Melakhim B 2: Healing, Death and Immortality
SEFER MELAKHIM BET: THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS
By Rav
Shiur #03:
Healing, Death and Immortality
Last week's shiur focused upon Eliyahu's ascent to heaven, and Elisha's
succession of Eliyahu. We witnessed
the manner in which Elisha replicates his master's miracles, splitting the
Jordan River with Eliyahu's cloak, and we learned of the group of fifty
benei ha-nevi'im
apprentice
prophets or disciples of the prophet who watch Elisha's splitting of the
Jordan and proclaim his new status:
The spirit of Eliyahu rests upon Elisha! And they came to meet him, and bowed
down to the ground before him." (2:15)
Now,
Elisha returns to the town of
The men of the city said to Elisha, Look, the situation of the town is
pleasant, as my lord can see, but the water is bad and the land causes
bereavement. He said, Bring me a new flask, and put salt in it. So they
brought it to him. Then he went out to the spring and cast the salt into it,
saying, This is what the Lord says:
I have healed this water. Never again will it cause death or bereavement. And the water has remained healed to
this day, according to the word Elisha had spoken. (2:19-22)
The water source in the beautiful city of
This episode, which immediately follows Elisha's splitting of the Jordan River,
evokes the Torah's account of Mara (Shemot 15:22-26), which immediately
follows the story of the crossing of the Red Sea. In Mara, as in Yericho:
-
The water is undrinkable.
-
The water is rendered
drinkable by casting into it ("va-yashlekh") a substance that would seem
unrelated to the treatment of water (a tree).
-
The motif of three days
appears: "And they walked for three days but did not find water" (15:22).
-
A proclamation is made in
God's name that identifies God as the "healer" of the nation: "I am the Lord
your healer" (15:26).
The crossing of the
"GO ON UP, YOU BALDHEAD!"
From there he went up to Beit-El. As he was going up the road, some youths came
out of the town and jeered at him. Go on up, you baldhead! they said. Go on
up, you baldhead! He turned around,
looked at them and cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods
and mauled forty-two of the youths.
And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to
This is a morally
challenging story. At first glance, it sounds like a group of children teased
Elisha about his unflattering appearance, and he cursed them, killing forty-two
children. Was Elisha unaware of the power of uttering a curse in God's name?[2] Should young
children (ne'arim ketanim) be blamed for a prank, a tease? And even if
these were adults, forty-two casualties is an exceedingly heavy death-toll. We
shall attempt to clarify what happened, although, admittedly, we shall probably
not resolve the moral questions entirely.[3]
Let us begin by exploring the identity of these youths and what they were
shouting at Elisha. Was this innocent banter? Who are these children?
If we read the story in context, we understand that he left Yericho and "from
there, he went up to Beit-El." Then, "youths came out of the
town." Which town? Yericho or Beit-El? At first glance it seems like this is his
reception party from Beit-El. However, if we read closely, we notice that "He
turned around, looked at them and cursed them." His turning around indicates
that his tormentors emerge from the town of
And what was the opposition to Elisha? What made him persona non
grata in Yericho? According to one fascinating interpretation,[4] the rowdy youths
are characterized as people who had earned their living by transporting water to
Yericho. Now that Elisha has fixed the local water source, they find themselves
suddenly unemployed!
Several commentaries[5] point out that the gibe
Go on up, you baldhead! is an
oblique reference to Eliyahu, whose most obvious identifying characteristic is
that he is a "hairy man" (1:7).[6] The barb of baldness is then a biting insult,
insinuating that
Elisha is unsuitable for the task of prophecy, that he is
"bald" in comparison to the "hairy man." This is not mere banter; it is a
provocation, a mockery, a protest or even an attempt to sabotage Elisha's
newfound status. Why do these youths mock Elisha? What is their motivation? We
can only speculate. Could it be that there was a group of residents in Yericho
who opposed the presence of prophets in their midst? Alternatively, within the
groups of prophets in Yericho, perhaps some felt there was a more worthy
candidate, or they resented Elisha for some undisclosed reason. If these were
young children, had they heard these views in their parents homes? Did the
articulation of this challenge to Elisha genuinely threaten his future success?
