Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 2 Kings 13:20
And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year.
20. And [R.V. Now ] the bands of the Moabites invaded the land ] If Elisha died in Samaria, and was buried in that neighbourhood, we must suppose Moab to have made great inroads upon Israel if the bands of plunderers could advance close to the royal city. Probably the great devastations of the Syrians on the east of Jordan (2Ki 10:32-33) made it easier for the Moabites to cross the Jordan and to ravage the lands of Israel to the west of the river.
at the coming in of the year ] We can see from such passages as 2Sa 11:1; 1Ki 20:22; 1Ki 20:26 ; 1Ch 20:1; 2Ch 36:10, that there was a season of the year at which alone it was usual, and perhaps, on account of the climate, possible, for an army to take the field. The general expression is ‘when the year was expired’: but this is very much the same as ‘at the coming in of another year’.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The bands of the Moabites invaded the land – The Moabites had been increasing in strength ever since their revolt from Ahaziah 2Ki 1:1. The defeat which they suffered at the hands of Jehoram and Jehoshaphat 2Ki 3:24 did not affect their subjugation. They spread themselves into the country north of the Arnon Isa 16:2, and thence proceeded to make plundering expeditious year by year into Samaria, in Spring. This was the natural season for incursions, as then in Palestine the crops began to be ripe.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
2Ki 13:20-21
And Elisha died, and they buried him.
The resurrection of a man in the tomb of Elisha; life derived from the holy dead
Death is no respecter of persons; the most illustrious, as well as the most obscure, must bow before his cold sceptre, and depart from the scene of life. This miraculous incident was designed and calculated to make a wholesome moral impression on the mind of the age. It had a tendency to
(1) Demonstrate to all, the divinity of the prophets mission.
(2) To show the honour with which the Eternal treats the holy dead.
(3) To prove the existence of a power superior to death. And
(4) To foreshadow a future state.
I. What are the spiritual remains of the holy dead which have a quickening power? What are those remains of the holy dead, which, like the bones of the old prophet, have a power to quicken the dead? The answer may be comprised in one sentence–Gospel thoughts, and Gospel virtues. Such thoughts have a life-giving force. They are the voice that calls up the soul from its grave of sensuality and sin; they fall upon the dead spirit like the quickening rays and refreshing showers of heaven upon the seed that is buried in the soil. What effect they had when uttered by the apostles! By them they woke the slumbering mind of their age, and turned the world upside down; and from the days of the apostles to this hour, whenever they have been brought into direct contact with soul, there has been the touch of life. Who has not felt their power? How often, as they have fallen from the lips of a Christ-inspired minister, have they passed like an electric fire through the audience, startling them with new and strange emotions. Every Gospel thought is charged with a life-giving power. But we say Gospel virtues as well as thoughts. Gospel virtues are but Gospel thoughts in feeling and in action; they are thoughts in their fullest development, and strongest power. It is the Gospel incarnate, made flesh, dwelling and working amongst men.
II. Where are the spiritual remains of the holy dead which have a quickening power? Where are they to be found?
1. In the memory of men. It is a solemnising thought, that the spirits of living men are the resting-places of the thoughts and virtues of men that are gone.
2. In sacred literature. Books are filled with the spiritual remains of the holy dead. They are valuable chiefly on this account.
III. How are the spiritual remains of the holy dead which have a quickening power to exert their quickening power? It was by contact with the bones of Elisha that life came to this dead man; and it is by contact with these Gospel thoughts and virtues, that spiritual life is to be produced. The life of a grain of corn, which contains the germs of future harvests, depends upon contact with certain elements. The energy of explosive matter depends upon contact with fire. A piled mountain of powder is powerless until it is brought into contact with the spark. It is even so in this case; unless we bring our spirits in Conscious contact with these remains they will avail us nothing. How is this contact to be obtained? By devout reflection. The most sacred things and the most powerful elements of truth may be deposited in the memory, yet, unless we prayerfully reflect upon them, they will be foreign to our hearts; we shall never feel their quickening touch.
1. That every age is increasing in responsibility. As good men depart, the world grows richer in the means of spiritual improvement: every soul that lived a holy life here, left behind it elements of life.
2. We must not judge of mens usefulness by the results of their lifetime.
3. That wonderful revelations may be anticipated on the Day of Judgment. (Homilist.)
The power and purpose of the posthumous life
Death is not the great termination; it is only the great interruption. We are endowed with a being which yearns for endless existence. We have a profound feeling that only eternal existence would justify the Creator in our making. All over the world, especially as men advance in power of reflection, the more fully do they become convinced that the original instinct of the human heart is a Divine implantation, and that man shall measure his duration with the duration of eternity. But when we have said this, we have not said all; when we talk of the boundary, death, being an interruption, we are not thinking mainly of eternal existence in the unseen. There is an impression prevalent among us that, when we come to that boundary stone of our being, we are for ever done with this planet; that we have completed our course, and that there is nothing more to be said; the places that knew us will know us no more; our career is finished; the world henceforth must lack interest and charm for us; we have no more place among the dwellings of men. But that is just the thought I desire to dispute, and I wish to remind you that the interruption which we call death does not deliver even from this world. It only changes the mode of our activity and influence in this world. For there is a life even after the body has perished, and the voice has gone dumb for ever–there is a voice, there is a life that continues among the children of men. And it is to this our attention is drawn by the peculiar narrative read in your hearing. It is not surprising, that the bones of a prophet should make a man alive, nor that the voice of an Abel should sound with strange force down through the generations. When we come to think of the great duties of life, while, of course, we win consult the living, are we not nearly always directed to the dead? A young man has to go out from England, and he knows not whither he is going; his mother admonishes him to take Abraham as his guide, who also went out into Ur of the Chaldees, but who took God with him. A young man is going into a great city, he is to be tempted and tried, and his minister admonishes him to read Daniel, who, in the midst of Babylon, kept his windows open towards Jerusalem, and held communion with the Highest. Another lad is bound to enter upon the great responsibilities of life, and Paul summons to him the admonitions of a Timothy, or some other servant of God whose influence still continues. And when the conscience is burdened with guilt, and the soul burns for peace, it is not to some living minister, to some living Church, to some living power, but it is rather to the death of Jesus Christ, and through that death up to His throne, that the inquiring soul is pointed. And just here we touch on the historic marvel of the ages–Jesus Christ. He illustrates transcendently my thesis. We are fascinated by His earthly career–its purity, simplicity, graciousness, beauty–all attract us. And yet, after all allowances are made for the sick healed, the dead raised, and the outcasts reclaimed, how immeasurably greater has been His posthumous influence than was His brief, humble life! So palpable is this that some theological schools maintain that this surviving influence is what He meant when He promised the mission of the Holy Ghost. It is claimed that just as we feel the spirit of Browning, or of Morris, or of Ruskin, when we meditate on their works, so, whenever we think of religion, the spiritual effluence of our Lords life is deeply realised. I am not persuaded that this restriction of His promise is warranted; but still we must all admit that the Christ of to-day is more potent than was the Christ of Nazareth, and that, as the ages roll, He becomes an ever-increasing power on the thought, conscience, and conduct of the individual, and on the movements and development of society as a whole. So that, turn as we may, we find that patriarchs and apostles, and fathers and mothers, and poets and school teachers, and enthusiasts and men of letters, and politicians and statesmen, and preeminently the Christ, all these from out the unseen, are moulding us and shaping us. But wherein lies their peculiar power, because certainly this posthumous life is a most potent life? How are you to explain it? I suppose one reason why it has such influence with us is, that it is the most independent life. The dead respect no one. We are frail, fallible, liable to change; but when the curtain falls, the work is ended. If it is an incomplete thing, like the statue of Moses, it must for ever remain unfinished. No tears can change it, no regrets revolutionise it. There it abides. What is written is written. Moreover, this is an enlarged life. It becomes universal. We are all more or less provincial. We are hedged in by our narrow, local limitations. It is difficult for us to rise above them. But when we die, that is all cast aside. Do you suppose when I read Thomas a Kempis I think of him as a Roman Catholic? Not at all. I read his noble words as universal truths; he has ceased to be aught but a Christian. Very well; when death has emancipated us, and we are free of our limitations, then the posthumous life surges onward, influencing and controlling men. And we never really think of Jesus Christ as a Jew when we pray to Him, and carry to Him our burdens and our guilt. The world has lost sight of the localisms of His ministry. To us He is neither Jew, Greek, nor Barbarian. He is quite beyond all racial distinctions. He is the Son of Man–the representative of humanity. When He lived He may have been to His followers provincial–but now He has lost the complexion of the old Hebrew race, and has become world-wide, cosmopolite, universal. Moreover, I suppose this power is to be traced to its continuity, to–its indestructibility. There is a charm in that which lasts. The purpose of the posthumous life. I have tried to analyse the power, and what is the purpose? Why is it that God permits us all to share in this posthumous life? And why is it that God reminds you through me of our posthumous life? It is to impart a higher sense of responsibility. It is to teach you in your little day, it is to assure you that your influence will not die with you, however humble you may be. You are starting currents that will flow into the sea of existence beyond your day. You are throwing a stone into the mighty sea of being, and the waves will extend in ever-widening circles until they beat on the shores of eternity. Great is it for a man to live; awful the responsibility. It is likewise the purpose to add new dignity to humanity. For it is responsibility that makes dignity. You are engaged in a work that is marvellous in its power and in its range. Try to understand it, you will be anxious to be fully equipped, you will be anxious to realise fully what the meaning of Gods Word, when it talks to you about a judgment to come. Nor do I think I am far wrong in asserting that we have in this posthumous life a suggestion of what the scientists call the survival of the fittest. True it is the evil that men do lives after them, and it is not true that the good is oft interred with their bones. There is a famous picture of the battle with the Huns which decided the fate of Europe. It presents the field at night covered with the slain, but over and above the wounded and the dying the ghosts of both armies are seen in deadly conflict. Though dead, they yet fight. So it is with truth and error, right and wrong, virtue and vice, and with the hosts of those who in former ages were arrayed on the side either of light or darkness. The conflict continues, and ultimate victory must rest with the cause of justice and honour. (G. C. Lorimer, D. D.)
