Thread by @DrPJWilliams

Thread: Elisha & the She-bears

2 Kings 2:23-25 contains the story of how 42 children met 2 furry animals.

Despite this plot, the story doesn’t make it into children’s Bibles, as the children get mauled by the bears after mocking Elisha.

Why is this grim tale in the Bible?

First, let’s read the passage in some translations which don’t help much.

Here’s the NRSV.

Notice that the ‘small boys’ tell Elisha ‘Go away’.

Here’s the Revised English Bible.

Here the ‘small boys’ tell Elisha to ‘get along’.

The 2011 NIV has the ‘boys’ saying ‘get out of here’.

All of these translations miss what more literal translations keep. The young people tell Elisha to ‘go up’. Here’s the Christian Standard Bible, which gets it right (as do the ESV and KJV).

The detail of the particular verb of motion is vital, as the context shows.

2 Kings 1-2 are truly awash with the two verbs ‘go/come up’ and ‘go/come down’.

The book starts with King Ahaziah falling down through a lattice (1:2). We hear repeatedly that he won’t ‘come down’ from the bed to which he has ‘gone up’ (1:4, 6).

He’s angry with Elijah and sends men to tell him to ‘come down’ (1:9).

Elijah says ‘Let fire come down’ (1:10).

Scene repeats, though the 2nd captain says to ‘come down *quickly*’ (1:11).

Oops. Elijah commands fire to ‘come down’ (1:12).

Next captain sensibly ‘went up’ to Elijah & pleaded. Elijah comes down (1:13-15), & tells king he won’t come down from bed to which he’s gone up (1:16).

Story so far:

Bad king told he can’t come down.

Bad king can’t tell man of God to come down.

Next story is Elijah ‘going up’ into heaven, though first he ‘goes down’ to Bethel (2:2), scene of the incident with the bears.

Elijah is evidently famous in Bethel and ‘sons of the prophets’ are already talking about Elijah being taken ‘from over’ Elisha’s head (2:3).

In these two chapters we get ‘go up’ 10x and ‘go down’ 13x, a high proportion of occurrences of these verbs for the entire book.

So the 4 stories in a row:

An ungodly person who goes up and can’t come down.

A group telling a man of God to come down.

A godly person who goes down then up.

A group telling a man of God to go up.

Lesson: God honours his people and judges those who despise them.

The next factor to consider is the theme of childlessness.

All the surrounding chapters have something about that:

1:17; 3:27; 4:18.

How old were the children, & were they all male?

KJV ‘little children’
ESV ‘small boys’
ASV ‘young lads’
NIV 2011 ‘boys’
NIV 1984 ‘youths’

The same phrase is used (hyperbolically?) by Solomon of himself in 1 Kings 3:7.

These kids are unsupervised, mobile, on a hill.

Bringing together Elijah’s fame & the knowledge of the sons of the prophets in Bethel of his imminent departure, we may suppose that Elijah’s fate was the talk of the town when Elisha returned.

Elisha had been PA to the rock star during his last visit. He had face recognition.

The children’s taunt as Elisha toils *up* the hill seems to be that he should do something like it was rumoured had occurred to his master recently.

To the extent that any of the children thought this way, they were aware of God’s work and chose to mock.

Another dimension is the fulfilment of the curses of Lev 26:22 ‘And I will let loose the wild beasts against you, which shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock’.

Also Lev 26:29 predicts eating children in 2 Ki 6:29 & Lev 26:30 the desecration of 2 Ki 23:20.

So we see that what is happening as the children of Bethel are killed is in fact a judgement in their parents.

It’s part of the big escalating narrative of judgement in 2 Kings.

Now to the theme of childlessness again.

Remember the curse of Joshua 6:26 when Joshua declared that anyone rebuilding Jericho would be bereaved of his first- and last-born?

That happened to Hiel *of Bethel* in 1 Kings 16:34.

The immediately preceding passage to the one about the bears is 2 Kings 2:19-22 about Jericho.

The problem brought to Elisha is (according to the ASV, which gets the childlessness theme) that ‘the land miscarrieth’ (2:19).

The Hebrew root behind that verb is škl, which is commonly used for being bereaved of children.

It’s also used of she-bears. There’s 1 thing she-bears were famous for—their ferocity if they lost their cubs (2 Sam 17:8; Prov 17:12; Hosea 13:8).

The proverbially bereaved bereave.

So bad Canaanite Jericho is getting uncursed, while Israelite Bethel is getting cursed.

The theme of bereavement is transferred from one to the other.

The place where God had revealed himself specially to Jacob is now a place of judgement.

Side note: 42 is interesting, aside from #hitchhikersguide since it occurs in 10:14 for the death of some of Ahab’s descendants & is implicitly in Matthew 1.

43 is 1st natural number in sequence NOT to appear in Bible.

42 wants to break into the 7th 7 but here is cut short.

All of this shows that these three verses are not random, but are contributing to the dire narrative of divine judgement on human sin.

The sin, of course, is primarily that of the adults, but the children are caught up too.

But when I’m studying the OT, I like to think what it teaches us of Christ.

There are numerous parallels between Elisha and Christ.

Both have names formed from Divine Name + ‘save’

Both are preceded by Elijah

Both are greater than the one before

When I’m studing the OT, I like to think what it teaches me of Christ.

There are numerous parallels between Elisha and Christ.

Both have names made up of Divine Name + ‘save’

Both were preceded by Elijah

Both were greater than the one before them

Both cleansed lepers

Both multiplied food

Both raised dead sons and returned them to their mothers

Both made something float (okay, that’s a stretch)

Both had a greedy disciple

People fled from the tombs of both

Elisha cursed the children

What did Jesus do?

See Mark 10:16

‘he redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us’ (Gal 3:13).

Elijah had done his preparatory work (Mal 4:5-6).

Despite the similarities, there are also huge contrasts between Elisha & Christ.