2 Kings 1:10 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Elijah said, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down, &c. This prayer or denunciation of Elijah did not proceed from malice and hatred to his enemies, nor from a desire to secure himself, which he could easily have done some other way; nor to revenge himself, for it was not his own cause he acted in; but from a pure zeal to vindicate God's name and honour, which were so horribly abused; to prove his mission, and to reveal the wrath of God from heaven against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. And therefore Christ does not condemn this act of Elijah, but only reproves his disciples for their perverse inclination to imitate it from another spirit and principle, and in a more unseasonable time. There came down fire, and consumed him and his fifty It is plain, from the address of this captain to Elijah, that he knew him to be a prophet, for he calls him a man of God; and therefore, he must have known that it was unlawful for him to be in any ways aiding, in obedience to an idolatrous king, in ill-treating a man of this sort: for it was no less than insulting and setting at naught the God of Israel, whose prophet he was. The captain, without doubt, knew that Ahaziah was angry with the prophet, and that he sent for him with no other end but to take an unjust revenge of him for having denounced his death. He, therefore, that would rather obey a tyrant than the laws of nature and revelation, which forbid us to be instruments of injustice, well deserved punishment. He who rather chose to secure his life than put it in any danger by refusing to be the executioner of unjust commands, justly deserved to lose it; and what we have said of the captain is likewise to be thought of the men. But, it may be objected, that both the captain and the soldiers were idolaters, and had forsaken the worship of the God of Israel: if this were the case, which perhaps it was, they deserved death for their idolatry, as well as for attempting to put the unjust orders of the king into execution. And we ought to conclude that Elijah's calling for fire from heaven upon them, was not merely from the impulse of his own mind; but that a divine prophetic influence prompted him to it, God knowing that they deserved, and that it was fit to inflict this punishment upon them. For the actions of the true prophets, in such cases as these, must not be looked upon as merely springing from themselves, but as the effect of divine influences and impulses, which they could not do otherwise than obey.