Elishas last miracle
1. The Jews thought this the crowning miracle of Elisha. Certainly it is unique in the pages of Holy Scripture, and it has also the distinction of being peculiarly offensive to modern thought. The author of Ecclesiasticus sums up his praise of Eliseus, After his death his body prophesied. He did wonders in his life, and at his death were his works marvellous (Sir 48:13-14).
2. Let us look at the circumstances. Elisha was dead and buried. His funeral, according to Josephus, had great pomp. The Moabites were still unsubdued, and infested the land of Israel. Some men were bearing a corpse to burial, when they suddenly spied a band of men, and, in their eagerness to escape, thrust the corpse into the open tomb of the prophet, and, upon contact with the sacred body of Elisha, the man revived and stood up on his feet.
3. That the men did this with any idea of restoring the man to, life seems scarcely worth discussion. Their intention is manifest in the text. The Israelites did not believe that the dead could raise the dead, though Elisha had raised the dead, when alive, by means of prayers and actions; nor would they have willingly deposited the body of a sinner in the resting-place of the holy prophet. Fear in the emergency led to this action, and accounts for it, God overruling it to His own purposes.
I. The miracle.
1. I should like to notice at the outset what a very short and unadorned account we have of this marvel. It is related within the limits of a single verse. How calm and restrained is the narrative! It gives the simple fact, without any embellishment or note of admiration. This in itself betokens an inspired writer. A similar instance of conciseness and composure may be found in St. Marks account of our Lords ascension and session to the right hand of the Father: So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God (Mar 16:19).
2. This is the record of a miracle, and the credibility of miracles is admitted to be a common point of assault in the present day. Perhaps, this arises from looking too much at the miraculous from the lower rather than the higher side. In other words, to fasten our thoughts upon it as an infringement of natural law rather than to regard it as a Divine work, wrought for a moral purpose. The overruling of a lower law by a higher cannot be accurately described as an infringement, for it is a part of universal law. A miracle is an exceptional occurrence, to awaken man to a sense of the Divine presence and power.
3. But this miracle is especially offensive to the sceptic, because of the instrument which God employed in effecting it–a dead body. When there is a living agent who operates, whether prophet or apostle, the wonder-working is not so far remorea from human experience. The spiritualist resents the idea that there can be sanctity and virtue in human remains. And yet, as it has been often shown, there are other miracles in the Bible of a kindred nature, as, for instance, the cures wrought through the touch of the hem of Christs garment (Mar 5:28-29), through the handkerchiefs and aprons of St. Paul (Act 19:12), and the shadow Of St. Peter (Act 5:15).
4. It may be admitted that miracles wrought through martial Objects seem more in keeping with the New Testament than the Old; for now Gods Son has entered into relations with matter through the Incarnation, thereby elevating it, and imparting to it new qualities. But God uses what instrument He wills, and when He wills, for the accomplishment of His purposes; and, as we shall see, the miracle in the Old Testament may be a type and picture of future truth–a dramatic representation, so to speak, of Christian mystery.
II. What it teaches.
1. The sanctity of Elisha. This event seems to be in his history a sort of counterpoise to the rapture of Elijah. Both were victories over death–the one, by his passage up to heaven without subjection to the last enemy (1Co 12:26); the other overcame death after he was dead and buried.
2. The power of God,
3. As the miracle was calculated to invest the memory of Elisha with a fresh halo of reverence, and to exhibit the Almighty power of God, so was it designed to breathe hope into the hearts of the depressed Israelites at a period in their history when they needed something to encourage them, and to revive their confidence.
4. Beyond, however, the temporal purpose, there was, we believe, a typical and prophetic significance in this wonder. Does it not point to Christs death as the means of bringing back life to man? Although all His acts were redemptive, His death was the principal. We were reconciled to God by the death of His Son (Rom 5:10). He by His death hath destroyed death (Proper Preface, Easter). Our reconciliation was effected in the body of His flesh through death (Col 1:22). But the miracle not only pictures the efficacy of Christs death; it teaches also that to know its quickening power we must be in union with Him. It was when the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived. There was contact before there was life. So there must be union with Christ, sacramental, moral, spiritual, if we would be restored; for only if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death shall we be also in the likeness of His resurrection (Rom 6:5). But the union must be moral as well as sacramental–the one the outcome of the other–for he that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked (1Jn 2:6); that is, the life which God has given within must be, is bound to be, shown forth in the outward imitation of Christs life. And this union must be spiritual, the spirit of man corresponding with the guidance of the Holy Spirit–an obedience of love.
5. The text, too, is a type of bodily resurrection, though a return to mortal life.
III. Lessons.
1. Let us be careful, in our view of nature and of the fixity of natural law, that we do not make God into a mechanical Deity (Mozley). The soul, made in the image of God, is conscious of will in itself, and therefore declares for a Deity with will; upon which the power of miracle follows.
2. God can use what may seem to be the most unlikely instruments for the fulfilment of His designs, inert matter to be the vehicle of life and grace.
3. Observe how God fores to honour His saints, and thereby to make His power to be known (1Sa 2:30).
4. Lastly, let us be mindful of the truth that the death of Christ is the meritorious cause of all our gifts and graces, and that through union with Him alone have we spiritual life–The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live (Joh 5:25)–the life of grace in the soul here, the life of glory in the body also hereafter. (Canon Hutchings.)
The resurrection at the tomb of Elisha
Several views have been taken of this incident. By some it has been regarded as a mere Hebrew myth; others have supposed that there was an inherent virtue, or life-giving power, in the bones of Elisha, and that the same power exists in the bones of all men of extraordinary goodness. From this point of view it has become a corner-stone of the doctrine of the efficacy of relics. With regard to the first, the occurrence is related as a historic fact as much as any other in the Old Testament, or as much as the raising of the daughter of Jairus in the New Testament. If it is to be rejected because it is a marvel, almost all the historical books of the Bible may be set aside for the same reason. As to the second view, experience contradicts it. We will therefore accept the fact as it stands, assuming that it was not the prophets bones which brought the dead to life, but the living God. Notice therefore–
I. That the resurrection of a dead man through the medium of the bones of another man is neither contrary to reason nor to the teaching of other parts of scripture. If God gave life to man at first, it is surely in His power to restore it by any means, or without any visible means, and it is not more extraordinary than the clothing of the rod of Aaron with beauty and fruitfulness, or the dividing of the Red Sea at the outstretching of the rod of Moses. The rod was the medium, but God gave the power; the prophets bones were the medium, the life-giving power was Gods.
II. That such a miracle was in keeping with the wonderful life of the prophet Elisha. He was a man raised up by God to do a special work. The whole of his public life was marked by miracles. As his predecessor, Elijah, had been honoured by a miraculous exodus from the earth, so it seems fitting that some similar mark of honour should be given to Elisha, either at the time of his death, or after it.
