2 Kings 7:9
A day of good news is no day for silence
- The gospel’s word בְּשֹׂרָה besorah · good news
Original
Translations
Finally, they said to one another, “We are not doing what is right. Today is a day of good news. If we are silent and wait until morning light, our sin will overtake us. Now, therefore, let us go and tell the king’s household.”
Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king’s household.
And they say to one another, “We are not doing right this day; it [is] a day of tidings, and we are keeping silent; and we have waited until the morning light, then punishment has found us; and now, come and we go in and declare [it] to the house of the king.”
문둥이가 서로 말하되 우리의 소위가 선치 못하도다 오늘날은 아름다운 소식이 있는 날이어늘 우리가 잠잠하고 있도다 만일 밝은 아침까지 기다리면 벌이 우리에게 미칠지니 이제 떠나 왕궁에 가서 고하자 하고
그때에 그들이 서로 이르되, 우리가 잘 행하지 아니하는도다. 이 날은 좋은 소식이 있는 날이거늘 우리가 잠잠하고 있도다. 만일 우리가 동틀 때까지 기다리면 어떤 화가 우리에게 임하리니 그런즉 이제 오라. 우리가 가서 왕의 집안에게 고하자, 하고
Commentaries
Matthew Henry on 2Kgs 7:3-11 as a whole
God can, when he pleases, make the stoutest heart to tremble; and as for those who will not fear God, he can make them fear at the shaking of a leaf. Providence ordered it, that the lepers came as soon as the Syrians were fled. …
Read the whole commentary →Wesley
Nothing on this verse itself.
Read the whole commentary →
Note
Outside the gate of starving Samaria, four men with leprosy find the Aramean camp deserted. They eat, drink and hide silver and gold, and then they stop: "We are not doing what is right. Today is a day of good news" (2 Kings 7:9). Here stands in the moment when people who have been rescued realize they cannot keep the news to themselves.
Ben-hadad king of Aram had besieged Samaria until the famine was so severe that "a donkey's head sold for eighty shekels of silver" (2 Kings 6:25). Elisha announced the word of the LORD: by this time tomorrow fine flour and barley would sell cheaply at the gate of Samaria. The officer on whose arm the king leaned scoffed that it could not happen even if the LORD opened windows in heaven (2 Kings 7:1–2). The four men at the gate lived where the law required, outside the camp (Leviticus 13:46). Reasoning that they would die of hunger whether they entered the city or sat where they were, they went at twilight to surrender to the Arameans. They found no one there. "For the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots, horses, and a great army" (2 Kings 7:6), and the whole army had fled, leaving tents, horses and donkeys behind.
The Hebrew is brief: yom besorah hu, "it is a day of news." No adjective is attached, but the context supplies the goodness: the siege is broken and there is food. And what has happened is not the lepers' doing but the LORD's; they are simply the first to find it. They say that keeping silent is not right, and that if they wait until morning light, avon will find them. Avon is the Hebrew word for wrongdoing and for the punishment it brings, both at once.
Most translations supply the word good. The BSB has "a day of good news," the KJV a day of good tidings, the 흠정역 좋은 소식이 있는 날, and the 개역한글 아름다운 소식이 있는 날, a day of beautiful news. The LSV alone keeps the bare Hebrew: a day of tidings. Over avon the versions divide in another way. The KJV says "some mischief will come upon us," and the Korean Bibles likewise speak of harm and punishment; the BSB says "our sin will overtake us" (2 Kings 7:9). The first readings name what would happen to them, the BSB names its root. The Hebrew holds both in one word.
Matthew Henry notes that "Their consciences told them that mischief would befall them, if they took care of themselves only" Matthew Henry, and then carries the scene forward: "they who have found the unsearchable riches of Christ, will not long delay to report the good tidings to others" Matthew Henry. Wesley looks at where the rescue came from: "God can when he pleases, dispirit the boldest, and make the stoutest heart to tremble" Wesley.
The people pushed outside the city were the first to hold the good news in their hands, and the news was nothing they had achieved. When John's disciples asked who Jesus was, he pointed to the signs, among them that "the lepers are cleansed" (Luke 7:22). Paul, having received the gospel, says of all people, "I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks" (Romans 1:14). The lepers' words at the gate are the words of people who have just discovered that kind of debt.