We have several puffed-up persons in our passage today suffering from some severely overly-inflated egos. I don’t think ego is always a bad thing. It refers to your sense of self and your sense of self-importance. If we had no ego, we would have no appreciation of who we are as a person. If we had no ego, we would have no real sense of what we can do nor who we are called to be as God’s beloved. But overly-inflated egos are dangerous because they tend to puff us up to the point in which we are blinded to the realities around us and always about ready to *POP!* Naaman is the first character named in our text. He is a great warrior (puff). He is the head commander of the army of Aram (puff). He appears to be in direct contact with the king himself (puff, puff). It mentions that he is held in high favor by some high-ranking folks which makes me think Naaman was a guy who enjoyed a lot of high-fives! The second character mentioned was the king of Aram. Although his name is not mentioned here, it is probably Ben-hadad (see 2 Kings 8:7). He was the ruler of the entire Semitic kingdom centered in Damascus (puff) who had servants for his servants (puff) and enough silver, gold and garments to guarantee that he should be able to buy anything he wanted (puff, puff, puff). This king assumed that writing a letter would accomplish anything he wanted.
Thank you to guest writer Rev. Brian Christopher Coulter. You can find the rest of the commentary on our website. | 
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