Some thousands of years ago Israel failed to guard her heart. Do you recall the outcome of that? They were unable to guard their borders; defeated in war raiding parties trounced through their cities.
2 Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. (2 Kings 5:2–NIV)
If you live in
Some thousands of years ago Israel failed to guard her heart. Do you recall the outcome of that? They were unable to guard their borders; defeated in war raiding parties trounced through their cities.
2 Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. (2 Kings 5:2–NIV)
If you live in a Western society and peace and safety generally marks your life, do not let it taint your perspective of this young girl’s experience. Do not romanticize it; her reality, even in Israel, was war-ravaged and men-depleted. The poor residuals of the population were ill-equipped for self-defense. So Aram mined Israel not only for its gold but also for its human resources.
Those women and children freshly harvested from their meager existence would have been roughly dispatched to the transports. If not already taken advantage of on the way to the streets many more opportunities stretched before them as the trajectory of their lives shifted toward the alleys of Syria and away from the soon-to-be nostalgic hills and valleys of Israel.
That is what verse 2 means. A young girl was caught up in the kidnapping devices that Aram brought to bear upon the unnecessarily vulnerable Hebrews.
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