Struggling with Scripture: 2 Kings 7:3-20

2 Kings 7:3-20 is a powerful image of God as Warrior.  This recurring motif throughout the Hebrew Scriptures is a complex image, bound up in holy warfare over the holy land, the giving over of armies and kings to other sides, wholesale slaughter, and bloodless miracles where the LORD fights for Israel or Judah.

Our particular passage for today shows a bloodless victory ending a horrible siege.  King Ben-hadad of Aram has come up against Samaria (capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel).  The siege drags on to the point where women are cooking their sons in order to have something to eat.  Yet, when Elisha the prophet is about to be murdered by the King of Israel, Elisha then gives the word of the Lord that the LORD GOD will fight for the people and lift the siege (the language here is actually one of the marketplace - prices will come way down from what they were because goods would be plentiful). 

As we find out, The Lord chases away the Aramean army that very night by the sound of chariots, horses, and a great army that scares them into fleeing, leaving all their goods behind them (2 Kgs 7:6).  The siege is lifted, the LORD GOD has waged war ending in a bloodless victory. 

I am challenged by this text.  I wonder, why is Elisha so central to this plot?  Why did the LORD God wait until people were cooking their children to lift the siege?  At this point in time, the entire nation of Israel and Judah are pretty much under punishment for having faithless, idolatrous kings (more or less).  God's mercy is great - and gives victory in this instance, and in others, without the shedding of blood through his prophets.  In other instances, it comes at the price of bloody warfare, with enemies being slaughtered. 

What the most challenging issue for me is, how do we reconcile this text to today in the USA?  First, I don't think the LORD God is on any nation's side...not since ancient Israel.  Second, I find our model is new for winning the battle - it's the cross of Christ.  No longer do we win through the shedding of another's blood, nor is it through "victory" in any terms of the world.  Instead, victory comes as we shed our own blood for our enemies - just as Jesus did.  Greg Boyd calls this the image of "the cruciform God," a picture of God's self-sacrificing love that overcomes all evil.  How can we practice this today?  Finally, I end with another question - are there prophets like Elisha in the world today?