What Does 2 Kings 8:7 Mean?
And Elisha came to Damascus, and Ben-hadad the king of Syria lay sick, and it was told him, saying, The man of God has come here.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Elisha came to Damascus; and Ben-hadad the king of Syria was sick; and it was told him, saying, The man of God is come hither.THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “sick” also reaches toward “entreat,” so the king’s bodily weakness is already turning toward a plea.
THE MEANING
Your rank and strength do not place your body beyond vulnerability. As the king hears that Elisha has arrived, weakness opens the scene to a word outside his command. The moment remains unresolved: the man of God is here, but no healing is promised yet.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse undoes is that authority can make a person self-sufficient: even a king’s body enters need.
THE ROOT
חֹלֶה
ḥōleh
GROWS FROM
חלה
ḥ-l-h
Become weak or sick; in another form, entreat or appeal.
“lay sick” in this verse is ḥōleh. English gives “sick” only as a bodily condition, but the Hebrew root family also reaches toward entreating. It lets weakness and appeal touch: a king who commands a realm is already at the edge of asking for help.
ALSO GROWS
ḥŏlî: Sickness, illness
חֳלִי
The next verse uses this noun for the king’s “disease,” carrying the root of his weakness into the question he sends.
wayḥal: He entreated, appealed
וַיְחַל
This form shows the root’s appeal sense, joining being brought low with pleading for another’s intervention.
אֱלִישָׁע
ʾĔlîšāʿ
GROWS FROM
ישע
y-š-ʿ
Deliver, bring out into spaciousness; Elisha’s name carries “My God is deliverance.”
Elisha’s name puts deliverance into the scene before he speaks. His arrival brings that possibility near, while the verse leaves the king’s recovery unresolved.
ALSO GROWS
yāšaʿ: Deliver, bring out
יָשַׁע
This verb holds the action inside Elisha’s name: deliverance is something that brings a person out.
yəšûʿāh: Deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun makes explicit the quality carried by Elisha’s name, present in the scene without yet guaranteeing an outcome.
THE PATTERN
Illness can turn even people of rank toward a word beyond their command.
At that time Abijah the son of Jeroboam fell sick. And Jeroboam said to his wife, Arise, I pray you, and make yourself a stranger, that you not be perceived as the wife of Jeroboam; and go to Shiloh. Behold, there is Ahijah the prophet, who spoke to me that I would be king over this people. And take in your hand ten loaves, spotted cakes, and a flask of honey, and come to him. He will tell you what will become of the child.Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man before his master, and whose face the king lifted, because by him the LORD had given deliverance to Syria; he was also a mighty man of strength, but he was a leper.So Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee, where he made the water wine. And there was a certain man of the king whose son was sick in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to him and begged him to come down and heal his son, for his son was at the edge of death.THE THREAD
And the king said to Hazael, Take a gift in your hand, and go to meet the man of God, and seek the LORD through him, saying, Shall I live from this sickness?The next verse calls this condition “this disease,” using חֳלִי (ḥŏlî), from the same root חלה (ḥ-l-h) behind “sick” here. The shared word-family moves from the king’s weakness to the question he sends through Hazael.
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