Two bears attacking a group of more then 42 humans? Unless the bears of antiquity were a lot more ill-tempered then then their modern conterparts, that’s pretty clearly ahistorical. Plus even if its not explicit, the author clearly meant his readership to understand the bear attack was due to Elisha’s religiously derived powers.
Anyways, I agree with the other posters. There’s no deep meaning here, the story is just meant to demonstrate that people should respect elders, religious figures, and that Elisha is a bad-ass with magical powers.
Yes, all that’s great, that’s why I started the thread.
It says something about the god in question if he really killed the children. It says something about the writers of the Bible if they just made up a bunch of stories.
If it really happened, then we should maybe really repent, but out of fear rather than love. If it didn’t really happen, then the god in question is probably as fictional as the event. At least that’s how I see it.
I would also make the argument that the targets of Elisha’s curse (executed through bear agency) are not just the 42, but the town of Bethel as a whole. Not uniquely amongst humankind, but perhaps even more so than we do in modernity, old testament folk attached great importance to their children and there are several instances in the bible where lessons are taught by making someone’s children, especially first born sons, suffer. As an aside, the cultural meaning of God’s sacrifice in giving us his only son is perhaps larger for contemporaries of Jesus than it is for us. In this light, it does not really matter whether the slaughtered where children in the sense of being of a certain age; what’s the point is that they’re someone’s children. I think Elisha’s by-proxy murder of the children of Bethel is not just the old testament variant of ‘get off my lawn, you crazy hoodlum kids’, but is him smacking down the whole town of Bethel by hitting what is most important to any town, its future as represented by its children.
Could it be that the point of this little story isn’t really about the youths’ punishment at all; rather, it was to demonstrate how absolutely bad-ass Elisha was as a result of his direct-line to God?
In other words, this wasn’t about saying [to the reader] ‘Be nice or else you’ll be mauled by bears’, it was about illustrating how God’s omnipotence could be channeled by hardcore believers in a (seemingly) nonchalant manner for almost arbitrary personal reasons?
I would like to be able to summon bears to maul people on whim…Who wouldn’t?
The exaggeration of numbers in the Bible has been mentioned more times than I can count.
I think Elijah was a powerful, impressive preacher, and so was his bald successor, Elisha. The other details are the accrual of legend, not allegory or history. It’s more interesting to me that it shows that the Hebrew culture of the time thought how important reverence towards a holy figure was.
I was going to mention this. This story takes place shortly after Elisha has (literally) assumed the mantle of Elijah, and this story is a way of demonstrating his legitimacy.
Also, regarding ‘42’ - it’s a number commonly used in the Bible. According to Luke 24:5, the drought under Elijah lasted 42 months also.
This is actually one of the most commonly misunderstood Bible stories. Everyone reads it as the children being punished, but really the whole point was to reward two virtuous bears.
Not sure the rising of the age (that IMHO is doubtful, the behavior in context does point to kids being disrespectful) makes things better, it is still a gross miscarriage of justice as the punishment does not fit the crime.
But, just suppose that that was the case and we are dealing with young guys.
It becomes worse now because then, as I do remember how young people married and how young people had kids those days, now we have many widows and fatherless kids (That were even more innocent).
As another thread says elsewhere, Why do [people] want to punish so disproportionately to the crime? If we as mere humans can recognize the injustice in it, surely a God could too. No? It doesn’t matter if it was children or young men.
I recognize it only as a tale, but I also I don’t see any good and decent moral to be had out of this story either. There are better parenting guides to be found.
If it’s a gang of chavs hassling, bullying, threatening an old man who they know is old, frail, and holy… then the punishment is poetic, but not disproportionate for the times.
I think everyone here agrees that the punishment is disproportionate in our context. I don’t recommend throwing disobedient neighborhood kids to the bears and telling people God told you to. (Although I’ve read some conservative commentaries try to argue that the mauling was justified; I disagree).
