2 Kings 5:27

27. Unto thy seed forever “Who can tell but that the victims of this horrid plague, now seen about the city [Samaria] and at Nablus, the present home of all the Samaritans, may be the heirs of this heritage of Gehazi?” Thomson.

He went out from his presence And from that time forth he seems not again to have ministered unto Elisha, though he might afterwards have been often called the servant of Elisha. See on 2 Kings 8:4.

A leper as white as snow Hence we learn that the disease of Naaman and the curse of Gehazi was the white leprosy. Comp. Exodus 4:6; Numbers 12:10.

Let not the punishment of Gehazi be thought too severe. Important principles were involved in his conduct, for, according to 2 Kings 5:26, it was a time when the representatives of the sacred office needed to observe the greatest caution against the spirit of worldliness. Then, too, Gehazi’s acts on this occasion were a complication of wickedness. He showed contempt for the judgment of his master in the matter of receiving gifts: he meanly misrepresented the prophet by making him ask for what Naaman had just heard him most positively refuse: he invented a false story to blind the eyes of Naaman: and finally told a miserable lie in the hope of escaping detection from Elisha. Add to all this the foul spirit of covetousness that actuated him through all this evil course and his curse will not appear too great.

The extending of his curse to his children after him is but another exhibition of the terrible consequences of human sinfulness. Gehazi’s posterity were innocent of their father’s sins, but, like many others, they were compelled to bear the consequences of ancestral crimes. That thousands of innocents are subjected to suffering because of the sins of others is a fact which none can deny. Why this is permitted, under the government of an all-wise God, is a question which he has not seen fit fully to answer.