“Go up, you baldhead!”
2 Kings 2: 23-24, is one of the more memorable verses in the bible. I have it on a coffee mug that my wife helped inscribe when we were dating, and I still have it today. For those not aware of what the verse says, here it is below:
He (Elisha) went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.
It’s delightfully unhinged, proof enough to me that God has a sense of humor. But it’s a terrifying verse, frankly, one that I have had to come to terms with over the years. How could God just let two bears murder a bunch of kids? There’s been plenty of times when the thought has occurred to me, usually when I’m waiting for a plane to get in at the airport, but still! No. Like most things there’s an underlying context that needs to me looked into. The cultural milieu of the Ancient Near East was exceedingly foreign to ours. And I don’t say that hyperbolically, it really was. The Greco-Roman understandings of reality and culture have shaped our entire Western civilization epistemology, which makes reading the Old Testament (or any other ANE writings) an assault to our senses. This was a time when the separation between the vulgar and the divine was paper-thin. The cosmology of the ANE was a disk world, with a solid, vaulted celestial heavens (known as the firmament). That something “existed” wasn’t because it was made of physical matter, but it was because it had a purpose/role in creation. City States represented the apex achievement of human civilization, where order prevailed over the formless chaos of nomadic living. These proto-cities were presided over by a royal authority, alongside a priestly entourage, considered by all to be either avatars of the gods, or the gods themselves. This social class participated in the temple cult, which justified their rule and established the dominion of the patron deity. In this time, there were many gods, and they recognized one another. Much like a child today insists on the playground that, “[their] dad can beat up your dad!”, the patron god of a city-state existed in the same reality as the other gods. (Not unlike rolling into San Francisco and finding yourself in Giants country, or cheering for the Las Vegas Raiders in Seattle.) Interestingly, YHWH distinguished himself as being the sole god of all creation, not just another deity scrapping around for fealty.
As far as the biblical context goes, for your benefit, I’ve summarized the first two chapters of 2 Kings to establish where all this bear mauling is coming from:
A corrupt king falls from the balcony in his palace and sends royal messengers to consult the god of another foreign nation, which implies fealty/allegiance to the foreign god’s temple cult.
While this is going on, a prophet named Elijah is consulted by YHWH. The Lord of Hosts dictates the corrupt king’s punishment for beseeching another god: that he will die in the bed he was confined to after his injury. So, Elijah intercepts the corrupt king’s messengers and tells them this.
The envoys return to the King and, to no one’s surprise, the king is enraged by Elijah’s prophecy. In response, he sends an armed detail of fifty men to bring Elijah back to the palace. Instead of going with them, Elijah says, “If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you [the captain] and your fifty.” Immediately, The entire guard is killed along with the captain.
Another fifty is sent out and this happens a second time.
The third time, however, the captain pleads for himself and his fifty men, not even asking Elijah to do anything. A theophany (ie. the “Angel of the Lord”) appears to Elijah in that moment and tells him to go with the guard. Elijah relays the message to the King, and the king promptly dies.
Elijah’s successor is then introduced, who’s name is Elisha. (Yes, I know it’s confusing). Elisha studies under Elijah and they appear to have had a good relationship. Elisha has three opportunities to leave his master, but he still sticks it out. (So you know he’s a keeper!)
While traveling through the desert, to the banks of the Jordan river, Elisha asks for a “double portion” of Elijah’s spirit (ie. his boldness/prophetic power), to which the latter replies, “[yes]…if you see me as I am being taken from you.” Then, sure enough, “chariots of fire and horses of fire” pull up, like a divine Uber taking Elijah to LAX. These celestial vehicles take Elijah up into heaven, leaving Elisha just sitting there, mourning the loss of his master.
After returning back to Jericho, the people there ask if they can go look for Elijah. (Because the angels must have dropped him off somewhere, right?) Elisha insists that they won’t find anything. After nothing comes of their search, Elisha establishes his presence in the city, by performing miracles like purifying the water supply, and then decides to leave for Bethel.
Exit summary, pursued by bear.
YHWH’s response to the youths’ indiscretion isn’t the only time in the Old Testament where God has appeared to have sanctioned violence against those disparaging his people. It’s everywhere to be honest. This is because God is holy. He cares about sin and it’s effects, especially when his people are involved. In the instance of 2 Kings 2:23-24, immediately after Elisha moves on from Jericho, the subtext is that God’s faithfulness is rewarded with the immediate castigation of his prophet. While the text doesn’t really describe much else the kids said beyond that, it was enough for Elisha to turn around and curse them. The text does state that forty-two of the kids are mauled by the bears, but another characteristic literary device in ANE religion and philosophy was the symbolic use of numbers, so there’s reason to believe that it wasn’t literally “42” kids that were accosted by the two bears.
All this minutiae distracts from the core message of the text, however. Elisha’s encounter is a narrative describing the consequences of sin, that it really does matter what we do. Jesus discusses this in his ministry, like, all the time. We have chosen to pursue the ends that benefit us most, that confirm our biases. Our self-interest is an asset, not a liability.
When we see God as this “angry” and “duplicitous” higher consciousness, I think we are convinced all the more that he is this moral monster that has been fabricated to control the masses, but his response challenges that narrative. This is, after all, the time of year we celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus, the Messiah. We’ve heard this all so many times that the idea has become stale and rote in our minds. Additionally, we don’t think anything is wrong to begin with, so that only exacerbates our apathy to the notion of sin. But consider that the same capricious God we rail against in the comments section of basically every social media post, made himself one of us. It’s an unfathomable act of empathy and condescension for him to enter into the hell of our own making, but he did so out of love. He did in in spite of us being absolute assholes.
I’ve felt firsthand the disappointment and bewilderment of my kid lying to me about something inconsequential and miniscule. I can only imagine what God feels when I take shortcuts or indulge in my own selfishness. But he still loves me and comes alongside me. He invests in my wellbeing and purpose. He was birthed into a cold stable, screaming and covered in afterbirth, because he didn’t want this life to be all that was.
It’s a mystery, one that I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand, but I have the opportunity every year to experience joy and thankfulness, because God loved us enough to live a life we were incapable of living and empathizes with us because of it.
Merry Christmas!
Stuart Warren
2024
