2 Kings 1-5 - Bears!

The readings - Days 111 and 112 - 2 Kings 1-5

If you had to assign different musical genres the various Biblical characters, I'm pretty sure that heavy metal would be a not-bad fit for Elijah. He commands respect, dresses funny, plays (from the perspective of the crappy kings of the time, at any rate) by his own rules, and has a particular love for pyrotechnics.

This time, he follows up on his Mount Carmel hit by calling on God to torch two successive groups of soldiers who have been sent to fetch him by the king. The king was irritated at Elijah for telling him that he was going to die because he sent for word from another god in a neighbouring land instead of consulting with God about it.



Anyway, the first two groups of guys took a direct, in-your-face approach that Elijah took exception to, and reminded them just why it was that they referred  him as "man of God" - It took a while for the soldiers to catch on that there was a bit of a disconnect between their acknowledgment of Elijah's elevated position (apart from the fact that he was on a hilltop) and their general brusque-ness towards him. The third volley was suitably humbled, so Elijah went with them

Not that it did the king much good - he was still told that he was going to die.

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I find it interesting how blatantly 'internal' the writing in Kings is. It's clearly not a book written with outsiders in mind. Half the time the author doesn't even go through the motions of acknowledging that the narrative is encountering a new character for the first time. Whereas in Genesis et al. new people were generally given a "now there was a man in ______ whose name was _____" introduction at least, here we just suddenly have Elijah and Elisha walking together where only Elijah was around before.

Also, there's really no sensitivity for spoilers here, either. I mean, Elijah is one of precisely two people  recorded in the Bible to not bother with all that pesky dying business in order to ascend to heaven, and the other was Jesus Himself. But do you think that climactic moment is given special treatment or a big reveal? Nope.

So to recap:

• Abandonment of various fundamental principles of writing
• Complete disregard for the importance of structure and storytelling vis-a-vis plot growth and resolution
• Written primarily for an esoteric audience who is more than likely already familiar with the subject matter

Sounds like a history book to me. Well done, people who first organized the books of the Bible into genres... Well done.

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If watching Seinfeld has taught me anything, it's that short-tempered men are not likely to graciously deal with a rapidly receding hairline.

Elisha, it seems, is one of them.

Having already seen some cool stuff out of Elisha, I was pretty stoked when a bunch of punk kids came up and started chirping this wandering prophet.

"Hee hee," said I, "This is going to be good!"

Then the best they could come up with was "baldhead," and I was starting to doubt these kids. THEN Elisha sent bears to tear 42 of them into bits.

That's... intense. Although if we're all being honest with ourselves, how many of us could really deny wanting bears to come and maul a bunch of obnoxious teenagers on the street or in the mall at least once. And Elisha had enough of the little buggers after him that the bear was able to maul 42 of them without it even being all of them...

On second thought, I think Elisha showed admirable restraint in a lot of ways...