The General and the Prophet
The main theme of the haftara of Parashat Tazria, taken from the second book of Kings, is a fascinating story about two utterly different individuals brought together by circumstance: Naaman, commander of the Syrian army and thus an enemy of Israel, and the prophet Elisha, Elijah’s successor, a man of God, visionary, and worker of miracles.
The connection between the haftara and the parasha is the subject of tzaraat, the skin disease usually translated as leprosy. The narrative begins with a pointed description of Naaman. He is “a great man,” “highly regarded,” a “valiant soldier.” These three phrases, cumulatively painting a picture of the conventional military hero, are followed by a single word, piercing in its unexpectedness: metzora. He is a leper.
Whatever interpretation we give of this condition in the parasha itself, where the sages take it to be something more and other than a conventional disease of the skin, here it is clear that it is to be understood in its plain sense. The hero is disfigured.
The story is set in motion by a small detail. A group of Syrian soldiers had been engaged in border raids against Israel and had taken captive an Israeli girl, who was employed as a servant to Naaman’s wife. The girl tells the woman that if only her husband would visit the prophet, whom she does not name, in Samaria, she is sure that he would be able to cure his leprosy.
Naaman hears this and tells his master, the king of Syria, who gives his approval to the visit and sends a letter to the king of Israel, together with a large gift of silver, gold, and clothing, requesting the king to see to it that Naaman is cured. In an amusing scene, the Israelite king, unaware of Elisha’s powers of cure, takes the letter as a provocation and a pretext for war. “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life?” He trembles and tears his clothes, fearing a Syrian attack.
Elisha hears about it, realises that it is he whom the soldier seeks, and sends a message to the king telling him to direct Naaman to him. Naaman travels with his considerable entourage of horses and chariots to the home of the prophet. The prophet, who does not appear in person, sends out a messenger with a simple instruction. “Bathe seven times in the Jordan and your skin will be healed.”
At this, Naaman is furious. He is expecting a conventional faith healer to come out, express appropriately flattering words to this important visitor, utter some magical formula, “wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.” Not only is he offended that the prophet does not come out to greet him and perform the appropriate gestures. He even proposed that the cure be effected by waters of the river Jordan. Does he not know, says Naaman, that we have better rivers in Damascus than in the whole of Israel?
He is about to storm off in a fury when his servants urge him not to be so hasty. After all, they reason, if he had ordered you to perform some arduous task, would you not have undertaken it? Since he is only suggesting that you bathe seven times in a river, what do you lose by obeying his words?
The general does so and is cured. “Then his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.” With touching simplicity, awestruck by the sudden lifting of his disfigurement, Naaman returns and this time meets the prophet. He declares, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel.” He urges the prophet to accept the gift that he has brought, but Elisha refuses.
Naaman now makes a request. He asks for two donkey-loads of earth from the land of Israel so that he can worship the God of Israel on his return to Syria. He asks forgiveness of the prophet that he may still have to accompany his master, the king of Syria, when he worships at the temple to Rimmon, the god of Syria, and asks him not to consider it idol worship when he bows there alongside the king. The prophet gently replies, “Go in peace.”
Naaman, a key enemy of Israel, now believes in the God of Israel but has still not understood the difference between monotheism and the local gods of place. Hence his request for soil from the land of Israel so that he can worship its God.
The story is full of charm. It is notable for the way wisdom is distributed among the story’s minor characters. It is the Israeli girl prisoner who suggests going to Israel in the first place, and Naaman’s servants who persuade their master to follow the prophet’s instructions. The conventionally important characters lack understanding. The king of Israel completely misinterprets the situation. And Naaman himself fails to realise what a true prophet is like. He is incensed by Elisha’s failure to act as a standard miracle worker, with genuflections, gestures, and an expectation of rich reward.
No less significant is the way it shows how a gentile can become convinced of the truth of Israel’s God. There is no suggestion, either on Naaman’s part or Elisha’s, that this should lead to some form of conversion – leaving Syria, perhaps, to live in Israel, or adopting any of Israel’s customs. It is enough that he now knows that there is one true God.
The central values of Tanakh are strongly in evidence in this story. Healing comes not through any magical performance but through a simple act of obedience. The dignity given to the minor characters, and the irony that attaches to the major ones, confirm the proposition we encountered earlier, in the first book of Samuel: “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (I Sam. 16:7).
There is a touching simplicity in many of the narratives associated with Elisha. To be sure, the world in which these stories are set is one of wars, power, and political intrigue. But there is, they suggest, a different reality, in which virtue is unrelated to office, in which goodness is rewarded, and evil, though it may hold sway in the short term, is defeated in the end. Stories like these, so different from the epics of other ancient cultures, still speak to us today and their message still rings true. Naaman’s cure may be miraculous, but somehow that is not the point of the story.
Simple obedience to the word of the Lord, without fuss or fanfare, equivocation or excuse: that is the value that drives the prophets, cutting through the often cruel and Machiavellian politics of the ancient world.