Bible Commentaries

2 Kings 2:1-11

1. And it came to pass, when the Lord would take up [when Jehovah caused Elijah to go up, or ascend] Elijah into heaven [as into heaven] by a whirlwind [in the storm] that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal [Gilgal in Ephraim].

2. And Elijah said unto Elisha, Tarry here, I pray thee; for the Lord hath sent me to Beth-el. And Elisha said unto him, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth [literally, "By the life of Jehovah and by the life of thy soul"], I will not leave thee. So they went down to Bethel.

3. And the sons of the prophets that were at Beth-el came forth to Elisha [who probably walked a little way before his master, to announce his approach], and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head today ["today" is emphatic]? And he said, Yea, I know [rather, I, too, know] it; hold ye your peace [suggesting that the subject was painful both to him and his master].

4. And Elijah said unto him, Elisha, tarry here, I pray thee; for the Lord hath sent me to Jericho. And he said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they came to Jericho.

5. And the sons of the prophets that were at Jericho came [drew near] to Elisha, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head today? And he answered [said], Yea I know it; hold ye your peace.

6. And Elijah said unto him, Tarry, I pray thee, here; for the Lord hath sent me to Jordan. And he [Elisha] said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. And they two went on.

7. And [Now] fifty men of the sons of the prophets went [had gone], and stood [taken their stand opposite. They wished to see whether and how the companions would cross the stream at a point where there was no ford] to view afar off: and they two stood by Jordan.

8. And Elijah took his mantle [his hairy ʾaddèreth, which characterised him as a prophet], and wrapped it together [rolled it up], and smote the waters [a symbolical action like that of Moses smiting the rock, or stretching out his rod over the sea], and they were divided hither and thither [ Exodus 14:16, Exodus 14:21-22; Joshua 4:22, seq.], so that [and] they two went over on dry ground.

9. And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee [as a dying father, Elijah might wish to bless his spiritual son ere his departure ( Genesis 27:4)]. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let [lit, and (i.e. well, then) let there fall, I pray thee, a portion of two in thy spirit, unto me] a double portion [The expression used in Deuteronomy 21:17 of the share of the firstborn Sirach 48:1).... The deep impression which Elijah had made on his nation only renders more remarkable the departure which the image conveyed by the later references to him evinces, from that so sharply presented in the records of his actual life. With the exception of the eulogiums contained in the catalogues of worthies in the book of Jesus the son of Sirach (48) and 1 Maccabees 2:58, and the passing allusion in Luke 9:54, none of these later references allude to his works of destruction or of portent. They all set forth a very different side of his character to that brought out in the historical narrative. They speak of his being a man of like passions with ourselves ( James 5:17); of his kindness to the widow of Sarepta ( Luke 4:25); of his "restoring all things" ( Matthew 17:11); "turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just ( Malachi 4:5-6; Luke 1:17).... It will be sufficient to call attention to the great differences which may exist between the popular and contemporary view of an eminent character, and the real settled judgment formed in the progress of time, when the excitement of his more brilliant but more evanescent deeds has passed away. Precious indeed are the scattered hints and faint touches which enable us thus to soften the harsh outlines or the discordant colouring of the earlier picture. In the present instance they are peculiarly so. That wild figure, that stern voice, those deeds of blood, which stand out in such startling relief from the pages of the old records of Elijah, are seen by us all silvered over with the "white and glistering" light of the Mountain of Transfiguration. When he last stood on the soil of his native Gilead [see the considerations adduced by Stanley (S. and P.) in favour of the mountain of the Transfiguration being on the east of Jordan], he was destitute, afflicted, tormented, wandering about "in sheepskins and goatskins, in deserts and mountains, and dens and caves of the earth." But these things have passed away into the distance, and with them has receded the fiery zeal, the destructive wrath, which accompanied them. Under that heavenly light they fall back into their proper proportions, and Ahab and Jezebel, Baal and Ashtaroth are forgotten, as we listen to the Prophet talking to our Lord—talking of that event which was to be the consummation of all that he had suffered and striven for—"talking of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem."

2 Kings 2:12-25

12. And Elisha saw it, and he cried [literally, Elisha was seeing, and he (emphatic) was shouting (comp. 2 Kings 2:10, "If thou see me taken away")], My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces [from top to bottom, in token of extreme sorrow].

13. He took up also the mantle of Elijah [the badge of the prophet's office was naturally transferred to his successor], that fell from him, and went back, and stood by the bank of Jordan.

14. And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is the Lord God of Elijah? [has he left the earth with his prophet? The words are a sort of irony of faith], and when he also had smitten the waters, they parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over.

15. And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest [hath alighted, i.e. settled, rested] on Elisha. And they came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him.

16. And they said unto him [after he had told them of the Assumption of Elijah], Behold now, there be with thy servants fifty 1 Kings 18:12; Acts 8:39, Acts 8:40. The suggestion of the sons of the prophets is a good comment on Acts 8:11, Acts 8:12. It shows that what is there told is certainly not that Elijah ascended a fiery chariot and rode visibly into heaven, as the popular notion is], and cast him upon some mountain, or into some valley. And he said, Ye shall not send.

