2 Kings 5:20-27

5:20 Gehazi, the prophet Elisha’s servant, thought,¹ “Look, my master did not accept what this Syrian Naaman offered him.² As certainly as the Lord lives, I will run after him and accept something from him.” 5:21 So Gehazi ran after Naaman. When Naaman saw someone running after him, he got down from his chariot to meet him and asked, “Is everything all right?”³ 5:22 He answered, “Everything is fine.⁴ My master sent me with this message, ‘Look, two servants of the prophets just arrived from the Ephraimite hill country.⁵ Please give them a talent⁶ of silver and two suits of clothes.’” 5:23 Naaman said, “Please accept two talents of silver.⁷ He insisted, and tied up two talents of silver in two bags, along with two suits of clothes. He gave them to two of his servants and they carried them for Gehazi.⁸ 5:24 When he arrived at the hill, he took them from the servants⁹ and put them in the house. Then he sent the men on their way.¹⁰

5:25 When he came and stood before his master, Elisha asked him, “Where have you been, Gehazi?” He answered, “Your servant hasn’t been anywhere.” 5:26 Elisha¹¹ replied, “I was there in spirit when a man turned and got down from his chariot to meet you.¹² This is not the proper time to accept silver or to accept clothes, olive groves, vineyards, sheep, cattle, and male and female servants.¹³ 5:27 Therefore Naaman’s skin disease will afflict¹⁴ you and your descendants forever!” When Gehazi¹⁵ went out from his presence, his skin was as white as snow.¹⁶

2 Kings 7:3

7:3 Now four men with a skin disease¹⁷ were sitting at the entrance of the city gate. They said to one another, “Why are we just sitting here waiting to die?¹⁸

2 Kings 7:10

7:10 So they went and called out to the gatekeepers¹⁹ of the city. They told them, “We entered the Syrian camp and there was no one there. We didn’t even hear a man’s voice.²⁰ But the horses and donkeys are still tied up, and the tents remain up.”²¹

¹tn Heb “said” (i.e., to himself).

²tn Heb “Look, my master spared this Syrian Naaman by not taking from his hand what he brought.”

³tn Heb “Is there peace?”

⁴tn Heb “peace.”

⁵tn Heb “Look now, here, two servants came to me from the Ephraimite hill country, from the sons of the prophets.”

⁶tn The Hebrew term כִּכָּר (kikkar, “circle”) refers generally to something that is round. When used of metals it can refer to a disk-shaped weight made of the metal or to a standard unit of weight, generally regarded as a talent. Since the accepted weight for a talent of metal is about 75 pounds, this would have amounted to about 75 pounds of silver (cf. NCV, NLT, CEV).

⁷tn Heb “Be resolved and accept two talents.”

⁸tn Heb “before him.”

⁹tn Heb “from their hand.”

¹⁰tn Heb “and he sent the men away and they went.”

¹¹tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹²tn Heb “Did not my heart go as a man turned from his chariot to meet you?” The rhetorical question emphasizes that he was indeed present in “heart” (or “spirit”) and was very much aware of what Gehazi had done. In the MT the interrogative particle has been accidentally omitted before the negative particle.

¹³tn In the MT the statement is phrased as a rhetorical question, “Is this the time…?” It expects an emphatic negative response.

¹⁴tn Heb “cling to.”

¹⁵tn Heb “he”; the referent (Gehazi) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹⁶tn Traditionally, “he went from before him, leprous like snow.” But see the note at 5:1, as well as M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 66.

¹⁷sn See the note at 2 Kgs 5:1.

¹⁸tn Heb “until we die.”

¹⁹tn The MT has a singular form (“gatekeeper”), but the context suggests a plural. The pronoun that follows (“them”) is plural and a plural noun appears in v. 11. The Syriac Peshitta and the Targum have the plural here.

²⁰tn Heb “and, look, there was no man or voice of a man there.”

²¹tn Heb “but the horses are tied up and the donkeys are tied up and the tents are as they were.”