CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
2 Kings 2:23. Little children—see note on נַעַר in 1 Kings 3:7; same word as in 1 Kings 12:8; 1 Kings 12:10; 1 Kings 12:14, young men. נְעָרִים describes ages from children to young men inclusive. Possibly these youthful revilers in sceptical Bethel, scoffing at Elisha’s report of Elijah’s translation to heaven, derisively taunted him, bidding him likewise “go up.” Baldhead—an Eastern epithet of contempt used regardless of the person being bald or old. Baldness was a mark of shame (Isaiah 3:17; Isaiah 3:24); priests were forbidden to shave (Leviticus 21:5). Their destruction was appalling, but rendered necessary by the profanity of the town. Had no judgment followed this insolent contemning of Jehovah in the person of His newly-designated prophet, it would have confirmed the people in their defiance and impiety.—W. H. J.
HOMILETICS OF 2 Kings 2:23-25
THE DOOM OF THE SCOFFER
I. The scoffer reveals a spirit of hatred and opposition to that which is good. Bethel was the headquarters of the great apostasy—the home of idolatry. Here schools were established, in imitation of the schools of the prophets, to instruct the people in idolatrous practices, and to inflame their hearts with hatred towards Jehovah and His worship. Where people are taught to despise and detest that which is good, no wonder they are ever ready to indulge in profane, contemptuous, and splenetic scorn.
1. Scoffing is too common a sin of depraved youth. “There came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him.” We are not to understand infantile or irresponsible children, but those who had attained to youthful manhood, as distinguished from the middle-aged and the old. Perhaps these young people were the pupils of a teacher of the calf worship at Bethel, and, meeting with Elisha as they came from school, they assailed him with the contempt and ridicule in which they had been too well instructed. Wicked and badly trained youth take delight in holding the truth up to derision and mockery; they make sport of the holiest things, and glory in their own wickedness—“Fools make a mock at sin.” The scoffer is the lowest type of depravity; “the seat of the scornful” is the nearest seat to hell.
2. To scoff at the servants of God is an insult to God himself—“Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.” It is not likely that Elisha was really bald-headed, as he was then comparatively young. The word was applied to him out of pure contempt, and in a way that would be most insulting. It was “a term of great indignity with the Israelites—baldness being usually seen among them as the effect of the loathsome disease of leprosy. It was equivalent to calling him a mean and unworthy fellow—a social outcast. In this sense it is still used as a term of abuse in the farther East, and is often applied as such to men who have ample heads of hair.” These profane mockers had heard that Elijah had been taken up to heaven, and they sneeringly expressed their wish that Elisha might share the same fate, and they would be well rid of him. But the sequel shows that Jehovah regarded the insult to His servant as directed against Himself. He is jealous for the character, reputation, and influence of His servants; he that “toucheth them, toucheth the apple of His eye” (Zechariah 2:8).
II. The scoffer may rouse the indignant threatening of the gentlest nature. “And he turned back and looked on them and cursed them in the name of the Lord.” How unlike the gentle, kindly, tender-hearted Elisha, as we have so far been led to regard him! It is more like the fierce outbreak of the fiery Eljah, the prophet of denunciation and wrath. But even the placid spirit of Elisha is aroused when the honour of His God is concerned. He cursed (the mocking youths, “not from personal resentment, but under a Divine impulse, without which no prophet ever dared to pronounce a curse. He cursed, and that was all. He did not punish.” The servant of God may patiently endure the scoffs and frowns and persecution of the world when they refer to himself only; but when the character of his God is maligned and His grandest work derided, the meekest become bold in vindicating the Divine glory. When Terantius, captain to the emperor Adrian, presented a petition that the Christians might have a temple to themselves in which to worship God apart from the Arians, the emperor tore the petition in pieces and threw it away, bidding the soldier to ask something for himself and it should be granted. Terantius modestly gathered up the fragments of the discarded petition, and said, with true nobility of mind, “If I cannot be heard in God’s cause, I will never ask anything for myself.”
III. The scoffer is sometimes signally punished. “And there came forth two she-bears out of the wood and tare forty and two children of them.” The offence, writes Kitto, involving as it did a blasphemous insult cast upon one of the Lord’s most signal acts, made a near approach to what in the New Testament is called the sin against the Holy Ghost. It became the Lord to vindicate His own honour among a people governed by sensible dispensations of judgment and of mercy; and it became Him to vindicate the character and authority of His anointed prophet at the outset of His high career. The pride, irreverence, and heartless disregard of the scoffer, will sooner or later meet with due recompense.
Hear the just doom, the judgment of the skies:
He that hates truth shall be the dupe of lies;
And he who will be cheated to the last,
Delusions, strong as hell, shall bind him fast.
LESSONS:—
1. Not the least evil of idolatry is that it produces a race of scoffers of the true God.
2. A scoffer is hardened against ordinary rebukes.
3. But erelong the scoffer meets with the just punishment of his sin.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2 Kings 2:23-24. The demoralizing effects of idolatry upon the young. I. It trains them in false ideas of God. II. It destroys their appreciation of the truly good. III. It inflates them with basest impertinence. IV. It exposes them to confusion and suffering.
2 Kings 2:23. Young people are always ready to make wanton sport of any peculiar appearance which they do not understand. The unripe behaviour of the young generation which is growing up, always forms a shadowy reflection of the shallow opposition in moral and religious ideas which exists in public opinion. The separate bearers and supporters of the truth which is deep, and hence misunderstood by the masses, are, for the most part, objects of blind scorn to wild youth. That which found expression against Elisha has also fallen upon many in later times. He who, in the exercise of his calling, goes up to perverted Bethel, must expect it.—Cassel.
2 Kings 2:24. As Elisha was not silent, so also now a faithful servant of the Lord may not keep silent if young people are brought up badly and godlessly. He ought not to let pass unnoticed their wickedness and impudence, and their contempt for that which is holy. It is his duty to warn them and their parents of the Divine punishment. Woe to the watchmen who are dumb watch-dogs, who cannot punish—who are lazy, and who are glad to lie and sleep.—Lange.
—O fearful example of Divine justice! This was not the revenge of an angry prophet, it was the punishment of a righteous judge. God and His seer looked through these children at the parents, at all Israel: he would punish the parents’ misnurturing their children, to the contemptuous usage of a prophet, with the death of those children which they had mistaught. He would teach Israel what it was to misuse a prophet: and if he would not endure these contumelies unrevenged in the mouths of children, what vengeance was enough for aged persecutors?—Bp. Hall.
—So Dr. Whittington, returning from martyring a good woman at Chipping-Sadbury, was gored by a bull. Dr. Story, who narrated that he had burned so many heretics, was hanged at Tyburn for treason. Hemingius tells of a lewd fellow in Denmark, who, showing great contempt against a preacher, as he passed out of the church, was brained with a tile falling on him. Luther tells of another who, going to the fields to look to his sheep, after he had railed most bitterly against a godly minister, was found dead—his body being burned as black as coal. “Be not ye mockers, lest your bands be increased.”—Trapp.
2 Kings 2:25. The uses of retirement. I. Is sometimes sought by the most active spirits. II. Affords an opportunity for study and preparation. III. Gives new strength to grapple with sin in its greatest strongholds.
—Whither dare not a prophet go when God calls him? Having visited the schools of the prophets, Elisha retires to Mount Carmel, and, after some holy solitariness, returns to the city of Samaria. He can never be a profitable seer that is either always or never alone. Carmel shall fit him for Samaria; contemplation for action. That mother city of Israel must needs afford him most work.—Bp. Hall.