the prophet in the eyes of Joram, but also of pointing Joram to the Lord as the only true God. The three kings, humbled by the calamity, went in person to Elisha, instead of sending for him.
Verses 13-14
In order still further to humble the king of Israel, who was already bowed down by the trouble, and to produce some salutary fruit of repentance in his heart, Elisha addressed him in these words: “What have I to do with thee? Go to the (Baal-) prophets of thy father and thy mother! Let them help thee.” When Joram replied to this in a supplicatory tone: על, no, pray (as in Rth 1:13), i.e., speak not in this refusing way, for the Lord has brought these three kings - not me alone, but Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom also - into this trouble; Elisha said to him with a solemn oath (cf. 1Ki 17:1): “If I did not regard Jehoshaphat, I should not look at thee and have respect to thee,” i.e., I should not deign to look at thee, much less to help thee.
Verses 15-17
He then sent for a minstrel, to collect his mind from the impressions of the outer world by the soft tones of the instrument, and by subduing the self-life and life in the external world to become absorbed in the intuition of divine things. On this influence of music upon the state of the mind, see the remark on 1Sa 16:16, and Passavant’s Untersuchungen über den Lebens-magnetismus, p. 207 (ed. 2). - As the minstrel was playing, the hand of the Lord came upon him (והיה according to the later usage for ויהי, as in 1Sa 17:48, etc.; compare Ewald, §345, b., and יהוה יד as in 1Ki 18:46), so that he said in the name of the Lord: “Make this valley full of trenches (עשׂה, inf. abs. for the imperative; for גּבים גּבים see Ges. §108, 4); for thus saith the Lord, ye will see neither wind nor rain, and this valley will be filled with water, that ye may be able to drink, and your flocks and your cattle.” גּבים are trenches for collecting water (vid., Jer 14:3), which would suddenly flow down through the brook-valley. This large quantity of water came on the (following) morning “by the way of Edom” (2Ki 3:20), a heavy fall of rain or violent storm having taken place, as is evident from the context, in the eastern mountains of Edom, at a great distance from the Israelitish camp, the water of which filled the brook-valley, i.e., the Wady el Kurahy and el Ahsy (see at 2Ki 3:9) at once, without the Israelites observing anything either of the wind, which always precedes rain in the East (Harmar, Beobb. i. pp. 51, 52), or of the rain itself. מקניכם
