“Do not greet anyone on the road”
Tie up your garment, take my staff in your hand, and go! If you meet anyone, do not greet him, and if anyone greets you, do not answer him. (2 Kings 4:29 BSB)
What it sounds like today
Elisha strangely ordering his servant to be rude to everyone.
The cultural key
A command to 'greet no one' sounds cold and antisocial to us, where a greeting takes a second. In that culture a roadside greeting was a drawn-out affair: mutual blessings, inquiries after family and flocks, sometimes shared food, all of which could consume real time. To forbid greetings, and to add 'tie up your garment' (gather the long robe into the belt so you can run), was to say the mission is a matter of life and death and cannot spare a single social nicety. Gehazi is being sent racing to a dead child. Jesus uses the very same shorthand when he sends out the seventy-two: 'do not greet anyone along the road' (Luke 10:4), meaning travel light and lose no time. The order is about extreme urgency, not bad manners.
Recovered meaning
'Do not greet anyone on the road' is a command for extreme haste, not rudeness. Eastern greetings were long ceremonial exchanges, so forbidding them meant the errand was too urgent for any delay, the same reason Jesus tells his messengers not to greet people on the way.