III. The probable intention of the miracle. It was probably intended to revive, in the mind of Israel, hope in God as to the future of the nation. Elisha, on his dying bed, had foretold the deliverance of Israel from the yoke of Syria: their present sufferings from the Moabites would naturally discourage the heart of the people, and lead them to forget the promise, which was not yet, it may be presumed, completely fulfilled. This resurrection by means of hope in Elishas Elishas dead body would be the means of a resurrection of God. Suggestions:
1. God would have the dust of departed saints remind us of their holy lives.
2. The dust of the godly dead may bear witness that they are still living. Its very contrast to the body when it was animated by the living soul, seems to testify to the fact that they must still be living. We speak of the body as theirs, thereby recognising the fact of their existence. The bones are hero called Elishas bones, suggesting, at least, his continued existence although disunited from his human body.
3. God retains His relationship with His children, even with their bodies, after they have left the world. The miracle here recorded is a proof that God was still the God of Elisha. (Outlines from Sermons by a London Minister.)
A dead mans power
Elijah was carried up to heaven in a chariot of fire. Elisha died in his bed like other men. Josephus tells us that he had a great funeral. With the death of Elisha there was a distinct letting down in the position of Israel among the peoples round about them, and it was not long before outlying tribes that had been respectful and friendly became arrogant and dangerous. The Moabites soon began to invade the land, not with any large army, but with plundering bands that were very aggravating, and very mischievous. It was the occasion of one of these raids by the Moabites that furnished the opportunity for this miracle. Elisha had been buried, according to the custom of the people at the time, in a cave in the side of a hill, excavated out of the rock. A while after his death there was another death in the community, and the neighbors were carrying the dead man to his burial. The Jews of that time didnt use coffins, and the body was bandaged and wrapped instead. As these people were carrying the remains of their friend to some tomb in the vicinity of the tomb of Elisha, they suddenly discovered, not far away, a company of armed Moabites, and saw that they had not time to go to the place they had intended for burial. The tomb of Elisha was nearest, and they rolled back the heavy stone from the door and put the dead body into the cave with that of the body of the prophet. But no sooner had the body which they carried touched the bones of Elisha than the life came back to it, and the man revived and no doubt returned home with his friends. We may find a probable motive for this miracle in the fact that it called world-wide attention, so far as world-wide went in those days, to Elisha. It gave him great prestige among his own people. They said about him that he was the prophet whose dead body prophesied, and the memory of Elishas faith in God, his devout and prayerful life, his pure and noble career, meant more to the people than it could have meant before. This would seem a sufficient reason for the exercise of the Divine power in thus honouring the dead body of the prophet. It is for us to find the spiritual significance of the miracle for teaching to our own souls.
1. We may learn from this incident that the influence of a good man or a good woman does not terminate with life on earth. How true that is in our national life. Who would for a moment contend that the influence of George Washington ceased with the citizens of the American Republic when his body was buried at Mount Vernon? His influence is greater to-day, perhaps, than ever before. And if we turn from these great historic illustrations and come into the narrower but tenderer sphere of our own life horizon, how true it is. How true it has been with us that some of the most important influences in making us the people we are to-day have come from those whose bodies have long slept in the grave.
2. It is certainly a serious and important question for us to ask ourselves, whether the life we are now living is of such a character that after we am dead men will be influenced by it for good. There are those who hear me who can bear witness that they are even now under the curse of dead men. The influence of people who have gone to their account still comes back to them, and affects them, and makes it harder for them to be good and easier for them to do wrong. I can imagine nothing more terrible than that. No doubt Dives remembered that during his lifelong association with his brothers all his influence over them had been evil. He had sneered at goodness; he had mocked at conscience; he had recklessly disobeyed God, and he felt that hell would be more bearable if he did not have it upon him to remember that he had brought his five brothers to hell with him through his influence.
3. If we are to be such vital personalities for goodness that our influence while we live and after we are gone from the earth shall be a revivifying power to awaken goodness in other souls, we ourselves must come into personal touch with Jesus Christ, who alone can bring to life and power all possible goodness in our hearts. The man who was buried in the grave of Elisha was not revived until his body came in personal.contact with the bones of the prophet. So we, though we be dead in trespasses and in sins, snail be revived to righteousness and spiritual living when we are brought into personal contact with the spiritual body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ was buried in the tomb of Joseph nearly nineteen hundred years ago, but He arose from the dead, and He ever liveth at the right hand of God to make intercession for us. (L. A. Banks, D. D.)
Death of Elisha
I. Good men never outlive their usefulness. Elisha had pursued a brilliant career, after the mantle of Elijah fell upon him, for a series of years; then for more than forty years his name is not mentioned in the national annals. It is not certain that God has nothing more for men to do because they are permitted for a period to remain in obscurity after having been prominent. It would have been sadly to misinterpret Providence, if, when quietly caring for the schools of the prophets and contrasting those days of more humble service with his former days of miracle-working and eminence, he had grown fretful and been disposed to question whether life were worth the living unless it could be a grand life. When Luthers voice was confined within the walls of the castle of Wartburg, and his soul was alternately chafed and bowed down with despondency under confinement which secluded him from what he supposed to be his great work, he was not released from further duty. He did not read on those gloomy walls Gods declaration that there was no more for him to do. No, he was being trained in his imprisonment for still greater service; and he went forth at last more powerfully to struggle because kept in durance so long. When obstacles rise in our path which we feel ourselves too weak to remove, or heights are before us which we cannot scale, or duties demand vigour and perseverance which we cannot manifest, we may not declare that we are no longer Called to serve. God will furnish some station for every watchman, some field for every worker. Every part of a Christians life has its bearing on the whole, and no part is useless, even to the end, unless we so determine. God had this brilliance of old-age service in view throughout Elishas long years of faithful quiet devotion to his trust, and in not one year was the Master unmindful of the servant or the servant toiling in vain.
II. A good man will be anxious, even to the end, respecting the cause of God. The king seems to have come to the prophets house only to express his sympathy and respect. Convinced that he could not live, he wept over the face of the man of God, and called to mind his own exclamation when he saw Elijah parting the heavens in his ascent: O my father, my father! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof! With a kind of abrupt eagerness, as though he felt that he had little time, Elisha called for the bow and arrows–which but for his purpose would be much out of place in such a scene–and by two forms of illustration which were appropriate, he summoned the kings attention to what he knew to be most important for him. The thought prominently in his mind was twofold: that the king and the people must feel that deliverance from their fears could come only from God; and that the extent of this deliverance would depend on both their faith and effort. If he could not merely say this, but impress it on the king, his high office as prophet would again be magnified, and Israel would again be saved by his agency. The opportunity to do this caused the duty of life to be superior to the possible experiences of the final hour. Heaven was, for the moment, eclipsed by the earth, and the welfare of his people was of more value than his own. The great need of the Church is such complete consecration to God and identification with His cause in purpose and life. Individual comfort, money, position, are little; the glory of God, the kingdom of Christ, are everything. Men change, trot God will abide; men die, but God will live. The venerable Eli heard the messenger from the camp of Israel say that his people had suffered loss in battle, with only ordinary signs of sorrow; that his own sons had been killed, with only the tears which the father could not restrain; but when he said that the ark of God had been taken by the enemy, the aged priest fell back from his seat and died, for he was troubled for the ark of the Lord. Joshua after the defeat at Ai must have felt the dishonour that would come on himself–must have been distressed on account of the loss of Israel; but he was unable to express his feelings as he thought of the reproach the Canaanites would heap on their God, and could only exclaim, What wilt thou do unto thy great name? Many other instances might be quoted. They all make known the same spirit–a spirit that regarded the highest interests at the cost of any lower–that could bear anything but the overthrow of what they prayed might abide. It has been the same in all ages, and had supreme exhibition in the Lord Jesus Himself. This was the language of His mission and life and death. Father, glorify Thy name, was His perpetual prayer; and He and His Father were one in purpose and act as everything personal was lost in the object for which He came.
III. The good mans influence lives after his body dies. Our posthumous influence does not receive enough of our thought. A man may be forgotten, his name may be unknown, and strangers may tread upon his grave or disturb his ashes to make room for their own dead, but the works he made in life will be seen and the power he possessed will be felt by those who follow him. How often does the form of some friend of other days come back in our thoughtful hours to cheer our sadness or excite our tears! How often do the words of wisdom or folly uttered long since by him awaken echoes in the cells of memory, and his example come up before us now! Whether connected with scenes of wickedness or with the hallowed exercises of devotion, all these affect our character, modify our influence on others, and, insensibly perhaps, but really, change our life. Our graves, in a sense, have a power as had Elishas. This is the natural consequence of our social relations, for even existence with another affects both that other and ourself. No man liveth unto himself, and no man dieth unto himself, is a law of our moral nature; and character in its very elements is immortal. We feel to-day the influence of men in the earliest times. The vibrations of that subtle medium of communication between soul and soul through which are conveyed the thoughts and feelings of men over the whole world shall never cease, and from age to age they bear their burden to affect the thoughts and feelings of all within their range. So, on the other hand, the labourer in the cause of evil has a power equally endless. We must not measure the curse to mankind of a wicked life by its immediate effects. Paine, that man for whose infamy apologists and defenders have sprung up in our day seeking to hide his deformity, has gone to judgment, but his works and his sins remain to wither and blight wherever they reach, accumulating power as they stretch on. (J. Ellis, D. D.)