But to the original author and audience, the punishment was not disproportionate - remember Mosaic law called for disobedient children to be taken out and stoned to death. So the point of the story is not the harshness of the punishment, but more likely to demonstrate Elisha’s legitimacy and/or reinforce the correct behavior in young people toward their elders and the prophets.
Nothing of the sort. It does mean, however, that we should not consider the OT in a cultural vacuum, or try to shoehorn the text into our own modern context. Times have changed; but people have not changed. And one of the reasons we study the OP is to understand the evolution of Israel’s understanding of and relationship with God.
I respect their right to have that opinion, although I cannot fathom it. I cannot imagine a text that is more engaging on the whole. This particular story seems a little trivial to get hung up on; but after all the OPs purpose was not genuine inquiry but to bait ‘liberal Christians.’
It is probably relevant that the youths were coming from Bethel, which was one of two state-sponsored centers of rival religions (Dan being the other), complete with a golden calf set up by Jeroboam after the kingdoms divided. Bethel had been the center of a confrontation beforehand —in 1 Kings 13, an unnamed young prophet cursed the altar of Bethel and its priests, with a sign performed when Jeroboam’s arm withered when he ordered the prophet arrested.
One website I looked at indicated it was significant because Ashtoreth was worshipped there, and she was occasionally referred to as a bear-goddess, and the young men would have been followers of her. This is carrying imagination beyond the scope of verifiability: everything I find has Ashtoreth being a dove-goddess, or, more often, a bull-headed goddess, no connect with bears.
It seems to me, if you look at the entire chapter, the sequence of events is:
Elijah and Elisha go to Bethel. Elisha is told by the prophets of Bethel that God is going to take Elijah. Elijah tells Elisha that he’s going to Jericho and to stay in Bethel
Elijah, with Elisha following him, goes to Jericho. Elisha is told by the prophets of Jericho that God is going to take Elijah. Elijah tells Elisha that he’s going to the Jordan and to stay in Jericho.
Elijah, followed by Elisha and the prophets of Jericho, go to the Jordan. Elijah, using his cloak, parts the Jordan and he and Elisha cross it. Elisha asks to be given Elijah’s power. Elijah says he can only have his power if he can see Elijah being taken up to heaven by God.
God takes Elijah up to heaven, with Elisha seeing. Elisha tears his clothing in two, and then picks up Elijah’s cloak.
Elisha uses Elisha’s cloak to part the Jordan and then joins the prophets of Jericho.
The prophets of Jericho, not knowing that Elijah was taken up to heaven, search for him over Elisha’s objections. They don’t find him, and Elisha says “I told you so”.
Elijah blesses a spring of bad water in Jericho and it turns sweet.
Elijah goes to Bethel, where he calls on bears to maul some boys who were mocking him. He then goes back to Mt. Carmel and Samaria.
So, it seems to me, looking at the whole thing, the passage is stressing that Elisha has gotten the same power Elijah had. Elijah parts the river with his cloak, Elisha parts the river with his cloak. And Elisha gets the same power that Elijah had; to bless, like he did in Jericho, and to curse, like he did in Bethel.
So it seems to me the fact that the boys cursed him for being bald, and that it was bears, and all that aren’t that important. The actual curse isn’t important…just the ability to curse.
I think there’s probably some significance with the chapters before and after too, dealing with Mesha’s revolt. In the one before, Elijah curses the king of Israel and he dies. In the one after, Elisha blesses the Kings of Judah and Israel and causes another miracle with water, which lets the armies of Israel and Judah defeat Moab until the King of Moab sacrifices his own son to the Moabite god and stops the invasion.
It’s interesting looking at Chapters 2 and 3, because I see some parallelism there.
In both cases, you have a miracle involving water. In chapter 2’s case, there’s a curse that kills children. In chapter 3’s case, there’s the sacrifice of a child that brings about divine intervention from Chemosh. I don’t know if it’s significant, but it’s interesting.