And he settled his countenance stedfastly, until he was ashamed: and the man of God wept.
The scene is in Damascus, where messengers sent by Ben-hadad come to Elisha to learn whether the king will recover from his sickness, and Elisha bears faithful witness to them in that meeting. Elisha fixes his gaze steadily upon Hazael until Hazael is ashamed, and then the man of God weeps. He weeps because he foresees the evil that Hazael will do.
That steadfast gaze marks the moment when Hazael's test comes to him over whether he will become a traitor and a betrayer. The test is whether he will barter his own soul for a mess of pottage, committing a crime to ward off financial embarrassment and robbing the cause of God in order to be revenged. It is a life-and-death question on the edge of a precipice, deciding eternal destiny, with fearful and fatal effect upon his eternal welfare if he goes forward in separating himself forever from God and from the people of God.
Hazael thus stands as a memorable example of the depths of evil to which men sink when under the control of satanic agencies, illustrating the solemn truth that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and he is by no means the only such illustration. Satan takes advantage of circumstances to arouse all the evil tendencies of the natural heart and sets every evil propensity on fire, until a man who had every opportunity for obtaining a rich experience in spiritual things but did not appreciate his advantages becomes the dupe of deception and falsehood, little knowing the evil of the unsubdued natural heart. A mere spark is enough to turn such an unsanctified temper into a seething cauldron that he cannot control, so that he is no longer master of himself, Satan speaks through him as a channel for the power of darkness, and having long been subjected to Satan's molding control he has no power to escape the snare.
The scene is in Damascus, where messengers sent by Ben-hadad come to Elisha to learn whether the king will recover from his sickness, and Elisha bears faithful witness to them in that meeting. Elisha fixes his gaze steadily upon Hazael until Hazael is ashamed, and then the man of God weeps. He weeps because he foresees the evil that Hazael will do.
That steadfast gaze marks the moment when Hazael's test comes to him over whether he will become a traitor and a betrayer. The test is whether he will barter his own soul for a mess of pottage, committing a crime to ward off financial embarrassment and robbing the cause of God in order to be revenged. It is a life-and-death question on the edge of a precipice, deciding eternal destiny, with fearful and fatal effect upon his eternal welfare if he goes forward in separating himself forever from God and from the people of God.
Hazael thus stands as a memorable example of the depths of evil to which men sink when under the control of satanic agencies, illustrating the solemn truth that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and he is by no means the only such illustration. Satan takes advantage of circumstances to arouse all the evil tendencies of the natural heart and sets every evil propensity on fire, until a man who had every opportunity for obtaining a rich experience in spiritual things but did not appreciate his advantages becomes the dupe of deception and falsehood, little knowing the evil of the unsubdued natural heart. A mere spark is enough to turn such an unsanctified temper into a seething cauldron that he cannot control, so that he is no longer master of himself, Satan speaks through him as a channel for the power of darkness, and having long been subjected to Satan's molding control he has no power to escape the snare.