CHAPTER 1
The Bible has a weird break for kings – it comes in the
middle of talking about the Judean King Ahaziah.
We begin with him injuring himself, and wanted to pray to
the god Baalzebub to see if he’ll get better. Wait? Praying to another God?
Yeah, this isn’t going to tell well.
Eljiah finds out and gets involved.
Ahaziah sends 50 men to bring Elijah to him. When the come Elijah says that if he’s
really a man of God, may fire rain down from heaven and consume all 50
men. So that’s what happens in the next
sentence. Ahaziah sends another 50 men
and it’s rinse, lather and repeat – 50 more barbecued people.
Ahaziah, clearly a slower learner, sends a third grouping of
50. However, while he might be stupid,
the head of the 50 is. This captain
approaches Elijah all obsequiously, begging not to be killed. Elijah is cool with this and agrees to
go. When he arrives, he just tells the
king that he’s doomed for going against God.
Naturally, the king then dies, and a new king, Joram, replaces him.
Elijah comes off like a jerk here. He has 100 men killed. In
his defense, he’s not sure why the men are coming for him, and he knows the
king isn’t going with God. It’s also in
character, as he was an arrogant (if hilarious) man in the big altar sacrifice
showdown.
CHAPTER 2
So long, Elijah.
He’s a major prophet, but he really doesn’t appear much in the Bible.
He’s the main figure of just five Biblical chapters (17-19 in Kings I, 1-2 in
Kings II) and makes a brief cameo in Chapter 21 of Kings I, but that’s it.
Somehow, someway – the Bible doesn’t say – Elijah knows
he’ll be taken up to heaven. Everyone
around him knows this, too. I guess God
told him and he told everyone else.
Eljiah and Elisha go to Jericho, with Elijah causing the Jordan River’s
waters to part on the way. Neat – he
does the Joshua at the same place Joshua himself did. Before Elijah goes up, he asks Elisha if he wants anything. The kid says he wants a double portion of
Elijah’s spirit. Elijah says that if
you see me go up to heaven, that means you’ve got it.
Well, the famous fiery chariot with the fiery horses comes
down, and take Eljiah up to heaven. He
thus enters the heavens without having to die, part of his big claim to
fame.
The chapter goes on, but let’s pause here. What am I to make of Eljiah? His stories remind me more of the things
from Judges than what we read about in Samuels. There are some really heavy duty miracle workings going on here,
and that makes it a throwback. Also,
while a memorable Biblical character, we don’t learn much about him beyond what
we need to for the plot. It’s not that
we don’t have as good a read on him as a person as we do on David or Samuel or
Saul. It’s that we don’t even have as
good a read on him as we have on Gideon of Samson.
Elijah shows up without any introduction. The only biographical feature we know of him
is that he’s “Elijah the Tishbite” – and we have no idea what that means. Hell, even with the Judges we knew what
tribe they were supposed to be from.
Elijah is the most enigmatic and mysterious of the Biblical leaders.
And his stories don’t really fit in too well with the other
stories around here. For instance, in
the Elijah stories we’re told that Ahab and Jezebel have killed all the
prophets of the Lord, all except Elijah.
But everyone else there are prophets’a’plenty. They even have their own guild.
In fact, the prophets even talk to Ahab, the man the Elijah stories say
is trying to kill them all.
Clearly the Kings books are being assembled from different
sources. That isn’t too
surprising. (In the Samuels there is
clear evidence of two different versions of the story of David and Saul being
combined). But what makes this
different is that it’s the story of a prophet instead of stories of kings. Elijah
is from the northern kingdom, so I assume the stories came from there. The Bible was written in the southern
kingdom long after the northern kingdom collapsed, which helps account for the
blurriness of what’s going on.
Really, there is narrative blurriness in general. One very real thing happening is that record
keeping for posterity apparently took a series hit after the division of the
kingdom. Taking things back to Elijah,
I can only assume there was such a prophet, but that over time stories about
him became grander and grander. Or
stories of different prophets were combined into one. It made it easier to turn him into myth given the worsening
record keeping of the era combined with the fact that he came from the fallen
northern kingdom. So he becomes the
first mythic figure in the Bible since Samson.
(As important as David was, he really wasn’t anything mythic, as nothing
he did was actively miraculous). And
Elijah is the last mythic figure of the Old Testament. From then on, events are coming too close to
the days when the Bible was written.
Wait – check that.
David and Jonus are mythic, too.
Damnit.
Anyhow, the chapter doesn’t end with Elijah’s
departure. Instead, we’re treated to
one of the most ghastly and memorably macabre moments in the entire Bible. Elisha crosses the river (re-Joshua-ing it,
just as Eliza had done. Nice way to
symbolize the passing of the prophetic torch).
He goes to the town of Bethel when it happens. Some kids see the apparently bald Elisha
pass and the mock him. “God away,
baldy! Go away!” Livid, he turns to them and curses them in
the name of the Lord. So far, this is
like something that happens everyday to someone somewhere in the world. But Elisha is a prophet, and he just cursed
these kids in the name of the Lord.
Upshot: “two she-bears came out of the wood and tore forty-two of the
children to pieces.” GAAAHHHHH!!! It’s a junior high Holocaust!
WHAT? THE? HELL?
