before us.—We do not see him in his pride and reckless dissipation: we see him laid upon the bed of sickness—fearing the approach of death. His uneasy mind turned for some help and comfort to the man of God who was at that time in Damascus. His infidelity failed him then, as it does so often fail in that awful moment.
III. It is indeed an affecting scene, and one that brings home to us some solemn truths which none can deny, and yet all are prone to forget.—Benhadad had everything that heart could wish of this world: he was not only a king, but a king of kings, for he was lord over thirty-two vassal kings; he had tens of thousands of soldiers in his armies—everything was at his service that power and wealth could procure. Yet all these things could not keep off from him the day of sickness, nor save him from the bed of pain and weakness. He had an enemy who was able to steal through all his sentinels, and lay hands on him in the midst of all his luxurious surroundings. He lived as if he were a god who could know neither weakness nor pain; but he learnt that there are messengers of God who, like God Himself, are no respecters of persons. Every one knows this, but how few seem to be influenced by it!
IV. Another no less important truth unveiled to us in Benhadad’s sick-room is the different view men take of religion when they feel death near at hand, from the view they take of it often when they are well.—There was a time when Benhadad thought he could do no better than scoff at God and at the people of God; but he was sick and weak, and ready to die, so he felt that to have God’s man near him when he was dying would be a good thing for him now he was going into God’s awful presence. How often it is so! There are those who shun religious people when they are well as if they were either fools or hypocrites, who are glad enough to see them when the gates of Eternity are opening before them. Benhadad never thought of sending when he was sick to the thirty-two kings who used to get drunk with him at midday, and join him in what he then thought to be a jovial life. Nay, he bethought him of the poor wandering prophet whom he had then despised and scoffed at. Wonderful to say, he even thought that he could be the better for such a man’s prayer! He had hated the sight of him while he was well and strong. If he had only attended to what Elisha said to him in God’s name when he was living, he would have had something better than Elisha’s prayers when he was dying—he would have had the Presence of God.
V. For we learn from that death-bed scene that a change of view about religion, when the end is near, may mean anything but a change of heart towards God.—Benhadad’s anxiety was more about the recovery of his health than about his soul. His was not the cry of the jailer, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ but the concern of one clinging to the world—Shall I recover of this disease? He could not bear to think that he was going to die. He would beguile himself with the prospect of recovery rather than prepare himself for the prospect of eternity. So it is generally in their sickness with those who have lived for this world and lived in pleasure. The real comfort they crave is the comfort of thinking they will get well again—a kind of comfort which those around them are too often ready enough to impart, like Hazael, who, to lull Benhadad’s fears, put a lie into Elisha’s lips, ‘Thou shalt surely recover!’
—Rev. G. Despard.