Whatever the precise motivation, this is a direct affront:
Because Eliyahu his master had hair, and he was bald, they said in derision and
ridicule, Go up to the heavens like your master, Eliyahu! as if to say, You
are not of his pedigree." (Metzudat David)
So now, let us imagine the scene: Elisha is leaving the town whose waters he has
cured, heading to Beit-El. Anyone who knows the topography of the region
understands that we are dealing with an arduously steep ascent. One imagines
that he is climbing the path, panting and sweating, when a large group arrives
to heckle him, to hound him on his way out of town. If forty-two "of
the youths" were killed, then the crowd was larger; was it fifty, eighty, one
hundred people? Even more? And as he struggles with the climb they shout out, "Go on up, you baldhead!" Alternatively, his adversaries pose it as a rhetorical
question: "Can you go up (aleh), baldhead? Can you
ascend as your master Eliyahu ascended (to heaven)? No! You are bald, and he
was hairy! You are not of the same quality! You can't even climb this hill!
Elisha curses the youths, invoking the name of God, and bears emerge and maul
some of the youngsters. It is possible that the language employed, namely, that
the two bears "came out (va-teitzena)" of the woods, is intended to
correspond to the verb used when the youths "came out (yatzu)" of the
town, which would be indicative of a measure-for-measure (mida ke-negged mida)
type of punishment. But why particularly bears? In several places in Melakhim,
a lion mauls an individual who disregards the words of a prophet, for example in
I Melakhim 13:24 and 20:36. This seems to be a standard divine
retribution for a direct attack on prophecy.[7] However, our case
is the sole instance in which a bear, rather than a lion, attacks and kills.
Bears, and more specifically she-bears, are mentioned in the context of
bereavement several times in Tanakh, for example, "a bear robbed of her
young (dov shakul).[8]
The implication is that generally a bear
won't attack humans, but after a she-bear has lost her young, she is highly
dangerous. This is highly resonant in our story, as Elisha has just been
bereaved of his master he is the bereaved she-bear as is in pain at the loss
he has incurred. Abarbanel even suggests that the two bears, "one for Eliyahu's
honor and the other for Elisha's honor, correspond to the mockery of these two
prophets.
Did Elisha possibly overreact, distraught by the loss of Eliyahu?[9] If so, the text
offers no indication of disapproval. Accordingly, despite the severity of the
response, we are left with the conclusion that this is God's way of defending
and protecting the reputation of his prophet. Chazal view this incident
as "a miracle within a miracle,"[10] reflecting a
clear example of God defending Elisha. Possibly, the early days of a leader's
tenure are highly sensitive and will set the tone for his or her future
leadership. We have suggested that just as chapter two depicts Eliyahu's route
from Gilgal to Beit-El, Yericho, the Jordan River, and across the Jordan River,
similarly Elisha ascends across the Jordan River, to Yericho, Beit-El,
IS ELIYAHU IMMORTAL?
One of the most striking difficulties of the chapter is the manner in which
Eliyahu dies. Did he in fact die, or is he still alive in some manner or form?
Tradition speaks of Eliyahu as visiting every brit mila, and
walking through our opened doors on Seder night. In the Talmud, Eliyahu seems to
commute freely between heaven and earth. Eliyahu is said to be the herald of the
messiah. Is Eliyahu still alive or did he die?
This is a fascinating debate amongst the Rishonim. Radak, in his opening
comments to the chapter, says that Eliyahu died
or at least
lost his human form:
The storm raised Eliyahu from Earth into the air
above the "sphere of fire."
There his clothes burned except his cloak, his flesh and his physical form were
consumed, and his spirit returned to God."