17. And when they urged him [ Genesis 33:11] till he was [lit, unto being] ashamed, he said, Send. They sent therefore fifty men; and they sought three days, but found him not.

18. And when they came again to him (for he tarried [now he was abiding in] at Jericho), he said unto them, Did I not say [or, command] unto you, Go not?

19. And the men of the city [not "the sons of the prophets," but the citizens] said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this [the] city is pleasant [good; Deuteronomy 34:3], as my lord seeth: but the water is naught [bad], and the ground barren 2 Kings 2:19; lit, and making (or, multiplying) abortion].

22. So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake.

23. And he went up from thence unto Beth-el: and as he was going up by the way [the highway; the way par excellence], there came forth little children [young boys (or, lads)] out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head [baldness was a reproach ( Isaiah 3:17, Isaiah 15:2)]: go up, thou bald head.

24. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them [to avenge the honour of Jehovah, violated in his person. (Comp. Exodus 16:8; Acts 5:4)] in the name of the Lord. And there came forth [directly fulfilling the menace of Leviticus 26:21, seq.] two she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two [showing that the mob was considerable] children of them.

25. And he went from thence to mount Carmel, and from thence he returned to Samaria [where he had his permanent abode. (Comp. chap. 2 Kings 6:32)].

Elisha

When Elijah supposed that his work was done he was ordered by Jehovah to go up and return on his way to the wilderness of Damascus; and he who supposed that his ministry was concluded had yet to anoint Hazael to be king over Syria, and Jehu the son of Nimshi to be king over Israel ( 1 Kings 19:15-16). But the anointing of these kings was a comparatively insignificant circumstance, the great point of the commission we find in the conclusion of the sixteenth verse of the same chapter:—"And Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room." Probably it had not occurred to Elijah that he could have a successor. A very subtle indication is thus given of his approaching end; the Lord instead of telling him that he had many a year left to spend in holy service, gave him to understand that even 2 Kings 2:12).—This is an apparently incoherent exclamation. When properly understood, however, it conveys a further tribute to the ministry which was exercised by the ascending prophet. The real meaning is: My father, my father, so much better than all chariots and horses,—in thy absence the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof, are useless; they were used by thee, and under thy conduct could be turned to good account, but now that thou art gone they do but mock our loneliness and make us feel still more bitterly our helpless condition. A greater question than, Where is Elijah? now occurred to the desolate young man. Instantly he seizes the reality of the occasion, and by exclaiming, "Where is the Lord God of Elijah?" he shows that he is not called to a merely official position, but that he is elected to represent the divine majesty upon earth. The young man thus begins well. There is nothing frivolous in his inquiry or in his interpretation of events. The very depth of his feeling gives us an index to the capacity of his mind. Rely upon it that he who can feel as Elisha did must have a mind equal in its proportions to the fine emotions which enlarge and ennoble his heart. Had the young man deported himself in a way which suggested self-sufficiency, his prophetic office would have been destroyed well-nigh before it was created. It is when we stand back in humility and in almost despair, and cry out in our desolateness, "Where is the Lord God of Elijah?" that we begin our work in the right spirit, and only then. In this whole ministry of righteousness and redemption there is no place for self-sufficiency. The apostle Paul said, "Our sufficiency is of God." The great inquiry, "Who is sufficient for these things?" keeps down human ambition and vanity, and prepares the heart for the utterance of prevailing prayer. The question which was thus propounded by Elisha is full of suggestion to ourselves. When we come to read the Bible we should not inquire so much Where is inspiration: but, Where is wisdom which can be applied to our own circumstances and be made unto us as the very staff of life? We need not exclaim in considering the Christian ministry of our own day, Where are the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles? Our inquiry should be, Where are the healed men, the comforted hearts, the forgiven souls, the rejoicing spirits? Who cares to inquire into the mechanism of the organ when he can hear its music and be bowed down by its most solemn appeals?

"And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha. And they came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him" ( 2 Kings 2:15).

There was no mistaking that spirit. Who can mistake the presence and influence of fire? Better that our spirit should be discovered than that our credentials should be examined. Of what avail is it that a man can produce a whole portfolio of testimonials, if nobody has discovered in him the presence and effect of the divine Spirit? This tribute is also to the credit of the sons of the prophets, for their judgment was vital and not accidental. There are men who will only regard providence as operating in one way or as operating in one form. These sons of the prophets did not belong to such an inferior class of judges. It is remarkable too, that the organic unity of the prophetic office is hereby recognised. The sons of the prophets do not treat Elisha as a novelty, a new sensation, or as representing a new point of departure; they unite the old with the new; though the man has changed, the spirit remains the same. This is what must be always regarded in reading Christian history and in watching the course of the Christian ministry. Old ministers depart, but when new men come they come with the old spirit and the old truth, or if they come with any other spirit or any other doctrine, they should, in the degree of the change, be suspected of being other than genuine successors of the prophets. From the beginning God has signalised ministers less by some outward badge than by an inward and spiritual power. "The Lord came down in a cloud, and spake unto him [Moses] and took of the spirit that was upon him, and and gave it unto the seventy elders: and it came to pass, that, when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, and did not cease." "The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord." And the apostle Peter recognises the same doctrine as continuing in the Christian Church, for he says, "The spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you." We are thus brought back to pentecostal days and pentecostal signs. The age will care little about names, offices, and ceremonial claims, but will set more and more store upon spiritual insight, spiritual sympathy, and the power of revealing the human heart to itself and applying divine remedies to human diseases.

