I've been in a rocking prayer for the men who have been beheaded in Iraq. I must have lost my own head in a past lifetime, because I have long suffered from a mind/body disconnect. I work on it by doing physical therapy.
I'm seeing these aweful beheadings as a 21st century replay of Old Testament blood feuds, so I decided to do the old Family trick of cutting the scriptures. Pray and see where the Spirit opens the word.
It fell to 2 Kings 8:7-13. The story of Elisha and Hazael of Damascus. Hazael would have been an Ishmaelite prince, coming from Syria, as far as I can tell.
"Elisha went to Domascus. Ben-hadad the king of Aram was ill, and was told, "Elisha, the man of God has come all the way to us." Then Ben-hadad said to Hazael, "Take a present with you and go to met the man of God; consult Yahway through him, and find out if I shal recover from my illness."
So Hazael went to meet Elisha, taking with him as a present the best Damascus could offer, a load for forty comaels. Hazael stood before Elisha said, "Your son Ben-hadad has sent me to ask you, 'Shall I recover from my illness?"
Elisha answered, "Go and tell Ben-hadad, 'You will certainly recover,' though Yahweh has shown me that he will certainly die." Then Elisha's face went rigid and his look grew fixed, and the man of God wept. "Why," Hazel asked, "does my lord weep?"
"Because I know," Elisha replied, "all the harm you will do the Israelites: you will burn down their fortresses, put their picked warriors to the sword, dash their little cihldren to pieces, rip open their pregnant women."
"But what is you servant?" Hazael said. "How could this dog achieve anything so great?"
"In a vision from Yahweh," Elisha eplied, "I have seen you king of Aram."
So what does it mean in context to the Muslim avenger al-Zaquari, a son of Syria, who beheads Christians in the name of monotheism and Islam?
I went looking for a blood feud in the OT. It's not hard to find one if you cut the scriptures the first fourth of the Bible. Interesting chance that I should happen upon a story about a prince of Syria.
I'm not going to try to figure out this particular collision of probability with an obscure story about my ancestors by adoption in Yeshua bin Miriam.
Only to offer an observation about Hazael, the prince of Aram, most probably an Ishmaelite tribe. Hazael calls himself a dog and sees honor in acheiving something as "great" as slaugtering women and children--after he's done knocking off the "picked soldiers". It takes a really brutal person to find honor in the slaughter of innocents.
Anyone know how ths story of Hazael ends?