The bones of Elisha
I. We have in this incident a striking illustration of the posthumous influence of good men. Nothing in the material world is lost. A grain of sand, however long you crush it, can never be destroyed. You may change its form,–crush it into yet smaller particles,–cause it to enter into new combinations, but you can do no more. The water that is absorbed from the sea is not destroyed; it descends again in showers to enrich the earth. In like manner, human character and influence last for ever. Every man has an influence; in this sense, no man liveth to himself. There is about us all an unconscious influence, what may be termed our personal atmosphere; and there is our conscious influence. The least action or word, even a look,–all make their impression; and issue in results, long after their time. The motion of your hand, or the sound of your voice, produces a succession of pulsations which, like Tennysons Brook, go on for ever. As we thus influence the natural world, so we influence the moral and spiritual world. This unseen yet mighty power, which we all possess, and of which we cannot divest ourselves–which lives in us, and works through us every moment, clothes our lives with a terrible solemnity. Not only is our influence felt during life, it is even felt after we are dead. Our usefulness, or hurtfulness in life, remains in active operation after we are gone. It may be swallowed up in the great social aggregate, like the rivulet in the river, or absorbed like the dew in the mists and vapours; but it does not, it cannot perish. It survives all the personal fortunes of the individual from whom it emanates on earth; it outlasts the monument, however enduring, that is raised over his dust. Founders of empires, legislators, patriots, philosophers, inventors, reformers, Christian teachers,–all these live through all ages–
Their speaking dust
Has more of life than half its breathing moulds.
Bad men, as well as good, leave their mark behind them; and perpetuate their influence long after they are dead. Hundreds of years after Jeroboams death, we find the people of Israel over whom he reigned walking in his footsteps, committing the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat who made Israel to sin. The writings of Voltaire and Paine and Hume and Byron are a curse to humanity to this day. Thank God! the evil shall be stamped out; while the good shall bear fruit for ever. The memory of the wicked shall rot; but the righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance.
II. Good men live after death in the results of their actions. Their conduct centuries, and even millenniums ago, tells on mankind to-day. Abrahams obedience to Gods command; the legislation of Moses; Pauls acceptance of the Christian faith; Wickliffes translation of the Bible into the English tongue; Luthers renunciation of popery; all these mark great epochs in the history of mankind, and are felt in the national life and social manners and religious progress of this nineteenth century of the Christian era. It would be easy to instance men of our own time, whose influence will reach on for good through all future generations. William Carey, John Williams, David Livingstone, Michael Faraday, Abraham Lincoln–these and others whom I might name–who shall attempt to calculate the blessings accruing from their character and work? Sometimes, those actions which seem to us the least noteworthy, are most fruitful, and live with mightiest power. The poor widow, when casting her two mites into the temple treasury, was wholly ignorant of the fact that Christ saw her, and would so signalise her self-sacrifice as to make it a pattern for universal imitation. So with ourselves, passages in our lives which awaken no interest in us at the time, or which, if of interest to ourselves, we may not for a moment think of identifying with others, may prove pregnant with great and lasting issues. Sometimes a mans name may be forgotten, yet his works remain. We know not who invented the plough, his name has perished; but the instrument remains one of the most useful inventions, and indispensable to civilisation. History has not preserved the names of the men who first crossed the sea to preach the Gospel to our forefathers here in Britain; but what wondrous results have followed their apostolic mission! Our own country has been raised thereby to the highest point of greatness, and sits queen among the nations; while from us the Gospel has sounded forth to the ends of the earth. We must die, and after a few years our names may be forgotten; but some action of our life, of which at the time no heed is taken, may become fruitful, even to the distant future, with richest good.
III. Good men live after death, in their writings. A man embalms his thoughts and feelings, the best part of his nature, in his books. Books, says John Milton, contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are. A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose, to a life beyond life. There is such a quickening power in some books that the dullest and deadest minds that come into contact with them are quickened by their inspiration. The books of Moses, the Psalms of David, the proverbs of Solomon, the predictions of the Hebrew prophets, the four Gospels, the apostolic letters, the visions of John, are among the supreme powers that govern and guide the world. Confucius and Plato and Aristotle still sway their sceptre over human souls. Bacon and Shakespeare fashion men with plastic power. Who shall reckon and tabulate the results of Augustines City of God, of Palearios Benefit of Christs Death, of the Imitation of Christ, of Calvins Institutes, of Luthers Commentary on the Galatians, of Bunyans Pilgrims Progress, of Baxters Saints Rest? Who shall the influence measure of the hymns of Gerhardt and the Wesleys and Watts and Cowper and Doddridge? Dead souls have been born again through them; dark souls enlightened; weak souls made strong; sorrowful souls inspired with gladness and joy. Their
Distant voices echo
Through the corridors of time,
and make the Church of God resonant with praise. The influence of Christian writers is seen in an interesting light, in the way in which one book becomes the parent of another through successive generations. About the close of Queen Elizabeths reign, a Puritan minister, called Edmund Bunny, met with a book written by a Jesuit priest, named Parsons; and, excluding the Popery, he recast the book and published it with a new title. A copy came into the hands of Richard Baxter, then a boy in Shropshire; and its earnest appeals led to his conversion. He grew to manhood, became a laborious preacher of the Gospel, and a voluminous writer. Among other books, he wrote the Call to the Unconverted, twenty thousand copies of which are said to have been sold in a single year. Twenty-five years after Baxters death a copy of this book fell in the way of Philip Doddridge, a youth at St. Albans, and brought him to God. He became a Christian minister and author, writing, in addition to other works, The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, which has been translated into several languages, and made useful to many souls. Thirty-three years after the death of Doddridge, William Wilberforce was setting out on a journey to the South of France, and, at the suggestion of a friend, took a copy of this book to read on the journey. The perusal of it led to his consecration to Christ. He found time, amid all his political and philanthropic duties, to write his Practical View of Christianity, a work which has passed through more than one hundred editions, and which, among the upper classes of society especially, has been a powerful leaven of righteousness. When Legh Richmond was a young curate in the Isle of Wight, still ignorant of the Gospel, a college friend sent him a copy of Wilberforces book. He began to read it, and could not leave off till he came to the end. The result he thus describes: To the unsought and unexpected introduction of Mr. Wilberforces book, I owe, through Gods mercy, the first sacred impression which I ever received as to the spiritual nature of the Gospel system. Another copy of the same work taught Dr. Chalmers the way of salvation, and made him such a distinguished preacher of Christs Gospel. Legh Richmond, as you know, afterwards wrote the touching story of The Dairymans Daughter; and Dr. Chalmers preached and published some of the ablest and most effective sermons of the age. Who knows how this genealogy may lengthen as time goes on; and what other books may trace back their ancestry to the copy of Bunnys Resolution, lent to Richard Baxters father.
IV. Good men live after death, in their spoken words. In this way: a faithful preacher of the Gospel in a town or district will make a mark that remains for ages. Take such cases as Fletcher of Madeley, Jay of Bath, Hall of Bristol, Raffles of Liverpool, Parsons of York, MCheyne of Dundee. The places where these men lived and laboured must be impregnated with their speech of past years, as with salt. In the came manner, the words of men of greater note and influence live on a larger scale.
V. Once more, good men live after death, in the memory and experience of survivors. The immortal dead, says George Eliot, live again in minds made better by their presence. We remember and copy their example. In our recollection of their excellences, we forget their faults, if faults they had. (W. Walters.)
Elisha prefiguring Christ
1. In the facts and incidents of his early history we may find Elisha prefiguring Christ. He came from Jordan, gifted by the hand of Elijah with the power of the Spirit; and surely there is some resemblance here between him and our Blessed Lord, baptized by John in the same river of Jordan, when the Holy Spirit like a dove abode upon Him. Nor can I forget the eminently religious home in which Elisha was brought up at Abelmeholah, the meadow of the dance,–reminding me of another home in Nazareth, where even a child understood what it was to be about His Fathers business. Is there nothing, also, in the fact that Elisha was called from the plough to be a prophet, and that up to the period when He began His public ministry, the Master, with the sweat standing in bead-drops on His lofty brow, stooped low and worked hard at a carpenters bench.