"And they said unto him, Behold now, there be with thy servants fifty strong men; let them go, we pray thee, and seek thy master: lest peradventure the Spirit of the Lord hath taken him up, and cast him upon some mountain, or into some valley. And he said, Ye shall not send. And when they urged him till he was ashamed, he said, Send. They sent therefore fifty men; and they sought three days, but found him not. And when they came again to him, (for he tarried at Jericho,) he said unto them, Did I not say unto you, Go not?" ( 2 Kings 2:16-18).

This proposal on the part of the young men must not be taken as an evidence of their scepticism, but as a proof of their determination to show that the case was from end to end thoroughly genuine in all its phases. They determined upon going out in quest of Elijah, if haply he might have hidden upon some mountain. They said, "Lest peradventure the Spirit of the Lord hath taken him up, and cast him upon some mountain, or into some valley." Elisha did not need any such demonstration of the reality of Elijah's ascension. Why? because Elisha himself saw the ascension, as we read in verse twelve, and he was therefore in the position of an eye-witness. Elisha insisted that the young men should not go, but they plied him with such importunity that at length he consented. A very beautiful expression occurs in 2 Kings 2:17—"They... found him not." All God's ways, so far as they are known to us, prove that when he has accomplished an end it is impossible to reverse it—to open a door which he has shut, or to shut a door which he has opened. When God takes away a 2 Kings 2:19-22).

Elisha begins his ministry by doing good: that is to say, by healing the water that was diseased. This appeal to the prophet to do something for the city or Jericho was itself a tribute to the genuineness of the prophetic office as exercised by him. It is always beautiful to notice how great power is associated with the doing of good. What is it to be a prophet of any age if the age is not practically benefited by the exercise of the office? The age does not want ornamental prophets, nominal prophets, official prophets; the age is crying out for men who can give it bread, who can heal its water, who can mitigate its sorrows, who can destroy its oppressions. By this sign must all prophets live or die. It would have been a poor thing on the part of Elisha to have shown the mantle of his predecessor if he could not also show his power. We are only in the apostolic succession as we are in the apostolic spirit. We may have all the relics which the apostles left behind, the cloak that was left at Troas, and the parchment, and the staff, and the vessels out of which they ate and drank: we may even have the scrolls which they used in reading the Holy Scriptures; but all these things will constitute only a burden if we have not along with all other possessions the mighty and eternal Spirit of the living God, without whose energy even the apostles themselves were but common men. The apostles of the age must come to bless our home, to bless our bread, to sanctify our love, and give our whole life a new and better impulse: in the degree in which they do this they will never forfeit the respect of their contemporaries. Depraved as the world 2 Kings 2:23-25).

This miracle has occasioned no little difficulty to those who read it only in the letter. It is not a narrow incident which can be regarded as a mere anecdote and treated as it were within the limits of its own four corners. We must understand the spirit of the age in which the incident occurred; we must realise that the whole air was full of idolatry and blasphemy; we must remember that the very church of Israel itself was deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, with hardly one spot of health on all the altar from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot; we must keep steadily before our minds the fact that the places which are mentioned in this incident had become as Sodom and Gomorrah, not perhaps in the physical and carnal sense, but in the still worse sense of spiritual alienation and spiritual contempt for everything associated with the name of the living God. When Elisha, therefore, wrought this deed of violence—this miracle of destruction his action must be regarded as typically, and as strictly in keeping with the necessities of the occasion. Only this kind of miracle could have been understood by the people amongst whom it was worked, and who had an opportunity of feeling its effects either directly or incidentally. How often it happens that the first miracle is one which is marked peculiarly by a destructive energy! This would seem to be the miracle which our own first zealous impulses would work, had they the power to express themselves in such a form. When the soul is alive with the purity of God, when the heart glows and burns with love, when the whole being is in vital sympathy with the purposes of the cross of Christ, the first and all but uncontrollable impulse is to destroy evil—not to reason with it, or make truce with it, or give it further treatment of any kind, but instantly and violently to crush it out of existence. This impulse will be trained to other uses in the school of Christ. Nothing could have been easier to the Son of God than to have destroyed his enemies; he who raised the dead and quieted the sea could easily have put his hand upon his foes and crushed them so that they never could rise again. Not for this purpose, however, did he come into the world: "The Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." Jesus Christ thus undertakes the most difficult part of all. There is nothing so easy as to destroy; there is nothing so difficult as to save. Who could not in one black night destroy the finest fabric ever raised by human hands? Gunpowder would do it, dynamite would do it;—but who could put up that fabric again in all its massiveness and beauty? Let us always understand that Jesus Christ came to destroy the works of the devil and thus to destroy the devil himself. He would destroy sin; he would save the sinner.