On the other hand, Ralbag suggests something very different:
One cannot understand that he (Eliyahu) was taken to heaven, because a human
body cannot be taken there. But rather [when it refers to Eliyahu's ascent in a
storm to
heaven] it means high
in the air as in the phrase, "cities, large and fortified to the heavens" (Devarim
9:1), or [regarding the
Indeed there is an opinion in the Gemara that maintains that Eliyahu never dies
(Resh Lakish in Moed Katan 26a). But I think we can identify a solid
grounding for the wealth of traditional thinking that sees Eliyahu defying
ordinary human constraints and achieving immortality.
IN HIS LIFETIME
In his own lifetime, people thought Eliyahu possessed superhuman abilities to
disappear, even fly away at will, to the unknown, carried by an undefined
"spirit of God." This is what Ovadia, Achav's courtier says to Eliyahu:
"When I leave you, the spirit of God will carry you off I don't know
where; and
he will not find you." (I Melakhim 18:12)
And the fifty
benei ha-neviim make an almost identical claim:
"
perhaps the spirit of God has carried him off and cast him upon some
mountain or into some valley." (II Melakhim 2:16)
Thus, this is
Eliyahu's reputation even in his lifetime. However, the Tanakh itself
leaves room to suggest that Eliyahu can live even after his death.
AFTER HIS DEATH
During the reign of King Yehoram of Yehuda, "A letter
came to him from Eliyahu the Prophet" (II Divrei Ha-yamim
21:12-15). Now this is certainly after Eliyahu's heavenly ascent. It is
problematic to claim that Eliyahu would have written the letter and delayed its
delivery, seeing that Elisha had already taken over in the reign of Yehoshafat,
Yehoram's father. Therefore, this is certainly some years after Eliyahu's
heavenly ascent. Radak suggests:
Eliyahu appeared in a prophecy to one of the prophets, dictated him the letter
and told him to write it and deliver it to King Yehoram.
However, Ralbag, Malbim and even Ibn Ezra[11]
suggest that Eliyahu takes on some life-form after death. Malbim notes:
This was after he [Eliyahu] had been taken, and this explains that he is still
alive and extant, and appears on occasion as is the tradition of the Rabbis.
A further crucial
source is found in the final verses of the book of Malakhi:
Behold, I will send you the prophet Eliyahu before the arrival of the great and
terrible Day of God. He shall restore the heart of fathers to their children,
and the heart of children to their fathers lest I strike the land with
destruction. (3:23-24)
Malakhi is undoubtedly a prophet in the early
"Behold, I shall send My angel (malakhi),
and he shall clear a path before Me, and suddenly God Whom you seek will come to
His Temple. And the angel of the covenant (malakh ha-brit) in whom you
delight behold, he shall come," says God of Hosts. But who can bear the day
of his coming, and who shall be standing when he appears? For he is like a
smelter's fire and like the washers' soap
Behold, I shall send to you Eliyahu the Prophet,
before the coming of the great and awesome Day of God
(3:1, 2, 23)
Upon
observing this interesting parallelism, one could conclude that Eliyahu is
indeed that angel the "angel of the covenant!"
SECOND
The future role of Eliyahu appears in other sources, as well. One second century
BCE text, the Book of Ben-Sira (sometimes quoted by the Talmud), states:
You were taken in high by a whirlwind, by fiery legions to heaven.
Ready, it is written, for the time to put [divine] wrath to rest, before the day
of the Lord,
To restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and to reestablish the
tribes of
Ben-Sira is
essentially restating the verses from Malakhi, although he goes further
than the prophet in two areas. First, it seems that Eliyahu will put divine
wrath to rest in general. For whom? For
Rabbi Yehoshua said: "I learned from Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, who in turn
heard it from his teacher, and his teacher from the teacher before him, all the
way back to Moshe at Sinai, that Eliyahu does not come to declare people impure
or pure, nor to distance people or bring them close, but rather to distance
those who have come close by force, and to draw near those who have been
distanced by force."