2. In close connection and intercourse with matters of this world, we may find Elisha prefiguring Christ. Like John the Baptist, Elijah to a large extent lived out of the world–away from and above it, in stern sublimity. Elisha, on the other hand, as we have seen all through the course of these lectures, was a citizen of the world, and mingled–as we would say in present day language–in all the great national and political movements and events of his time. In like manner, one of the chief complaints against the Divine Author of Christianity was this: His publicity–The Son of man came eating and drinking–and His apparent insurrection against constituted authority. The first was true, for He could not be hid; the second was false, for His kingdom was not of this world, else would His servants fight. The Elijah-like type of character–the hermit, the recluse, the solitary–was not reproduced in Jesus Christ. Such a type of character, in fact, was essentially unfitted for a religion that was to conquer the world. Christianity was to be a religion for common life.
3. In his intimate communion with the other world, find another important and apt-to-be-forgotten element in Elisha prefiguring Christ. Elijah and John the Baptist had little or nothing of this. True, Elijah was fed by the ravens, and miraculously sustained by an angel under the juniper tree; yet he had no such revelations and glimpses of the unseen world–beyond the still small voice–as were vouchsafed to Elisha. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw: and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. I, even I only, am left, was the wail of Elijah: to Elisha, on the other hand, was given, in a manner the most extraordinary, the anticipation by hundreds of years of the great Christian doctrine of the Communion of Saints. Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn which are written in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.
4. In what I shall term the discerning of spirits, and the reading of the thoughts and intents of the heart, we have another line of parallel in Elisha prefiguring Christ. Went not mine heart with thee, said the prophet to Gehazi. When Jehoram, at the siege of Samaria, sent the executioner to take the prophets life, See ye, said the man of God, how this son of a murderer hath sent to take away mine head. Now how innumerable are the illustrations in the life of Christ of Divine prescience and discerning of spirits, as furnished in the four Gospels, I need not stay to tell. He knew what was in man. And it is by bringing things to the Masters test that we, as by a new and subtle sense, can detect insidious unbelief, and transmit the faith of the Gospel pure and inviolate, as the beloved disciple assures us in a passage which is full of much solemn truth. The anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you; and ye need not that any man teach you, but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, end even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him. The one infallibility in the universe is in Christ, because Christ is God. There is another side to this thought. If Christ knows what is in man, He is just the Saviour for us, the sympathising Jesus.
5. In moral magnetism of character we see Elisha–in an infinitely lower, I admit, but still a sufficiently important and admissible sense–in his work and ministry prefiguring Christ. The attractiveness of Elishas character we have had ample occasion during these lectures to see. I think our great painters have seldom been less successful than in painting pictures of Christ. I have seen scores of them; but the face has either been too effeminate, or too colourless and uncharacteristic, and sometimes even too despotic–of all things in the world–to satisfy the portrait of the Bible, or the unpainted portrait of the heart. The best life of Christ is in the four Gospels, and the best pictures of Christ are there also. (H. T. Howat.)
Posthumous influence
It was a touching memorial to their comrade, the warrior of Breton birth, La Tour dAuvergne, the First Grenadier of France, as he was called, when, after his death, his comrades insisted that, though dead, his name should not be removed from the roils. It was still regularly called, and one of the survivors regularly answered for the departed soldier, Dead on the field. The eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews is such a roll-call of the dead. It is the register of a regiment, which will not allow death to blot names from its pages, but records the soldiers who have, in its ranks, won honourable graves and long abiding victories.
Power of the dead
A dead man, if he happen to have made a will, disposes of wealth no longer his; or if he die intestate, it is distributed in accordance with the notions of men much longer dead than he. A dead man sits on all our judgment-seats, and living judges do but search out and repeat his decisions. We read in dead mens books, we laugh at dead mens jokes, and cry at dead mens pathos! We are sick of dead mens diseases, physical and moral, and die of the same remedies with which dead doctors killed their patients! We worship the living Deity according to dead mens forms and creeds! Whatever we seek to do, of our own free notion, a dead mans icy hand obstructs us! Turn our eyes to what point we may, a dead mans white immitigable face encounters them and freezes our very heart! And we must be dead ourselves before we can begin to have our proper influence on our world which will then be no longer our world, but the world of another generation, with which we shall have no shadow of a right to interfere. (N. Hawthorne.)
Resurrection not unreasonable
This incident comes to us from the workshop of the great chemist Faraday. One day when Faraday was out, a workman accidentally knocked into a jar of acid into a silver cup. It disappeared, and was eaten up by the acid, and could not be found. The acid held it in solution. The workman was in great distress and perplexity. It was an utter mystery to him where the cup had gone. When the great chemist came in and heard the story, he threw some chemicals into the jar, and in a moment every particle of silver was precipitated to the bottom. He then lifted out the silver nugget and sent it to the smith, where it was recast into a beautiful cup. If a finite chemist can handle the particles of a silver cup in this way, what cannot the infinite Chemist do with the particles of a human body, when dissolved in the great jar of the universe. He can handle the universe as easily as Faraday can handle an acid jar, and can control it at will. Whatever the particles of the resurrected body may be, Paul says it is going to be changed so as to become a spiritual body. (Christian Age.)
Christianitys power to raise the dead
A great fable sometimes encloses a great truth. It is an old story of the Empress Helena, how she went to the Holy Land to find the Cross. Excavations were made, and they found three crosses; but how were they to know which was the true one? So they took a corpse, and put it upon one and another; and, as soon as the corpse touched the Saviours Cross, it started into life. Now, you are demonstrating the divinity of Christianity, and that is how you test it–it makes these dead men live..
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 20. And Elisha died] The two prophets, Elijah and Elisha, were both most extraordinary men. Of the former, it is difficult to say whether he was a man, or an angel in a human body. The arguments for this latter opinion are strong, the objections against it very feeble. His being fed by an angel is no proof that he was not an angel incarnate, for God manifest in the flesh was fed by the same ministry. Of him the following from Ecclesiasticus 48:1-11 is a nervous character: –
1. Then stood up Elias the prophet as fire, and his word burned like a lamp.
2. He brought a sore famine upon them, and by his zeal he diminished their number.
3. By the word of the Lord he shut up the heaven, and also three times brought down fire.
4. O Elias, how wast thou honoured in thy wondrous deeds! and who may glory like unto thee!
5. Who didst raise up a dead man from death, and his soul from the place of the dead, by the word of the Most High:
6. Who broughtest kings to destruction, and honourable men from their bed:
7. Who heardest the rebuke of the Lord in Sinai, and in Horeb the judgment of vengeance:
8. Who anointedst kings to take revenge, and prophets to succeed after him:
9. Who wast taken up in a whirlwind of fire, and in a chariot of fiery horses:
10. Who wast ordained for reproofs in their times to pacify the wrath of the Lord’s judgment, before it brake forth into fury; and to turn the heart of the father unto the son, and to restore the tribes of Jacob.
11. Blessed are they that saw thee, and slept in love; for we shall surely live.
Elisha was not less eminent than Elijah; the history of his ministry is more detailed than that of his master, and his miracles are various and stupendous. In many things there is a striking likeness between him and our blessed Lord, and especially in the very beneficent miracles which he wrought. Of him the same author gives this character, Ecclus. 12-14: Elisha was filled with his spirit: whilst he lived he was not moved with the presence of any prince; neither could any bring him into subjection. Nothing could overcome him; and after his death his body prophesied, i.e., raised a dead man to life, as we learn from the following verse. He did wonders in his life, and at his death there his works marvellous; perhaps referring to his last acts with Joash.
The bands of the Moabites] Marauding parties; such as those mentioned 2Kg 5:2.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
They buried him, in or near Samaria.
