Day 111 2 Kings 6-8

            Aram has been stirring up trouble with Israel for some time now, but God is angry with Israel so basically both sides are losing the fight.  Aram’s army will be run off by a miracle, but only after really ruining Israel’s day.  In a siege on the city of Samaria, the food shortages were so bad that people were eating their kids.  This was something that Moses prophesied would happen to Israel when they angered God enough to make Him turn on them back in his last speech at the end of Deutoronomy.  In the end though, God makes the Aramian army run away and leave their camp and all their supplies, so the city isn’t taken or destroyed.

            The king of Aram got sick and sent an officer to inquire of Elisha whether he would get better or die of the sickness.  That seems like an odd move sine Elisha lives in Israel, but maybe it’s public knowledge that he’s not very patriotic.  The officer, a man named Hazael, asks Elisha about the king’s health and Elisha gives him a very strange answer, explaining that the king will die, but that the officer should go tell him that he will recover.  Then he stares the officer down until things get awkward, and starts crying.  When the officer, Hazael, asks him what is going on, Elisha says that he, Hazael, is going to kill tons of Israelites.  He will accomplish this because he’s going to be king of Aram.

            All this borderline gibberish is apparently exactly what Hazael needs to hear though to go back home and kill the king.  This reads different to me than most prophecies in the past.  Before, the prophecies we heard about sort of described things from a distance, either reffering to things happening generations into the future or about other people unaware of the prophecy or something like that.  This prophecy seems to be one of the major causes of the event being prophecied.  The text seems to imply that Hazael would not have killed the king if Elisha had not said that he was going to kill the king.

            I know that God tends to use people to fulfil prophecies anyway, but it’s interesting that this prophecy was the motivation for the fulfillment of itself.  It’s like a trick-shot.