Elisha the Baldhead, the Two She Bears, and the Forty-Two Boys - Part 1
What the?
2 Kings 2:23 - He (Elisha) went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” 24 And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys. 25 From there he went on to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.
“If Something in the Bible Is Weird, It’s Probably Important”
~ Dr. Michael Heiser
If anyone tries to tell you the Bible isn’t hard to understand . . . then they don’t know what’s in the Bible. Ancient texts are very hard to interpret. It’s not only the distance in time from us, but language, culture, political realities, economics, and so on. Just think of all the English translations of the Bible we have to keep producing to keep up with our own rapidly changing circumstances and vocabulary.
This particular text is dated from the period of history we call the iron age. It is a scene that seems to just fall out of the sky, so out of place, in the midst of describing the transition from the ministry of the Old Testament prophet Elijah to his successor Elisha. You had better believe that from our vantage point as modern, Western thinking, comfortably soft and luxuriously caffeinated Christians (sort of), that you can’t just read this text at face value and assume to understand what is really being communicated.
Lets begin our interpretation of this passage with considering the setting in life. The ancient world was savage on levels you and I can’t identify with. Furthermore, we can’t identify with the type of character and mentality the world would form in people who have to live under such circumstances. There would have been serious anxieties people had to learn to cope with even beyond maintaining adequate food, water, and shelter without the assistance of Oprah and Benzodiazepines (anti-anxiety meds). You couldn’t just pull out your phone and call the police. People didn’t have the energy to get offended if you used the wrong pronouns. Men had to be men and the women wanted (lets be honest, needed) it that way. And by men I mean, like, old school men. Real, serious, no-nonsense, and in their own way only for the right reasons equally savage men.
Look at how the scripture describes the state of humanity a little further back in the book of Genesis.
Genesis 6:1 When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God (almost always means what we refer to as “angels” or the OT refers to as “gods”) saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
God wasn’t grieved because people were vaping or looking at porn. There is a difference between lacking wisdom and immaturity on the one hand, and pure unchecked evil on the other. Most of us reading this article, having the privilege of growing up in a culture based upon Judeo Christian values, will find it hard to even imagine evil on the level being described here.
One might find it helpful to get a sense of this type of evil from the depiction of a similar cultural milieu in the 2006 movie written and directed by Mel Gibson titled “Apocalypto”. Here is the description of the movie from IMBD.com:
“In the Maya civilization, a peaceful tribe is brutally attacked by warriors seeking slaves and human beings for sacrifice for their gods. Jaguar Paw hides his pregnant wife and his son in a deep hole nearby their tribe and is captured while fighting with his people. An eclipse spares his life from the sacrifice and later he has to fight to survive and save his beloved family.”
I am posting scenes from the movie here. It is brutal and violent, but very helpful for understanding the next level type of evil someone in a culture like this might face. The entire movie is worth watching if you can stomach it:
In this movie, people were hunted and used as slaves for city building projects, for sport and entertainment, and for ritual sacrifices to their gods.
The scripture describes similar things, all of which deeply grieved God:
Genesis 10:7 The sons of Raamah: Sheba and Dedan. 8 Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. 9 He was a mighty hunter (of men) before the Lord. Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.” 10 The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.
Genesis 11:2 they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves.
Scripture teaches that humanity had come under the sway of, and gotten into agreement with, some very dark and powerful forces from the other side. It was those created spiritual forces that had rebelled against service to the one God and to his humanity, that the Bible refers to as “gods”. Those beings were the chief architects of these types of evil societies of men. Rather than destroying everything again, like the One God did with Noah, the only true and uncreated God decided to start a rebuilding project in the midst of the evil. Wiping out humanity hadn’t fixed the problem the first time, humans were going to have to partner with God in learning to build and live in a Godly society alongside of evil. Ultimately to overcome it and destroy it.
It was a very long game God had in mind that started with a man named Abraham and his family, collectively referred to as “Jacob” in the following passage from Deuteronomy 32:
7 Remember the days of old;
consider the years of many generations;
ask your father, and he will show you,
your elders, and they will tell you.
8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he divided mankind (the nations),
he fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God (almost always means what we refer to as “angels” or the OT refers to as “gods”).
9 But the Lord's portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.10 “He found him in a desert land,
and in the howling waste of the wilderness;
he encircled him, he cared for him,
he kept him as the apple of his eye.
11 Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
that flutters over its young,
spreading out its wings, catching them,
bearing them on its pinions,
12 the Lord alone guided him,
no foreign god was with him.
This constitutes the backdrop of what is happening in the story from 2 Kings with Elisha, the boys, and the bears. It was all of the “disinherited” nations of the earth and their gods vs. the one true God. The testimony of scripture is that those gods were real, but they weren’t gods in the same way as the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and ultimately Israel. The nation of Israel was the true God’s rescue plan for all of humanity living under brutally evil societies and for the very earth itself.
The primary battlefield was the minds and hearts of the people of the nations. No matter the marvelous and miraculous things he did in their midst, the one true God found it a struggle even to win over the citizens of his own kingdom much less the other nations. But if humanity was going to be rescued from the type of evil depicted in the film by Mel Gibson and found in the pages of scripture itself, then the project of a nation of separate people in the midst of the evil was crucial.
A surgeon does not hesitate to amputate an arm, a leg, or even an organ in order to save a patient from fatal cancer. In a similar way, the God of Jacob will do whatever it takes to win this war. Failure was not an option.
Yes, I looked him up just an hour or ago and noted he had recently passed. To bad but I might just read it.
Interesting.....and a good read! Not sure I have the ability to digest it but it does make be want to read from Dr. Heiser. Truly like his quote!