At the coming in of the year; in the spring, when the fruits of the earth grew ripe.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
20, 21. Elisha diedHe hadenjoyed a happier life than Elijah, as he possessed a mildercharacter, and bore a less hard commission. His rough garment washonored even at the court.
coming in of the yearthatis, the spring, the usual season of beginning campaigns in ancienttimes. Predatory bands from Moab generally made incursions at thattime on the lands of Israel. The bearers of a corpse, alarmed by theappearance of one of these bands, hastily deposited, as they passedthat way, their load in Elisha’s sepulchre, which might be easilydone by removing the stone at the mouth of the cave. According to theJewish and Eastern custom, his body, as well as that of the man whowas miraculously restored, was not laid in a coffin, but onlyswathed; so that the bodies could be brought into contact, and theobject of the miracle was to stimulate the king’s and people ofIsrael’s faith in the still unaccomplished predictions of Elisharespecting the war with the Syrians. Accordingly the historianforthwith records the historical fulfilment of the prediction (2Ki13:22-25), in the defeat of the enemy, in the recovery of thecities that had been taken, and their restoration to the kingdom ofIsrael.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And Elisha died, and they buried him,…. In Samaria. Epiphanius says n, in Sebastopolis of Samaria, Samaria itself was called Sebaste in later times; though the Jews say o he was buried in Mount Carmel, in the cave of Elijah; according to the Jewish chronology p, he died in the tenth year of Joash, and he prophesied more than sixty years; sixty six, as Abarbinel, since he began to prophesy in the nineteenth year of Jehoshaphat; and, according to Clemens q of Alexandria, when he was forty years of age; but it seems rather, as Kimchi observes, that he died in the beginning of the reign of Joash, and even before his father’s death, when he was a partner with him in the throne, and before any salvation or deliverance from the Syrians was wrought:
and the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year; at the spring of the year, when there was fruit on the earth, those troops of robbers came to plunder and spoil; several of the Jewish writers observe, that in the word for “coming”, is instead of
, and so may be rendered “in that year”, in that selfsame year that Elisha died; and so read the Syriac, Arabic, and the Vulgate Latin versions.
n De Vitis Prophet. c. 6. o Cippi Heb. p. 46. p Seder Olam Rabba, c. 19. q Stromat. l. 1. p. 326.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
| The Death of Elisha. | B. C. 837. |
20 And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. 21 And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet. 22 But Hazael king of Syria oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. 23 And the LORD was gracious unto them, and had compassion on them, and had respect unto them, because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them, neither cast he them from his presence as yet. 24 So Hazael king of Syria died; and Benhadad his son reigned in his stead. 25 And Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz took again out of the hand of Benhadad the son of Hazael the cities, which he had taken out of the hand of Jehoahaz his father by war. Three times did Joash beat him, and recovered the cities of Israel.
We must here attend,
I. The sepulchre of Elisha: he died in a good old age, and they buried him; and what follows shows, 1. What power there was in his life to keep off judgments; for, as soon as he was dead, the bands of the Moabites invaded the land–not great armies to face them in the field, but roving skulking bands, that murdered and plundered by surprise. God has many ways to chastise a provoking people. The king was apprehensive of danger only from the Syrians, but, behold, the Moabites invade him. Trouble comes sometimes from that point whence we least feared it. The mentioning of this immediately upon the death of Elisha intimates that the removal of God’s faithful prophets is a presage of judgments coming. When ambassadors are recalled heralds may be expected. 2. What power there was in his dead body: it communicated life to another dead body, v. 21. This great miracle, though very briefly related, was a decided proof of his mission and a confirmation of all his prophecies. It was also a plain indication of another life after this. When Elisha died, there was not an end of him, for then he could not have done this. From operation we may infer existence. By this it appeared that the Lord was still the God of Elisha; therefore Elisha still lived, for God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And it may, perhaps, have a reference to Christ, by whose death and burial the grave is made to all believers a safe and happy passage to life. It likewise intimated that though Elisha was dead, yet, in virtue of the promises made by him, Israel’s interests, though they seemed quite sunk and lost, should revive and flourish again. The neighbours were carrying the dead body of a man to the grave, and, fearing to fall into the hands of the Moabites, a party of whom they saw at a distance near the place where the body was to be interred, they laid the corpse in the next convenient place, which proved to be Elisha’s sepulchre. The dead man, upon touching Elisha’s bones, revived, and, it is likely, went home again with his friends. Josephus relates the story otherwise, That some thieves, having robbed and murdered an honest traveller, threw his dead body into Elisha’s grave, and it immediately revived. Elijah was honoured in his departure. Elisha was honoured after his departure. God thus dispenses honours as he pleases, but, one way or other, the rest of all the saints will be glorious, Isa. xi. 10. It is good being near the saints and having our lot with them both in life and death.
II. The sword of Joash king of Israel; and we find it successful against the Syrians. 1. The cause of his success was God’s favour (v. 23): The Lord was gracious to them, had compassion on them in their miseries and respect unto them. The several expressions here of the same import call upon us to observe and admire the triumphs of divine goodness in the deliverance of such a provoking people. It was of the Lord’s mercies that they were not consumed, because he would not destroy them as yet. He foresaw they would destroy themselves at last, but as yet he would reprieve them, and give them space to repent. The slowness of God’s processes against sinners must be construed to the honour of his mercy, not the impeachment of his justice. 2. The effect of his success was Israel’s benefit. He recovered out of the hands of Benhadad the cities of Israel which the Syrians were possessed of, v. 25. This was a great kindness to the cities themselves, which were hereby brought from under the yoke of oppression, and to the whole kingdom, which was much strengthened by the reduction of those cities. Thrice Joash beat the Syrians, just as often as he had struck the ground with the arrows, and then a full stop was put to the course of his victories. Many have repented, when it was too late, of their distrusts and the straitness of their desires.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Two Deaths – Verses 20-25
No particulars of Elisha’s death and burial are recorded, but an amazing incident involving him posthumously is recorded. Although God granted Israel a measure of relief from the Syrians, saving them from absolute destruction in the reign of Jehoahaz, the enemies were soon back at their old trouble-making. Since the time of Ahab they had liked to send marauding patties into Israel raiding and pillaging-the towns and countryside. This time, however, it was the Moabites who were marauding. They even broke up a funeral procession.
Some Israelites were on their way to burial of a dead man when they observed one of the Moabite bands coming toward them. They quickly looked about them for a place to dispose of the dead, dropping him into a tomb (probably a cave) already occupied by a body. It was Elisha’s tomb, and when the dead man touched the bones of Elisha he revived and stood up. Even after his ministry the Lord was verifying His word to Israel as it had been preached by His prophet. Here was demonstrated the mighty power of God, not only to the apostate Israelites, but to the pagan Moabites as well.
God possesses the power of life, and this incident of life coming out of a tomb was a prelude to a far more significant and eternally efficient life, stemming from another tomb. Jesus Christ is the way of life (Joh 14:6; Joh 10:10). He came forth from the tomb, as the old preachers used to say, “triumphant over death, hell, and the grave” (Col 2:13-15). And so, He ever lives to make intercession for the believer (Heb 7:25), assuring them that every one shall also have life from the tomb (1Co 15:20-23).
Old King Hazael of Damascus never relented his warfare against Israel. Yet the Lord would not allow the destruction of the nation for a while longer, because of His covenant with the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He granted them grace and compassion during Jehoahaz’ time and continued it to even greater degree under Joash, his son. But finally old Hazael died, after a long reign, and was succeeded by his son Ben-hadad. His son was named after the old king and predecessor of Hazael, whom Hazael had assassinated by smothering him in his sick bed (2Ki 8:15). Probably Hazael’s wicked deed was never known by the people, for he had given his son the name of the old king in a seeming act of hypocrisy.
Under the young Ben-hadad God’s prophetic promise through Elisha on his deathbed began to come to pass. Joash was able to defeat the Syrians and to recapture the cities which Hazael had wrested from them. He won just three times, as Elisha said he would, because he had smitten the arrows on the ground just three times in a demonstrable lack of zeal.
Lessons to be learned from chapter 13: 1) God has mercy on and blesses even the unrepentant in manifold ways; 2) some wicked persons show utter contempt for God by their open defiance of His known will; 3) many ignorant of the Lord’s way think to win His favor by pious words and Biblical quotations; 4) the world’s leaders pass by opportunities for good of their countries by their disbelief in the power of God; 5) the truth of God’s preached word will never die; 6) God’s word is accurate and sure, in spite of man’s doubt and unconcern therewith.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.
2Ki. 13:20. Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year lit., a year came; but it may be interpreted as the Spring season, in ancient times the usual period for opening campaigns or commencing invasions.
2Ki. 13:21. As they were burying a man, &c.i.e., a corpse of some unknown person about to be interred in the same burial place in which Elishas sepulchre was situate. The sudden appearance of one of these Moabite hordes urged them to cast the body hastily into the grave of Elisha, which, if not open, was quickly accessible by removing the stone from its mouth.
HOMILETICS OF 2Ki. 13:20-21
THE INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT AND GOOD
I. Does not terminate with their life. And Elisha died, and they buried him; but they could not bury his influence for good; that is one thing over which death has no power. There is nothing, writes Dickens, no, nothing innocent or good, that dies and is forgotten; let us hold to that faith or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those who loved it, and play its part through them in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes, or drowned in the deepest sea. There is not an angel added to the host of heaven but does its blessed work on earth in those that loved it here. Forgotten! Oh, if the good deeds of human creatures could be traced to their source, how beautiful would even death appear, for how much charity, mercy, and purified affection would be seen to have their growth in dusty graves. The life of Elisha was a precious treasure to the nation; his name could not be forgotten; his deeds shone as the stars of heaven; his power penetrated all ranks, from king to peasant.
