Scripture Daily

Context No. 1185 of 4322 · 2 Kings

Context · Reflection

2 Kings 6:1-5: in context

1The sons of the prophets said to Elisha, “See now, the place where we live and meet with you is too small for us. 2Please let us go to the Jordan, and each man take a beam from there, and let’s make us a place there, where we may live.” He answered, “Go!” 3One said, “Please be pleased to go with your servants.” He answered, “I will go.” 4So he went with them. When they came to the Jordan, they cut down wood. 5But as one was cutting down a tree, the ax head fell into the water. Then he cried out and said, “Alas, my master! For it was borrowed.”

The company of prophets around Elisha has outgrown its quarters, and they propose to go down to the Jordan, each cutting a beam to build a bigger place. Elisha agrees and goes with them. As they are felling trees by the river, one man's axe head flies off the handle and sinks into the water, and he cries out in distress: alas, my master, it was borrowed.

The little detail that gives the scene its poignancy is that the axe was borrowed. This was not the man's own tool to lose; it belonged to someone else, and now it lies at the bottom of the Jordan, and he has no way to replace it or make it good. His cry, it was borrowed, carries the particular anxiety of having lost what was not yours to lose. And the man does the right thing with a small, embarrassing, practical loss: he cries out about it to the man of God. He does not hide it or shrug it off as too trivial to mention; he brings this ordinary mishap, a lost tool, to be met with God's help, and in the next verses Elisha makes the iron float and the man recovers it. There is a quiet lesson in that the man thought this small loss worth bringing to God's prophet, and God cared enough to answer. We often assume our small troubles, a practical loss, a mundane worry, are beneath God's attention, too minor to pray about. The borrowed axe head says otherwise. God is not too great to be concerned with a lost tool and an ordinary man's distress over it. Nothing that troubles his servants is too small to bring to him.

Do I assume my small, ordinary troubles are beneath God's attention, or will I bring even the lost axe head, the mundane loss, to the God who cares about the distress of his servants?

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