Our story today comes from chapter two of 2 Kings.
One day the prophet Elisha was taking a walk, minding his own business, when some kids came out of their houses and started calling him names.
“Hey, baldy!” one of the kids shouted.
“Get out of our neighborhood, skin head!” another one yelled.
How do you think those mean words made Elisha’s heart feel?
Do people ever make fun of you?
How does that make your heart feel?
What do you do when kids make fun of you?
Well, let’s see what the prophet Elisha did when these kids were mean to him.
Elisha wished God would do something bad to the kids. Then two bears came out of the woods and tore 42 of the children to pieces.
Those kids never made fun of a bald person again.
And Elisha finished his walk.
I’ve always been fascinated and appalled by this story. If this won’t put the fear of God in you, I don’t know what will.
I heard that story in Sunday School many years ago. I was in an older class (mid-teens) and I *think* the message which came out of it was ‘don’t mock God’.
The OT has some terrific ‘boy’ stories in it, doesn’t it.
So much for turning the other cheek…
God is faithful to deliver us from our oppressors!
My husband is bald and has shown this scripture to those who tease him — usually with a laugh, telling them they’d better be careful.
Seriously, I think it’s a great warning to anyone to be careful about mocking a man chosen by God.
These were not preschool kids. They knew better, yet they taunted and spoke unkind words to this man of God. They knew he’d been chosen as Elijah’s successor, and teased him — much as our Lord was mocked on the cross to come down — about HIM going on up in a whirlwind.
The message I take away from this is to be careful how I judge others and the words I say to others, realizing that it really is serious business to God.
“And Elisha finished his walk.” And did some other really cool things.
My husband is a youth minister (and going bald). The kids are always teasing him, and he said he’s going to teach a lesson on this sometime. I can’t wait!
This is very timely with the horrible stories about bullying that are in the news. Second, I am always fascinated by the Old vs. New Testament in dealing with life’s problems. Sometimes revenge is a dish best served cold.
what a sweet story.
That’s really funny…yet not…
Beautiful. I can see this getting mixed into your Compassion talks in the future somehow.
Absofreakinglutely.
Yeah…no more “wave and pound and shine…”
Um – my son would LOVE this Bible story. It would speak right to his little boy heart. Yikes.
Your son’s gonna love the next bible story up for posting for sure then.
I hope it’s this one (Judges 3:22):
And the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not pull the sword out of his belly; and the dung came out.
The story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal is a personal favorite of mine. It’s filled with these beautiful words of sarcastic glory:
At noon Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.”
I’ve got you covered.
Sicko.
That’s a gooder, Lisa. Only topped by another story I’ve never heard preached on – the love story about the man and his concubine who gets angry with him and heads home to her dad. Her “husband” comes and picks her up again, they head home and on an overnight trip in the city he sets her out to be gang-raped by a mob. She manages to crawl back to the threshold of the house before dawn and he slings her over his donkey and sets out home again. When they get there he cuts her body into 12 pieces (we’ll assume she was already dead) and sends the pieces out among the tribes.
You can read about it in Judges 19:10-22
It’s such a love story I’m surprised Nicholas Sparks hasn’t ripped it off yet.
So, I was looking for a Mother’s Day video to use in our church next month and I stumbled upon this:
http://vimeo.com/8340871
Bizarre Bible story twice in one day. Kinda freaky.
This is me *not* mocking Shaun’s rock-star haircut.
There’s a woman in Waco who sells “Not So Precious Moments” figurines based on Bible verses that never get made into Precious Moments. This story is one of them, bears and all. Another is “Women shall be saved through childbearing.”
Yep.
At a conference I was at recently, where Walter Brueggemann was the featured speaker, he was asked to speak for a couple minutes after dinner one evening before the next session started. He decided to talk about Elisha, and had the audience practically rolling on the floor in laughter at his retelling of this story. Of particular hilarity was his observation that, in a patriarchal society, a group of boys probably wouldn’t have insulted an elder, even if he was a wierdo, unless they were put up to it, maybe by their elders who didn’t like the way things would change due to Elisha’s teachings. So, Brueggemann observed, those boys “were the original teabaggers.”
The audio of that talk is here.
Oh man, we didn’t do ourselves any favors with some of these translations…
I have an example, if you’ll humor me. I speak Urdu. In Urdu, there isn’t a word for “baby”. There’s only a word for kid. There is another word that means “young adult”, which is something like 16-23 years old. Sometimes, you can lose some things in the translations.
In English, the word “teenager” didn’t exist until (I think) the early 1900′s. So what did we call them before that? Kids, youths, young adults.
So…from what I’m told. The actual Hebrew word in this story is something like the Urdu word (naujowan, by the way) that means something like 16-23ish years old. But back in good ol’ 1611 (when King James did us this favor of translating…) we didn’t have an English word for teenager yet. So for some brilliant reason, in a toss-up between “kids” and “adults”, they picked the kids to get eaten by the bears. Good call, way to make God look cool guys.
Anyhow, if you think of it more like this one old man on the road surrounded by dozens of young men who are more than likely going to beat him to death, the bears seem a little bit better.
This is one of those stories that seems to really undermine a flat view of “inerrancy” . To me this demonstrates the progressive nature of scriptural revelation. Jesus seems to completely contradict this kind of action in Matthew 5. I just don’t see how you can harmonize this act of Elisha with the words, actions, and exhortations of Jesus.