2 Kings 8:9
So Hazael went to meet him, and took a present with him, even of every good thing of Damascus, forty camels’ burden, and came and stood before him, and said, Thy son Ben-hadad king of Syria hath sent me to thee, saying, Shall I recover of this disease?
Ben-hadad, king of Syria, when sick with disease, sent Hazael to Elisha at Damascus to ask whether the illness would end in recovery or in death. That even foreign rulers sought Elisha for counsel shows how faithfully he bore witness for God amid widespread rebellion. For Hazael, that errand on Ben-hadad's behalf became a test over whether he would become a traitor.
Hazael did not know the evil of his own unconsecrated, unsubdued natural heart, and his history stands as a memorable illustration that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. His course shows the depths of evil to which men sink when under the control of satanic agencies, for Satan takes advantage of circumstances to arouse all the evil tendencies of the natural heart and set every evil propensity on fire. A man who had every opportunity for a rich spiritual experience but did not appreciate his advantages becomes the dupe of the father of deception and falsehood, so that a mere spark is enough to turn his unsanctified temper into a seething cauldron he cannot control. Then he is no longer master of himself; Satan speaks through him and he becomes a channel for the power of darkness, molded by Satan until he has no power to leave the snare.