II. Keeps alive the hope of deliverance in the breasts of an oppressed people (2Ki. 13:20). The Moabites had partially rccovered from the reverses they suffered at the beginning of Elishas career (ch. 3), and became strong enough to make an annual predatory incursion. Harassed by Syrian and Moabite, the Israelites might have yielded to despair; but the spirit of the dead prophet sustained them. They loved his memory; they revered his stainless character; they believed his prophecies, and in the darkest hour of oppression and suffering they cherished the hope of deliverance. The influence of a good man lives through many generations, and inspires many to nobler thoughts and more heroic action.
O! who shall lightly say that fame
Is nothing but an empty name!
Whilst in that sound there is a charm
The nerves to brace, the heart to warm;
As, thinking of the mighty dead,
The young from slothful couch will start,
And vow, with lifted hands outspread,
Like them to act a noble part!Baillie.
III. Is sometimes vindicated by miraculous occurrences (2Ki. 13:21). This miracle of Elishas, after his death, is more surprising than any of those which he performed during his lifetime. No exact parallel offers itself in the rest of Scripture. Still it may be said to belong to a class where the miracle was not wrought through the agency of a living miracle-worker, but by a material object in which, by Gods will, virtue for the time being resided. The most familiar example of this class is the staunching of the issue of blood, by the touch of the hem of Christs garment; but the cures wrought by handkerchiefs and aprons brought to the sick from the body of St. Paul (Act. 19:12) are still more nearly parallel. In the present instance, no doubt the primary effect was greatly to increase the reverence of the Israelites for the memory of Elisha, to lend force to his teaching, and especially to add weight to his unfulfilled prophecies, as to that concerning the coming triumphs of Israel over Syria. In the extreme state of depression to which the Israelites were now reduced, a very signal miracle may have been needed to encourage and re-assure them (Speakers Comm.) It was not the dead body of Elisha, but the living God, that gave life again to the dead; and Omnipotence worked by contact with the dead Elisha to show that the Divine efficiency that was in the prophet had not disappeared from Israel with his death. The future fame and influence of the good may be safely left in the hands of God.
LESSONS:A good man.
1. Is the fruit of divine grace.
2. Is a great boon to a nation.
3. Is imperishable in his influence.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2Ki. 13:20. The death of the good. I. A calamity to a distracted country. II. Suggests that the most conspicuous piety cannot evade the penalty of sin. III. The cause of wide-spread and genuine sorrow. IV. Leads men to reflect upon the influence and power of the life just terminated.
Such was Elisha, greater yet less, less yet greater, than Elijah. He is less. For character is the real prophetic gift. The man, the will, the personal grandeur of the prophet are greater than any amount of prophetic acts, or any extent of prophetic success. We cannot dispense with the mighty past, even when we have shot far beyond it. Nations, churches, individuals must all be content to fare as dwarfs in comparison with the giants of old timewith the Reformers, the Martyrsthe heroes of their early youthful reverence. A prophet like Elijah comes once, and does not return. Elisha, both to his countrymen and to us, is but the successorthe faint reflection of his predecessor. When he appeared before the three suppliant kings, his chief honour was that he was Elisha, the son of Shaphat, who poured water on the hands of Elijah.
Less, yet greater. For the work of the great ones of this earth is carried on by far inferior instruments, but on a far wider scaleand, it may be, in a far higher spirit. The life of an Elijah is never spent in vain. Even his death has not taken him from us. He struggles, single handed as it would seem, and without effect; and in the very crisis of the nations history, is suddenly and mysteriously removed. But his work continues; his mantle falls; his teaching spreads; his enemies perish. The prophet preaches and teaches; the martyr dies and passes away; but other men enter into his labours. By that one impulse of Elijah, Elisha and Elishas successors, prophets, and sons of prophets, are raised up by fifties and by hundreds. They must work in their own way. They must not try to retain the spirit of Elijah by repeating his words, or by clothing themselves in his rough mantle, or by living his strange life.
What was begun in fire and storm, in solitude and awful visions, must be carried on through winning arts, and healing acts, and gentle words of peaceful and social intercourse. Not in the desert of Horeb, or on the top of Carmel, but in the crowded thoroughfares of Samaria, in the gardens of Damascus, and by the rushing waters of Jordan. Elisha himself may be as nothing compared with Elijah. His wonders may be forgotten. He dies by the long decay of years; no chariots of fire are there to lighten his last moments, or bear his soul to heaven. Yet he knows that, though unseen, they are always around him. Once in the city of Dothan, in the ancient pass, where the caravans of the Midianites and the troops of the Syrians stream through into Central Palestinewhen he is compassed about with chariots and horses of the hostile armies, and his servant cries out for fear, Elisha said, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. It is a vision of which the meaning acquires double force from its connection with the actual history; as if to show, by the very same figure, that the hope which bore Elijah to his triumphal end, was equally present with Elisha. Elijah, and those who are like Elijah, are needed in critical and momentous occasions to prepare the way for the Lord. His likeness is John the Baptist: and of those that were born of women before the times of Christendom, none were greater than they. But Elisha, and those who are like Elisha, have a humbler, and yet a wider, and therefore a holier sphere; for their works are not the works of the Baptist, but are the deeds, if not of Christ Himself, at any rate of the least in His kingdomthe gentle, beneficent, holy man of God, who passeth by us continually.Stanley.
Before closing this account of Elisha, we must not omit to notice the parallel which Elisha presents to our Lordthe more necessary because, unlike the resemblance between Elijah and John the Baptist, no attention is called to it in the New Testament. Some features of this likeness have already been spoken of. But it is not merely because he healed a leper, raised a dead man, or increased the loaves, that Elisha resembled Christ, but rather because of that loving, gentle temper, and kindness of dispositioncharacteristic of him above all the saints of the Old Testamentever ready to soothe, to heal and to conciliatewhich attracted to him women and simple people, and made him the universal friend and father, not only consulted by kings and generals, but resorted to by widows and poor prophets in their little troubles and perplexities. We have spoken above of the fragmentary nature of the records of Elisha, and of the partial conception of his work as a prophet which they evince. Be it so. For that very reason we should the more gladly welcome those engaging traits of personal goodness which are so often to be found even in those fragments, and which give us a reflectionfeeble, it is true, but still a reflectionin the midst of the sternness of the Old Dispensation, of the love and mercy of the New.Smiths Bible Dictionary.
2Ki. 13:21. The virtue of a corpse. The chief lesson this story teaches is the mighty influence a good man may exert after his decease.
1. We should be ambitious of this influence. Our lives at the longest are brief. That portion of our lives devoted to holy aims is briefer still. How consolatory and inspiring is the fact that, when our brief life is finished, we can still be a power for good! Think that, from your seat in glory, you may see men inspired by the memory of your generosity, zeal, courage, purity, and prayerfulness. Their deeds in turn are remembered, and inspire others. Thus you will have a share in blessing men to the end of time.
2. Let me remind you how much we owe to this influence. Would you be what you are were it not for the memory of the dead?
3. The best methods for securing this posthumous influence for good.
1. By publishing through the press our thoughts and opinions. How many a book is like the body of Elishalifeless itself. yet giving life!
2. By a definite and public profession of religion.
3. By active engagement in Christian work. We must all exert some influence after death, either for weal or woe. Let us, then, be jealous over ourselves with a godly jealousy.R. A. Griffin.
Were not the men of Israel more dead than the carcase thus buried, how could they choose but see in this revived corpse an emblem of their own condition? How could they choose but think, if we adhere to the God of Elisha, He shall raise our decayed estates, and restore our nation to its former glory.Bp. Hall.
The miracle of Elishas bones has been the subject both of criticism and of allegory. The rationalist, of course, admits no miracle. In his view, the deceased was only apparently dead, fallen into a trance, perhaps, but suddenly brought to his senses again by the shock of being roughly cast into Elishas tomb; others admit a real miracle, but seem to look upon it with suspicion. This, says Clarke, is the first, and, I believe, the last, account of a true miracle performed by the bones of a dead man, and yet on it, and such like, the whole system of miracle-working relics has been founded by the Popish Church. Elishas works, says Stanley, stand alone in the Bible in their likeness to the acts of medival saints. There alone, in the sacred history, the gulf between Biblical and ecclesiastical miracles almost disappears. In this, as in so much besides, his life and miracles are not Jewish, but Christian. By others the miracle is made a type of Jesus power to raise to life by his own death and burial those who are dead in trespasses and sins. So, too, says Wordsworth, the apostles and evangelists, being dead, yet speak to all the world in the Gospels and Epistles, and, by the word of God in them, they raise souls to life eternal.Whedon.
