What did Naaman become — a true convert, or a henotheist?

Type: interpretive-crux argument (off-timeline) · Assessment: sound that Naaman’s confession is a genuine, exclusive turn to the God of Israel — the reading that the healed general became a true worshipper of the LORD alone (however the tradition labels him) is well-grounded in the text and its reception; what must be conceded is only that his theology remained untaught — a real territorial residue clings to his request for Israelite earth — so the conversion is genuine but imperfect. The sharpest counter, folded in below, is the henotheism reading (the earth request + the continuing Rimmon bow prove a still-territorial, still-plural theology); as a claim that he was merely a henotheist and no true convert it fails on its best case · advanced by the whole Christian tradition and, in its own idiom, by the rabbis (who class him a ger toshav); the henotheism defeater by many critical and devotional commentators

The claim

— 2 Kings 5:15–18 (KJV).¹ The one chapter Scripture gives Naaman packs three things into a breath: a sweeping confession (“no God in all the earth, but in Israel”), an exclusivity vow (sacrifice “unto other gods” renounced, “but unto the LORD”), and two acts that sit uneasily beside them — the request for a load of Israelite soil to worship on, and the reserved bow in the temple of Rimmon. The question adjudicated here is what the healed Syrian became. Three answers compete: (a) a full convert to the exclusive worship of the LORD, his confession read as genuine faith; (b) a henotheist, who has added a greater God to his world but keeps a territorial theology — he needs Israelite earth because he still thinks the LORD is bound to Israelite ground, and he still attends Rimmon’s house; and (c) the rabbinic category of a ger toshav, a “resident” who renounces idolatry and fears the God of Israel without taking on the whole Law. The advocated reading rated here is (a), in its steelman form; (b) is folded in as its sharpest defeater, and (c) — as the argument shows — is not a rival to (a) at all but the Jewish-legal name for the same genuine, imperfect turn.

Who advances it

The full-conversion reading is the mainstream of the whole reception, and it starts from the mouth of Jesus, who at Nazareth makes Naaman the very type of the outsider who receives what Israel refused — “none… was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 4:27) — a saying that treats the Syrian not as a half-believer but as the model of Gentile faith. The Fathers follow: Ephrem the Syrian reads the confession as the recognition of “the Lord of the universe” — the opposite of a merely local god — and even takes the notorious earth request as an act of faith that shames Israel, “so that they might be ashamed that a stranger believed that even the dust of their land was filled with God, while the Hebrews did not even believe that God dwells in the prophets.”² The Jewish tradition, working the same text through the categories of law, reaches a verdict that sounds like a demotion but is not: it classes Naaman a ger toshav — a resident semi-convert who has formally forsworn idolatry and taken on the Noahide commandments, short of the circumcision and full Law that would make him a ger tzedek, a righteous proselyte.³ The point to hold is that this is not a rival claim that Naaman did not truly turn — the ger-toshav category itself presupposes a genuine renunciation of idols; it merely declines to call an uncircumcised Gentile returning to Aram a full member of Israel. Christian “true convert” and Jewish “ger toshav” are two frameworks describing one reality: a real, exclusive turn to the LORD by a man who did not become a Torah-keeping Israelite. The genuine counter comes from a different quarter — the many commentators, critical and devotional alike, who read the earth request as the tell of a theology still territorial, and so downgrade the confession to henotheism or monolatry (below).

The evidence for

Read as a genuine conversion, the scene is coherent and strongly attested. (1) The confession is universal, not local: “there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel” denies deity to every other god everywhere — the natural sense is that the LORD alone is God, over the whole earth, and merely known “in Israel.” (2) The vow is exclusive: Naaman binds himself to “offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the LORD” — a formal renunciation of the entire pagan cultus, which is precisely what a real turn from idolatry looks like. (3) The Rimmon bow, far from proving easy polytheism, is named by Naaman himself as a problem: he singles it out, asks pardon for it in advance, and frames it as a coerced civil act of his office — the behaviour of a newly exclusive conscience, not a comfortable henotheist (the bow is weighed on its own house-of-Rimmon page). (4) The whole later reception, Christian and Jewish, treats him as one who genuinely believed: Jesus as the type of saving Gentile faith, Ephrem as a witness who put Israel to shame, the rabbis as a man who had truly forsworn idols. (5) Even the Reformers, hostile to any easy reading of the Rimmon plea, granted the reality of his renunciation — Calvin’s case against the Nicodemites turns precisely on the fact that Naaman had first openly sworn to “perform sacred rites to no god but the God of Israel,” which is why he could not be a precedent for a temporizer who had not.⁴ On this reading Naaman is exactly what the narrative celebrates: the great Gentile who meets Israel’s God and turns.

