An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 64: Elijah and Elisha perform miracles, some of which we’ve seen before, some of which we’ll see again, and some of which involve children getting mauled by bears (2 Kings 1-5)

2 Kings 1-5
Elijah and Elisha perform miracles, some of which we’ve seen before, some of which we’ll see again, and some of which involve children getting mauled by bears.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

2 Kings 1

“And Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick: and he sent messengers, and said unto them, Go, enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron whether I shall recover of this disease.

Considering that the majority of this chapter looks at the dealings of Ahaziah and Elijah, it’s odd that it (and the Second Book of Kings) opens with a line about Moab rebelling against Israel, but then has nothing to do with this.

Anyway, Ahazaiah has some kind of strange accident and sends men to enquire of the god Baalzebub (god of Ekron) as to his survival chances. The prophet Elijah, meanwhile, gets word of this via angelic messenger and intercepts Ahazaiah’s men, sending them back to ask why Ahazaiah is asking Baalzebub for help when there’s a perfectly good Israelite god. Ahazaiah guesses that this is Elijah, because his description is “an hairy man girt with leather”, so he sends fifty soldiers to arrest the prophet.

Elijah calls down fire from heaven to kill them. Ahazaiah sends another fifty soldiers. Elijah calls down fire from heaven to kill them. Ahazaiah sends another fifty soldiers. This time the captain has the good sense to ask politely, so Elijah comes with them, repeats his words to Ahazaiah, that the king will die for not asking the right god for help, and then Ahazaiah dies.

2 Kings 2

“And it came to pass, when the LORD would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal.”

Elijah is set to die, but before he does so he does a little tour with his successor Elisha. They stop off at various cities, with a little folk-tale style motif where Elijah tells Elisha to stay and Elisha replies that he will follow (and they even do this the three times required by folk tale motifs).

Elijah parts the River Jordan so that they can cross (that’s already been done, find your own miracle!)  and is then taken up by a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire, in a whirlwind into heaven. Clearly he is abducted by aliens, or is himself an alien from an advanced civilisation. It’s the only plausible explanation!

So Elisha heads back, and does the same trick to cross the Jordan, implying that the mantle has passed to him. In fact it has literally, so is this the origin of that expression? I didn’t even think of that when I started writing that sentence! The fifty followers of the prophets go in search of Elijah but can’t find him. They ask Elisha to stay at Jericho, except that it is water-poor. Elisha performs a miracle with some salt and “heals the waters”. Then some children mock him for being bald so he gets a bear to kill them. Because that’s a measured response. After this he returns to Samaria.

2 Kings 3

“And he went and sent to Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, saying, The king of Moab hath rebelled against me: wilt thou go with me against Moab to battle? And he said, I will go up: I am as thou art, my people as thy people, and my horses as thy horses.”

Jehoram, son of Ahab, rules Israel/Samaria whilst Jehoshaphat rules Judah. King Mesha of Judah decides to stop his tribute of sheep that he was paying Ahab, so Jehoram allies with Jehoshaphat and the Edomites to take war to the Moabites (this is the bit that was hinted in Ch1 V1).

The three kings make an alliance and set out to war, but forget to bring water. They send for Elisha to advise them. Elisha is huffy towards Jehoram because, although he has got rid of the Baal worship is still “cleaving unto” the sins of Jeroboam (which are very vague, but I’m guessing some kind of heterodoxy in Yahweh worship). He does, however, deal with Jehoshaphat and, via a divinely inspired minstrel tells the kings to dig ditches, which will “miraculously” be filled with water even though there is no rain (you’d think desert-dwellers would know about groundwater).

This works, and Elisha prophesies the defeat of the Moabites, who see the ditchwater as blood, and are indeed handily defeated by the three kings who utterly destroy their lands, even when the Moabite king sacrifices his own son to ensure victory.

2 Kings 4

“Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead; and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the LORD: and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.”

This chapter is a series of vignettes in the life of Elisha as he performs a series of miracles.

Miracle number one: the wife of one of his followers, who has died, asks Elisha for help with her creditors, who want to take her two sons as bondsmen in payment for her dead husband’s debts. Elisha performs a miracle of multiplying oil, which the widow sells to cover her debts.

Miracle number two: Elisha passes by the house of a Shunnamite woman and takes bread there every day. She makes him a little chamber where he can stay, so Elisha decides to repay her favour, and she wants a child (for her husband is old). Miraculously she has a baby nine months later and I’m afraid I’m thinking that since Elisha has own room in the house and regularly stops by that this is perhaps a little less miraculous than it is made out to be.

Sadly, later on when the boy is older, he has a sudden headache and dies. The woman sends for Elisha who performs some slightly creepy CPR on the child, who sneezes seven times and comes back to life. Miracle number three.

Miracle number four: followers of the prophets make a pottage but accidentally use some toxic (?) gourds in the making of it. Elisha makes it edible again. Finally miracle number five is a bit loaves and fishes where one hundred people are fed by what seems like an inadequate amount of tribute.

2 Kings 5

“Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honourable, because by him the LORD had given deliverance unto Syria: he was also a mighty man in valour, but he was a leper.

Naaman is a captain of the king of Syria but he has leprosy. He has a maid from Israel, and she suggests that Elisha the prophet might be able to help. The king of Syria sends Naaman to Israel with a load of silver and clothing as tribute. Naaman first meets with the king of Israel who gets really upset until Elisha gets word.

He tells Naaman to wash seven times in the Jordan, and at first Naaman is annoyed, saying that they have perfectly good rivers in Damascus and he could have stayed at home to do this, until his servants persuade him to give it a try anyway. He does, and his leprosy is cured. Elisha refuses any gifts, so Naaman merely asks that Elisha ask God’s forgiveness for his king when he worships the god Rimmon in ignorance.

However, Elisha’s servant Gehazi (we met him last chapter acting as a messenger but I didn’t mention him) follows after Naaman and finagles a few gifts out of him. Elisha gets so annoyed with this that he gives Gehazi and his descendants leprosy, and Gehazi becomes as “white as snow”.