Unfortunately, however, the Hebrew will not bear this meaning. Elisha bids Hazael to go back with the distinct message, "Thou shalt surely recover," as it is rightly rendered in the Revised Version.
This, however, is the rendering, not of the _written_ text as it stands, but of the margin. Every one knows that in the Masoretic original the text itself is called the K'thîb, or "what is written," whereas the margin is called _Q'rî_, "read." Now, our translators, both those of 1611 and those of the Revision Committee, all but invariably follow the Kethîb as the most authentic reading. In this instance, however, they abandon the rule and translate the marginal reading.
What, then, is the written text?
It is the reverse of the marginal reading, for it has: "Go, say, Thou shalt _not_ recover."
The reader may naturally ask the cause of this startling discrepancy.
It seems to be twofold.
(I.) Both the Hebrew word _lo_, "not" (לֹא), and the word _lo_, "to him" (לוֹ), have precisely the same pronunciation. Hence this text might mean either "Go, say _to him_, Thou shalt certainly recover," or "Go, say, Thou shalt _not_ recover." The same identity of the negative and the dative of the preposition has made nonsense of another passage of the Authorised Version, where "Thou hast multiplied the nation, and _not_ increased the joy: they joy before Thee according to the joy of harvest," should be "Thou hast multiplied the nation, and increased _its_ joy." So, too, the verse "It is He that hath made us, and _not_ we ourselves," may mean "It is He that hath made us, and _to Him_ we belong." In the present case the adoption of the negative (which would have conveyed to Benhadad the exact truth) is not possible; for it makes the next clause and its introduction by the word "Howbeit" entirely meaningless.
But (II.) this confusion in the text might not have arisen in the present instance but for the difficulty of Elisha's appearing to send a deliberately false message to Benhadad, and a message which he tells Hazael at the time is false.
Can this be deemed impossible?
With the views prevalent in "those times of ignorance," I think not. Abraham and Isaac, saints and patriarchs as they were, both told practical falsehoods about their wives. They, indeed, were reproved for this, though not severely; but, on the other hand, Jael is not reproved for her treachery to Sisera; and Samuel, under the semblance of a Divine permission, used a diplomatic ruse when he visited the household of Jesse; and in the apologue of Micaiah a lying spirit is represented as sent forth to do service to Jehovah; and Elisha himself tells a deliberate falsehood to the Syrians at Dothan. The sensitiveness to the duty of always speaking the exact truth is not felt in the East with anything like the intensity that it is in Christian lands; and reluctant as we should be to find in the message of Elisha another instance of that _falsitas dispensativa_ which has been so fatally patronised by some of the Fathers and by many Romish theologians, the love of truth itself would compel us to accept this view of the case, if there were no other possible interpretation.
I think, however, that another view is possible. I think that Elisha may have said to Hazael, "Go, say unto him, Thou shalt surely recover," with the same accent of irony in which Micaiah said at first to the two kings, "Go up to Ramoth-Gilead, and prosper; for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king." I think that his whole manner and the tone of his voice may have shown to Hazael, and may have been meant to show him, that this was not Elisha's real message to Benhadad. Or, to adopt the same line of explanation with an unimportant difference, Elisha may have meant to imply, "Go, follow the bent which I know you _will_ follow; go, carry back to your master the lying message that I said he would recover. But that is not _my_ message. My message, whether it suits your courtier instincts or not, is that Jehovah has warned me that he shall surely die."