2 Kings 2:24

And he turned back, and looked on them,.... With a stern countenance, thereby reproving them, and in order to intimidate them, and make them ashamed, and cause them to leave off, but to no purpose;

And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them. He ... cursed them in the name of the Lord.

Cursed them; nor was this punishment too great for the offence, if it be considered that these children were grown up to some maturity; (See Poole "";) that their mocking proceeded from a great malignity of mind against God; that they mocked not only a man, and an ancient man, whose very age commanded reverence, and a prophet; but even God himself, and that most admirable and glorious work of God, the assumption of Elijah into heaven, which makes it in some degree resemble the sin against the Holy Ghost; that they might be guilty of many other heinous crimes, which God and the prophet knew; and were guilty of idolatry, which by God’ s law deserved death; that the idolatrous parents were punished in their children; and that if any of these children were more innocent and ignorant of what they said, God might have mercy upon their souls, and then this death was not a misery, but a real blessing to them, that they were taken away from that wicked and idolatrous education, which was most likely to expose them not only to temporal, but to an eternal destruction. In the name of the Lord; not from any carnal or revengeful passion, but by the motion of God’ s Spirit, and by God’ s command and commission, as appears by God’ s concurrence with him; which God did, partly for the terror and caution of all other idolaters and profane persons, who abounded in that place; partly to vindicate the honour and maintain the authority of his prophets, and particularly of Elisha, now especially in the beginning of his sacred ministry. And this did beget such a confidence in Elisha, that he durst venture to go into Beth-el after this was done; and such a terror in the Beth-elites, that they durst not avenge themselves of him. Two she-bears; possibly robbed of their whelps, and therefore more fierce, ; but certainly acted by an extraordinary fury, which God raised in them for this purpose. Forty and two children: this Hebrew word signifies not only young children, but those also who are grown up to maturity, as 34:4 37:30 .

2 Kings 2:24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.Ver. 24. And cursed them.] By his spirit of prayer and prophecy: not out of private revenge. And there came forth two she bears.] So Dr Whittington returning from martyring a good woman at Chipping Sadbury, was gored by a bull. Dr Story, who vaunted that he had burnt so many earwigs - heretics he meant, - was hanged at Tyburn for treason. Hemingius telleth 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. Luther telleth of such another, who going into the fields to look to his sheep, after he had railed most bitterly against a godly minister, was found dead: his body being burnt as black as a coal. "Be not ye mockers, lest your bands be increased." Mr Clark’ s Martyrol., fol. 58. Luth., in Coll.

(24) He turned back.—The boys were following him with their jeers. Thenius says, “The wanton young people, who had not courage to attack except in the rear, had stolen round him.” Cursed them.—“To avenge the honour of Jehovah, violated in his person” (Keil). (Comp. Exodus 16:8; Acts 5:4.) And there came forth.—Whether at once, and in the presence of Elisha, or not, is uncertain. Thenius supposes that on some occasion or other a terrible calamity had fallen on some person or persons after such a mockery of Elisha, or of some other prophet (!); and that in the desire to magnify the divinely maintained inviolability of the prophetic office, the author of the above narrative has overlooked the immoral character of cursing, especially in the case of wanton children. He then contrasts the behaviour of the “historical” David (2 Samuel 16:10). But (1) the curse of a prophet was an inspired prediction of punitive disaster; (2) Beth-el was a chief seat of idolatry (1 Kings 12:29, seq.; Amos 4:4; Amos 5:5; Amos 7:10), and the mobbing of the new prophetic leader may have been premeditated; (3) at all events, the narrative is too brief to enable us to judge of the merits of the case; and (4) what is related belongs to that dispensation in which judgment was made more prominent than mercy, and directly fulfils the menace of Lev 26:21, seq. Two she bears.—Hosea 13:8; Proverbs 17:12; Amos 5:19. (Comp. 2 Kings 17:25.) Wild beasts were common in Palestine in those days. Forty and two.—This may be a definite for an indefinite number. It shows that the mob of young persons who beset the prophet was considerable.

24. And he turned back, and looked on them] R.V. And he looked behind him and saw them. The young lads had come forth from the city, and Elisha had, as it seems, passed by them, before they began their mockery. The word translated ‘turned’ in A.V. is used specially of turning the face toward any object. It is so rendered by A.V. in Genesis 18:22, ‘And the men turned their faces’. Elisha turned about and saw in them the malice and evil spirit of their parents and kindred. and cursed them in the name of the Lord] It was not to avenge himself. Their insult to him was but a symptom of their hatred of all that was connected with the pure worship of Jehovah. It was as Jehovah’s servant and in vindication of Jehovah’s honour that Elisha invoked a curse upon the revilers. ‘God and His seer looked through these children at the parents, at all Israel. He would punish the parents’ misnurturing their children, with the death of those children which they had mistaught’ (Bp Hall). two she bears] Of the prevalence of wild beasts in the immediate neighbourhood of cities we have indications in the history of David who slew a lion and a bear as he was keeping his father’s flock (1 Samuel 17:36), and in the story of the disobedient prophet who was torn by a lion near this very city of Bethel (1 Kings 13:24). tare forty and two] The punishment would touch the parents in a way which nothing else could have done.

On this occasion only do we find Elisha a minister of vengeance.

24. Cursed them in the name of the Lord — It would not do to let such malice and blasphemy go unnoticed before the people of Beth-el, and so the insulted prophet called down on those young