Hazael was the chief minister and prime favourite of Benhadad, the Syrian king.  He had been raised from a humble lot and promoted to that high post by the partiality of his sovereign, who had doubtless discerned his exceptional abilities, and certainly placed implicit trust in him.  Just now the king was dangerously ill, and Hazael had been sent to inquire of the prophet of Israel as to the probable issue of the sickness.  He put the question with seeming anxiety:  “Will my master recover?” He spoke as if that was his dearest wish; perhaps he did wish it.  But there were evidently other thoughts half-formed, lurking and hiding themselves in the background.  Suppose the king should die and leave the throne vacant, what then?  May there not be a chance for me?  Elisha read these hidden thoughts, and looked the man in the face long and steadfastly, until the face turned crimson and the head was lowered with shame.  And then the prophet said, “Thy master need not die of the sickness; nevertheless, he will die, and I see you filling a throne won by murder, and I have a picture before me of the terrible things which you will do to my dear land of Israel.”  And as this vision passed before the prophet’s eyes, he wept.  Then Hazael gave the answer which stands at the head of this paper.

It is open to two interpretations.  The Authorised Version gives one and the Revised Version the other.  According to the first, it is an indignant denial; he recoils with horror from the picture of perfidy, cruelty, and enormous criminality which the prophet has sketched for him.  I am not capable of such a thing, he says; “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?” According to the other reading it is not the crime that he revolts from, but the kingship and the greatness that he refuses to believe in.  It seems so improbable and all but impossible that he, a man of obscure birth, should climb to such eminence.  He exclaims against it as a piece of incredulous and extravagant imagination. “What is thy servant, which is but a dog, that he should do this great thing?”

Now, I doubt not that both readings may be allowed.  For certainly both thoughts were in the speaker’s mind.  He did not believe at that moment that he could ever be brought to commit such infamous deeds, and he did not believe that he could ever attain such high ambitions and power.  There was a dark moral depth predicted for him to which he was sure he would never fall, and there was a certain grandeur and elevation to which he was confident he would never rise.  To both things he said, “It is impossible,” and yet the impossible came to pass.