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Context No. 158 of 4322 · 2 Kings

Context · Reflection

2 Kings 2:17-25: in context

17When they urged him until he was ashamed, he said, “Send them.” Therefore they sent fifty men; and they searched for three days, but didn’t find him. 18They came back to him while he stayed at Jericho; and he said to them, “Didn’t I tell you, ‘Don’t go’?” 19The men of the city said to Elisha, “Behold, please, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord sees; but the water is bad, and the land is barren.” 20He said, “Bring me a new jar, and put salt in it.” Then they brought it to him. 21He went out to the spring of the waters, and threw salt into it, and said, “The LORD says, ‘I have healed these waters. There shall not be from there any more death or barren wasteland.’” 22So the waters were healed to this day, according to Elisha’s word which he spoke. 23He went up from there to Bethel. As he was going up by the way, some youths came out of the city and mocked him, and said to him, “Go up, you baldy! Go up, you baldy!” 24He looked behind him and saw them, and cursed them in the LORD’s name. Then two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of those youths. 25He went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.

Elijah has been taken up, and Elisha has picked up his cloak. This passage is his first days as the prophet, and it contains two miracles that could not be more different.

The men of Jericho tell him the town's situation is pleasant but the water is bad and the land unfruitful. He asks for a new bowl with salt in it, throws the salt into the spring, and says God has healed this water. Jericho sits by a spring in a desert, and the whole town depends on it. It is a repair to the most ordinary thing a place needs.

Then he goes up to Bethel, and a crowd of youths comes out and jeers at him, go up, baldhead, go up. Go up is what Elijah just did. They are mocking the departure of his master. He curses them in the name of the LORD, two bears come out of the woods, and forty-two of them are mauled. The account offers no comment and no justification. It is one of the passages readers stumble on and the text does not help them. A man who has just healed a town's water calls down bears on a mob of boys, in the same chapter. What do I do with a story about someone I respect that I cannot make fit the rest of what I know?

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