Article May 29, 2017 Issue

Spiritual innocence brings freedom

H. M. Wyeth

We do not even know her name. All we know about the little girl is that Syrian soldiers captured her, and that she became a slave of their commander’s wife.

Perhaps because such grim tales were commonplace at the time, the Bible account in Second Kings 5 omits details of her abduction, leaving the reader to wonder. Was her whole community wiped out in the raid? What happened to her family? Perhaps, however, the writer wished to direct the reader to the story’s more important part—a remarkable event.

Despite having good reason to hate her captors, she showed them compassion. Learning that the commander, Naaman, was suffering from leprosy, she volunteered information that led to his healing. And although she was a female in a male-dominated culture, a young person in a society that commonly valued the wisdom of age, and a foreign slave besides, her captor listened to her advice.

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