I’ve read two comments on this incident that stick with
me. David Plotz makes a good point in
“The Good Book” on this incident. This
is what happens when the power of being a prophet is first given to
Elisha. He’s got to learn what he’s
doing. He’s probably yelled at kids
before and it means nothing – but this is his first time with the power. So be careful with what you got.
In “The Cartoon History of the Universe” Larry Gonick makes
a hilarious comment about it. After
saying what happened, Gonick has Elisha tell the scribe standing next to him,
When you write my story down, make sure you leave out all the times kids mocked
me and bears didn’t come. Heh.
I think Plotz has it right.
I’ll just at that saying 42 died is an extra nice detail. Not some big round number – 42. Sounds more precise. Also, how slow moving were these
children? I get that bears move fast,
but there are only two bears and once they come after the kids you’d think they
run in all directions away from each other as fast as possible.
He leave the bear massacre behind and goes to Mount Carmel –
sight of Elijah’s greatest triumph.
CHAPTER 3
Time for some war stories.
Earlier I noted that the narrative here often seems hazier than it was
in the Kings books. That’s very true of
some of these war chapters where I can’t quite tell what exactly is going on –
and I’m not really sure why much of it matters. Normally the Bible writer is clear in what’s going on, but he
sure has problems around here. I guess
the sources he’s compiling from are worse.
In one of these chapters a footnote says that the oral
tradition would just say King of Israel without giving a name, so the Bible was
often guessing on who the king is. It’s
a pain in the ass.
At any rate, Joram rules Israel and Moab rebels against
him. Joram gets the kings of Judea and
Edom to fight with him. They run out of
water on the march and – wait. Hold
on. That’s bad. Whoever is charge of logistics on this march
is a moron. The Bible says they took a
roundabout route, but that’s no excuse.
It ain’t like they’re going to China.
This is inept on someone’s part.
Needing help, they call on Elisha, who says he’ll only come
because he respects the king of Judea, not that jerk running Israel. Well, they Judea-Israel-Edom forces win the
battle and it looks like they can’t be stopped. But Moab’s leader has a trick up his sleeve. He takes his first-born son and offers him
as a burnt offering to his god. And
that turns the tide.
Whoah! OK, several
disturbing things here. First, it’s
human sacrifice – of a man’s own son, at that.
Second, the human sacrifice seems to work! That’s something. This
indicates that there are in fact other gods, and at least one responds to this
sort of thing. After all, once the
burnt offering is done the Bible says, “The wrath against Israel was so great
that they gave up the siege.” Whose
wrath? Not God’s wrath. He doesn’t go for human sacrifice. The wrath of the defenders shouldn’t make
any difference – they can’t seem to win.
Any other God? Just disturbing
all around. That part about wrath just
plain isn’t explained.
CHAPTER 4
Back to Elisha, as he commits a bunch of miracles. Earlier I said that Elijah is the last
mythic character. Well, his successor
is another. It’s just that hardly
anyone remembers much of what Elisha did – because it’s mostly the same as what
Elijah did.
The chapter starts off with the bottomless jug of oil trick
that Elijah did in Chapter 17 of Kings I.
Then Elisha brings a dead boy back to life – just as Elijah did in that
same Chapter 17. In between, Elisha
does one thing unique. He lets an
elderly lady become pregnant. (It’s her
eventual son he brings back to life).
You have to wonder here.
We got two prophets with almost the same identical names, doing almost
the same identical miracles – are these really stories about two different
people or just stories of one guy that have been separated? My best hunch is that there were all these
stories of the Great Prophet up north, and all the things he did. But the stories stretch over the reigns of
maybe too many kings. And as the stories were told orally, the prophet’s name
was slightly changed in some retellings but not another. Thus you end up with two very similar
traditions by the time the writer put it in the Bible.
Well, Elisha does a few more things. He turns poison stew into edible stew. He also has a bottomless offering of
barley. I should also note, when he
brings the child back from the dead, the mother asks him for help on Mount
Carmel. That place keeps coming up in
the Elijah/Elisha stories.
CHAPTER 5
Elisha performs another miracle – he heels a man of
leprosy. The man he heels isn’t from
Judea or Israel. It’s the army king
from Aram. We’re getting blurry as to
who is in the club and who isn’t. Just
next chapter Aram will attack Israel.
The story has some humor.
The military man is Naaman and when he goes to Elisha for help with his
leprosy, Elisha doesn’t see him, just has one of his hangers-on tell Naaman to
bath in the Jordan River seven times and he’ll be cured. Naaman is
infuriated. The guy didn’t see me and
he gave me generic advice? Bah!
We can relate, right?
When you go to the doctor, you often feel robbed if you’re not given
some sort of pill or answer. And can
you imagine if he doesn’t even bother see you, but just reads the symptoms and
has his office staff give you his feedback?
In college I saw – or “saw” a doctor for bronchitis and he just wrote
out a prescription for penicillin and had the nurse give it to me. I never saw him.
At any rate, it works.
(Just as my penicillin did, actually).
Naaman flatly says he now knows that God is the only god. OK, after a hint of polytheism in Chapter 3,
we’re back to monotheism.
But there is a weird coda.
Gehazi, an assistant to Elisha, isn’t happy that Naaman wasn’t charged
and takes off on his own to tell Naaman – no, sorry, you owe us some silver
after all. Then Gehazi pockets the
silver.
Click here for Kings II: Chapters 6 to 11.
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