Rabbi Yehuda says: "To bring close, but not to distance."
The
Sages say: "Neither to distance nor to bring close, but rather to make peace in
the world
The discussion in the mishna takes Eliyahu's role as herald of the messianic era
for granted. But it seeks to probe what his precise function will be. Based on
the aforementioned phrase of "restoring the hearts of sons to fathers
" Rabbi
Yehoshua and Rabbi Yehuda suggest that Eliyahu will use his prophetic powers to
clarify questions of genealogy, identifying who is Jewish and who is not.
Possibly this is an extension of Ben-Sira's portrayal of Eliyahu returning lost
tribes.
These sources might provide an explanation as to why this is merely the
beginning of the road for Eliyahu in aggada, mysticism and folklore.[12]
[1]
I Melakhim 17:1.
Interestingly Chazal suggest that Eliyahu's opening declaration was made
in Yericho! See the connection with 16:34 and the Radaks comments there.
[2]
An
interesting question is whether these stories (and chapter two as a whole) should be
framed as the tail-end of the Eliyahu stories or the first of the Elisha
stories. On the one hand, certain elements seem as if they are features of the
Eliyahu stories. Most prominent is Elisha's use of lethal force as he strikes
down forty two children, echoing Eliyahu's repeated killing of fifty soldiers in
chapter one. Moreover, the literary style of three-fold recursive stories and
the presence of fifty (specifically fifty in number) prophets are motifs in
Eliyahu stories. Elisha uses Eliyahu's "aderet" in crossing the
On the
other hand, the depiction in this chapter of bands of prophets as a social
group, living in Beit-El and Yericho, as well as Elisha's miraculous provision
of food for this group, is typical of the Elisha stories.
[3]
The Talmud (Sota 46b) is similarly troubled by several aspects of this
story. It is a masterpiece of rabbinic struggle to resolve the ethical issues.
Amongst its resolutions, it suggests that these were not children but adults
called "nearim" because they came from a town called Naaran, or "they
were youths who behaved like children." The Talmud then attempts a different
line of argument, proposing that these were thoroughly evil people deserving of
death: "Samuel said:
their mothers had all become
conceived with them on the Day of Atonement
R. Yochanan said
there was no sap
of the commandments in them
R. Eleazar said
neither in them nor in their
descendants unto the end of all generations." Could parental supervision have
helped control the children, or alternatively might the townsfolk be guilty for
leaving a lone Elisha vulnerable to a large jeering crowd? "Had the men of
Yericho escorted Elisha, he would not have stirred up bears against the
children." These are just a few of the lines of argument; however, one senses
the rabbinic discomfort and the endeavor of teasing out every possibility to
resolve the troubling ethical question.
[4]
Rashi, Sota 46b, s.v. shehikrachta.
[5]
Abarbanel, Malbim. See also a useful article by Prof.
Yair
Zakovitch,
"Go up, Baldhead! Go up, Baldhead!; Rings of Commentary in a Biblical Story,
[6]
It refers either to
long and unkempt hair or to his prophetic garb, the
"aderet sei'ar." See Zekharia 13:4 and Daat Mikra on
I Melakhim 1:7.
[7]
Lions are also featured in a divine punishment later in II Melakhim
(17:25).
[8]
Shmuel II 17:8, Hoshea 13:8, Mishlei 17:12.
A further linguistic connection ties the bereaved bear theme to our
story in that the previous episode phrases the death and bereavement of Yericho
as "meshakalet," the same Hebrew root as "shakul."
[9]
Again, Sota 46b suggests
that Elisha shares some culpability: "Our Rabbis taught: Elisha was afflicted
with three illnesses: one because he stirred up the bears against the children
"
[10]
"There was no forest; there were no bears" (Sota 47a).
[11]
Comment to Malakhi 3:24
[12]
For more on Eliyahu in aggada, folklore and mysticism see Encyclopedia
Judaica vol. 6, columns 632-642.
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