Adversarial assessment

The henotheism defeater — and how far it reaches. The sharpest objection fastens on the request for “two mules’ burden of earth.” Why should a man who has just confessed the LORD as God over “all the earth” need a cartload of Israelite dirt to worship Him on in Damascus — unless he still supposes the LORD is somehow bound to Israelite ground? A long line of commentators reads it exactly so. The Cambridge Bible is blunt: “Naaman still has no notion of Jehovah but as a territorial deity.” Ellicott: it was “natural for Naaman, with his local idea of divinity, to make this request.” Guzik, following the Expositor’s commentators, grants the point pastorally — Naaman’s “faith was yet untaught,” and he “held the common opinion of the ancient world that particular deities had power over particular places.” Add the continuing Rimmon bow and the picture the henotheist reading paints is of a man who has enthroned the LORD as his God, even the greatest God, without yet reaching the flat monotheist claim that the other gods are nothing at all.⁵ This is a real feature of the text, and it should be conceded without flinching: Naaman’s theology is untaught. He carries his new and exclusive loyalty inside an old thought-world whose furniture he has not yet cleared out.

Why it does not overturn the conversion. But notice what the defeater actually establishes and what it does not. It bears on the completeness of Naaman’s theology, not the genuineness of his turn — and the maximal form, “he was merely a henotheist, no true convert,” overreaches on three counts. First, it must saw off the branch it sits on: the same verse that carries the earth request carries the exclusivity vow — sacrifice to no other god, “but unto the LORD.” A pure henotheist keeps his other altars; Naaman renounces them. The territorial residue qualifies an exclusive commitment; it does not replace one. Second, the earth request will not by itself bear the polytheist weight. The Pulpit Commentary, no friend to laxity, notes that it need not imply the “polytheistic superstition” that every god owns his own land, but only “the notion of there being such a thing as ‘holy ground’” — a sense of sacred place that outlives even mature monotheism (pilgrims have carried Holy-Land earth for burial for centuries). Read devotionally, as Ephrem read it, the dirt is a relic of gratitude, a tangible link to the God and the ground of his healing, not a theory of divine real-estate.⁶ Third, at least one careful reading denies the territorialism is in the finished text at all: Dennis Bratcher, in a study devoted to just this question, argues that whatever pre-literary traditions may have thought, “as it stands in the text” the passage presents the dirt “simply… as an act of authentic piety,” the portrait of a “practical monotheism” that the narrator nowhere condemns — indeed the story rewards it, sending Naaman off “in peace.”⁷ One need not go the whole way with Bratcher to see the force: the narrative frames Naaman’s turn as a success story, not a cautionary tale of half-measures.

Where the ger-toshav reading actually lands. This is why the rabbinic classification, once its idiom is understood, falls on the conversion side of the ledger, not against it. To be a ger toshav a Gentile must stand before a court and formally renounce idolatry; the category is unavailable to a henotheist who keeps his old gods. The rabbis’ verdict is thus a precise middle term that both traditions can affirm: Naaman genuinely and exclusively turned to the God of Israel (that is why he counts as a resident-convert at all), yet he did not become a full Israelite under the whole Law (that is why he is a ger toshav, not a ger tzedek). Read this way, (a) and (c) are not rivals but a Christian and a Jewish name for the same fact — a real conversion that stopped short of full proselytism — and the only genuine dispute is with (b), over whether the residue of territorial thinking demotes that turn from conversion to mere henotheism. It does not.

Assessment

Sound that Naaman’s confession is a genuine, exclusive turn to the God of Israel; the maximal henotheism reading, that he was no true convert, is weak. The core claim — the healed Syrian truly forsook his idols for the LORD — rests on the plainest features of the text (a universalising confession, a formal renunciation of all other sacrifice) and commands the whole reception, Christian and Jewish alike: Jesus makes him the type of Gentile faith, Ephrem the Gentile who shamed Israel’s unbelief, the rabbis a resident-convert who had forsworn idolatry, Calvin a man who had “first openly sworn” to sacrifice to no other god. What must be granted, and is, is that the turn is imperfect: the request for Israelite earth carries a real residue of the old territorial thought-world, and Naaman’s theology is, in Guzik’s fair word, “untaught.” But an untaught faith is still faith. The henotheism reading rightly diagnoses the residue and wrongly makes it the whole man — it under-reads the exclusivity vow in the very same verse, over-reads a load of soil into a doctrine of divine real-estate (against the Pulpit’s “holy ground” and Ephrem’s and Bratcher’s piety readings), and cuts against the grain of a narrative that treats Naaman’s turn as a triumph. And the ger-toshav label, so often cited as if it settled the matter against a “full” conversion, in fact confirms the genuine turn while denying only full proselyte status — a distinction of covenant standing, not of the sincerity of faith. The honest verdict is the one the story itself invites: a real convert, imperfectly instructed — genuine in his turn, territorial in his residue, and sent away in peace.

