The Servant Counted the Wrong Army

The young man got up first, and that is how the trouble started.

Elisha and his servant are in Dothan. The king of Syria has worked out that the prophet keeps telling the king of Israel where the Syrian ambushes are, and he has had enough of it, so he sends a force in the night to take one man. 2 Kings 6:14 says he sent horses, and chariots, and a great host, and they came by night and compassed the city about.

So the servant walks outside in the morning and there is an army all the way round the town.

And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do?2 Kings 6:15, King James Version

I want you to hear how reasonable that question is. How shall we do. He is not panicking for no reason. He went out to draw water or feed a mule and the whole horizon has soldiers on it. Every single thing he reports is true.

That is the part I want to sit on before we go anywhere.

His count was accurate. It was also incomplete, and those two words are not opposites.

Elisha's answer does not correct the count. Watch it.

And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.2 Kings 6:16, King James Version

More. Not they are not really there. Not you are exaggerating. Not stop being so negative. He grants the entire report and then adds a second column to it.

Watch what he prays for

Here is where this chapter earns its place, and it is one short sentence.

And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.2 Kings 6:17, King James Version

He does not pray for the Syrians to go home. He does not pray for a wall, or a storm, or an escape route. He prays about the servant's eyes.

The prayer was aimed at the man, not at the hillside.

You are not outnumbered, you are under-informed. 2 Kings 6:16 says more, which is a word about a total and not about a feeling, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes that word off a page and puts it over the arithmetic you have been running since Sunday.

And then the detail that reorganizes everything, and most people read straight past it.

The mountain was full.

Past tense. It was full before he saw it. The chariots of fire did not arrive when Elisha prayed. They had been on that hill all night, while the servant slept, and all morning, while he stood outside with his heart going and did his count. The prayer did not change the mountain. It changed what the young man was able to see of a mountain that had not altered by one chariot.

You have had something standing on your hill through every hour you were certain there was nothing there. 2 Kings 6:17 says was full, in the tense it is written in, and the same Spirit who opened one man's eyes in Dothan is the one who does not need to move anything in order to answer this.

I want to name the count you have been doing, because I think you have got a real one.

You know exactly how much is owed and when. You know which of them stopped calling and roughly what month it was. You know what the scan said and what the letter said and what the silence after the letter meant. You could stand up right now and give the numbers without notes, and I am not going to tell you those numbers are wrong, because Elisha did not tell his servant that.

You were never asked to unsee the horses, and nowhere in this chapter is the first column crossed out. The written account leaves the Syrian host standing in verse fifteen and adds fire to the hill in verse seventeen, and it is His Spirit who keeps both of those true at once so that nobody has to pretend.

There is one more thing here and it changes the temperature of the whole account. The chariots on that mountain are described as being round about Elisha. Round about one man, in one small town, who is not a king and does not have a court. This is not a national defense. It is a personal cordon.

You have a specificity around you that a general truth about God could never account for, and this passage will not be widened into a general truth. 2 Kings 6:17 says round about Elisha, naming him, and the same Spirit who put a name in that sentence is the reason it is not simply a nice fact about heaven.

And notice how the chapter ends, because it does not end in a battle. Elisha prays a second time, the Syrian army is struck with blindness, and he leads them into Samaria. The king of Israel wants to kill them, and Elisha says no. Set bread and water before them. He feeds them and sends them home, and the raids stop.

Nothing in this chapter is spent proving a point. The fire on the hill never even engages.