For Your Inspiration
What Has Caused Your Leprosy?
by Jennifer Workman
Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They
said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? If we say, ‘We’ll go into the
city’—the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die.
So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare
us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.”
At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans. When they
reached the edge of the camp, no one was there, for the Lord had caused the
Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that
they said to one another, “Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and
Egyptian kings to attack us!” So they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left the camp as it was
and ran for their lives.
The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp, entered one of the
tents and ate and drank. Then they took silver, gold and clothes, and went
off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent and took some
things from it and hid them also.
Then they said to each other, “What we’re doing is not right. This is a day
of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight,
punishment will overtake us. Let’s go at once and report this to the royal
palace.”
So they went and called out to the city gatekeepers and told them, “We went
into the Aramean camp and no one was there—not a sound of anyone—
only tethered horses and donkeys, and the tents left just as they were.” The
gatekeepers shouted the news, and it was reported within the palace.
—II Kings 7:3-11
32 HimPower October 2016