Sources

The confession, the earth request, and the Rimmon reservation (KJV): “Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel… Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules’ burden of earth? for thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the LORD… that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there… and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon… the LORD pardon thy servant in this thing” (2 Kings 5:15–18). ↩
Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Second Kings, on 2 Kings 5:15 and 5:17. On the confession: Naaman “thanked God for his healing and testified that the Lord of the universe, in his profound care for him, had conceded him that extraordinary power by simply using water” (shown at historicalchristian.faith, on 2 Kings 5:14–16). On the earth request: “Naaman the Aramean asked for some dust from the promised land in order to cause the shame of Israel, as I think, so that they might be ashamed that a stranger believed that even the dust of their land was filled with God, while the Hebrews did not even believe that God dwells in the prophets” (historicalchristian.faith, on 2 Kings 5:17). Ephrem reads both the confession and the soil as marks of faith, not of a territorial theology. ↩
Naaman as a ger toshav — a resident who “observes the seven Noahide mitzvot” rather than a full convert (ger tzedek): Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 57b (“Naaman… was not a convert, as he did not accept all of the mitzvot, but rather he was a ger toshav”) and the baraita at Sanhedrin 96b (“Naaman was a ger toshav… Nebuzaradan was a righteous convert”), William Davidson translation, sefaria.org. The category is a halakhic status of residence and covenant standing, not a denial of genuine belief: a ger toshav is admitted only after formally renouncing idolatry before a court, so the classification presupposes the very turn from idols that the full-conversion reading asserts. The Talmud elsewhere treats Naaman’s coerced Rimmon bow as excusable precisely because he had truly turned (Sanhedrin 74b, sefaria.org; weighed on the house-of-Rimmon page). ↩
Jesus makes Naaman the type of saving Gentile faith, “none… was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 4:27). On Naaman’s prior open renunciation as the thing that made his turn real, see John Calvin, “On Shunning the Unlawful Rites of the Ungodly” (De fugiendis illicitis sacris, 1537), trans. Beveridge, covenanter.org: Naaman had first sworn to “perform sacred rites to no god but the God of Israel” — the point Calvin presses against the Nicodemites, who had made no such renunciation (fuller treatment on the house-of-Rimmon page). ↩
The territorial-deity reading of the earth request: the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (“Naaman still has no notion of Jehovah but as a territorial deity”) and Ellicott’s Commentary (“It was natural for Naaman, with his local idea of divinity, to make this request”), on 2 Kings 5:17, biblehub.com; David Guzik, Enduring Word commentary on 2 Kings 5 (quoting R. D. Patterson and H. J. Austel, Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Naaman’s “faith was yet untaught”; and framing the request as the ancient assumption “that particular deities had power over particular places”), enduringword.com. James Montgomery’s International Critical Commentary collects the ancient parallels for transporting sacred soil (a Persian synagogue built of earth brought from Jerusalem; Helena importing holy soil to Rome), noted at studylight.org. ↩
That the earth request need not carry a polytheist theology: the Pulpit Commentary on 2 Kings 5:17 grants it need not imply the “polytheistic superstition” that each god owns his own land, but at most “the notion of there being such a thing as ‘holy ground,’” biblehub.com — a sense of sacred place that survives in mature monotheism (the later custom of carrying Holy-Land earth for burial, e.g. the Campo Santo at Pisa, is of a piece). Read so, and as Ephrem read it (n. 2), the soil is a relic of gratitude, not a theory of divine territory. ↩
Dennis Bratcher, “Naaman, Dirt, and Territorial Gods: The Canonical Function of 2 Kings 5:17–19,” CRI/Voice Institute, crivoice.org: “in spite of what the tradition historians say I am not at all convinced that this passage in 2 Kings 5 reflects vestiges of territorial deities as it stands in the text”; the dirt is “simply presented as an act of authentic piety,” the portrait of a “practical monotheism” that the narrator does not condemn but rewards. ↩