Which miracle God wrought, partly to do honour to that great prophet, and that by this seal he might confirm his doctrine, and thereby confute the false doctrine and worship of the Israelites; partly to strengthen the faith of Joash and the Israelites in his promise of their success against the Syrians; and partly, in the midst of all their calamities, to comfort such Israelites as were Elishas followers with the hopes of that eternal life whereof this was a manifest pledge, and to awaken the rest of that people to a due care and preparation for it.Pool.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(20) And the bands of the Moabites invaded.Rather, And troops of Moabites used to invade. They took advantage of the weakened condition of Israel to revenge the devastation of their country described in 2Ki. 3:25.
At the coming in of the year.So the Targum and the LXX. The Syriac, Vulg., and Arabic understand, in that (or, the same) year. The preposition b has probably fallen out of the Hebrew text: read, bb shnh, when the year came ini.e., in the spring. (Comp. 2Sa. 11:1.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
20. Buried him Josephus says he was honoured with a magnificent funeral, in every respect worthy of a personage so saintly and beloved.
Bands of the Moabites Marauding parties seeking for plunder. The Moabites had partially recovered from the severe losses they suffered at the beginning of Elisha’s career. Chap. 3.
At the coming in of the year When the early crops were ripening appropriate season for a nomadic invasion. Apparently the next year after Elisha’s death. This invasion of the Moabites is mentioned to introduce the miracle wrought by the instrumentality of Elisha’s bones, recorded in the next verse.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Joash Smites Aram Three Times As A Result Of YHWH Giving Israel New Strength, Raising Them As It Were, From The Dead ( 2Ki 13:20-25 ).
The parlous state of Israel at this time is demonstrated by the fact that Moabite roving bands were able to penetrate deep into Israelite territory. Israel in Transjordan was under the control of Benhadad III who had succeeded Hazael (2Ki 10:32-33), and it would appear that he was allowing the Moabites free licence to rove there and attack Israel over the Jordan. Furthermore Benhadad also had control of a number of Israelite cities west of Jordan.
But the ‘saviour’ whom YHWH had sent in order to relieve the pressure on Jehoahaz (2Ki 13:5), the Assyrians under Adad-nirari III, had severely weakened Aram with the result that they were no longer the proposition that they had once been. Thus when Joash came to the throne he was able to recover the cities west of Jordan, and probably much of the land in Transjordan. And that this was through YHWH’s help is brought out by the acted out prophecy of the coming back to life of a man whose corpse touched that of Elisha.
Analysis.
a
b And it came about, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a roving band, and they pushed the man into the sepulchre of Elisha, and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet (2Ki 13:21).
c And Hazael king of Aram oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz (2Ki 13:22).
d But YHWH was gracious to them, and had compassion on them, and had respect to them, because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them, nor did he cast them from his presence as yet (2Ki 13:23).
c And Hazael king of Aram died, and Benhadad his son reigned instead of him (2Ki 13:24).
b And Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz took again out of the hand of Benhadad the son of Hazael the cities which he had taken out of the hand of Jehoahaz his father by war (2Ki 13:25 a).
a Three times did Joash smite him, and recovered the cities of Israel (2Ki 13:25 b).
Note that in ‘a’ the Moabites invaded Israel, and in the parallel Joash was able to smite Aram and recover Israel’s cities. In ‘b’ a man was revived from the dead by touching the body of Elisha, and in the parallel a revived Israel, revived through Elisha’s dying words, were able to recover their cities from Benhadad of Aram. In ‘c’ Hazael oppressed Israel continually, and in the parallel Hazael died. Centrally in ‘d’ all this was because YHWH was faithful to His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
2Ki 13:20
‘Now the roving bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year.’
That the roving bands of Moabites were able to penetrate as far as the grave of Elisha demonstrates the conditions in Transjordanian Israel as a result of the control of Aram, and the weakness of Israel west of the Jordan. Israel were prey to any passing marauders. At this time of year they would be after the grain on the threshing-floors and in the grain stores.
2Ki 13:21
‘And it came about, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a roving band, and they pushed the man into the sepulchre of Elisha, and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.’
But that YHWH had not forgotten Israel is brought out by an anecdote describing how a corpse which touched the body of Elisha was raised from the dead. This occurred because the men who were burying the corpse intended to bury it in the same cave as Elisha was buried in, and having removed the stone from the entrance spotted a band of Moabite raiders and fled for their lives, unceremoniously pushing the corpse into the cave. As a result the corpse came into contact with the bones of Elisha and immediately revived. It was a symbol of what YHWH was going to do for Israel in accordance with Elisha’s promises to Joash.
2Ki 13:22
‘And Hazael king of Aram oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz.’
That YHWH’s help was necessary comes out in that Hazael’s pressure on Israel, first through his own activities and then through his son Benhadad, was unceasing all the days of Jehoahaz (Hazael died towards the end of the reign of Jehoahaz). The phrase is to be seen as very much a generalisation. Until the arrival of the Assyrians Hazael had been able to do pretty much what he wanted to Israel, and his oppression had been severe, but the first Assyrian invasions in the time of Hazael had severely weakened Aram, and the second in the time of Benhadad weakened them even further, so that while they still kept their control of the Israelite cities that they had captured, and were probably still a nuisance against a very much weakened and demoralised Israel (thus continuing to ‘oppress them’), they had ceased to be the threat that they once were.
Note how in this brief passage the author is summarising the overall situation from Jehoahaz to Joash so as to bring out YHWH’s goodness to Israel and His faithfulness to His promises to the patriarchs, finishing with the direct fulfilment of YHWH’s promise to Joash through Elisha. The emphasis is all on the activity of YHWH.
2Ki 13:23
‘But YHWH was gracious to them, and had compassion on them, and had respect to them, because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them, nor did he cast them from his presence as yet.’
YHWH had not yet cast off Israel, for He still remembered His promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in which Israel had a part. As a result of these promises He was gracious to Israel and had compassion on them (that is why He had sent them a ‘saviour’), and did not as yet destroy them or cast them off. Thus their main antagonist, Hazael, died, and YHWH began to revivify Israel. He had still not forgotten them.
Note the ‘as yet’. The prophets recognised that not all Israel were the true Israel. In their view the only true Israel was Israel in obedience to the covenant. And when they ceased in that obedience they would be permanently cut off. After the destruction of Samaria the vast majority of Israel was cut off, and only a few remnants survived and became a part of the Israel that remained. Later Judah would be cut off, and again only a remnant would return. Thus the Israel in the time of Jesus was only a remnant of what had been. But even they would reject the covenant, when they rejected God’s covenant Messiah, and true Israel would survive in the new congregation of Israel, the church (Gal 6:16; Rom 11:17-28; Eph 2:11-22; 1Pe 2:9).
2Ki 13:24
‘And Hazael king of Aram died, and Benhadad his son reigned instead of him.’
One result of YHWH’s compassion was that Hazael died and was replaced by Benhadad III, who ruled over a much weakened Aram, weakened by the ‘saviour’ whom YHWH had sent against them, even the king of Assyria.
(Note. Whether Benhadad was II or III is disputed. It depends on whether there had previously been two Benhadads, or only one who had a very long reign, something which is uncertain. Our knowledge of Aramaean history outside the Old Testament is very limited).
2Ki 13:25
‘And Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz took again out of the hand of Benhadad the son of Hazael the cities which he had taken out of the hand of Jehoahaz his father by war.’
The consequence of this was that a revived Israel under Joash was able to recover all the Israelite cities that Aram had previously occupied, and this possibly included the liberation of parts of Transjordanian Israel (2Ki 10:32-33), although the latter might have awaited the reign of Jeroboam II (2Ki 14:25). (The prophetic author is not interested in the detail).
‘The cities which he had taken out of the hand of Jehoahaz his father by war.’ This is probably a loose statement with the ‘he’ referring to Hazael, rather than Benhadad, although it is always possible that in his early days Benhadad had taken further cities.
2Ki 13:25
‘Three times did Joash smite him, and recovered the cities of Israel.’
In accordance with what Elisha had promised Joash was able to smite Benhadad three times, and recover more and more of the cities of Israel. Once again the author is not interested in detailing the history. His emphasis is on the prophetic fulfilment.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Here is no account of the prophet’s funeral, or of Israel’s lamentation over him. Reader! doth not the death of the servants of our Lord always remind thee, and call forth holy joy in the heart, that though all die, yet Jesus the Master liveth forever! Sweet thought! And oh! the preciousness of the consolation. Thou art forever the same, blessed Jesus, and thy years do not fail. Heb 1:12 . The invasion by the Moabites the same year as the prophet died, is remarkable. Not unfrequently, before the Lord brings on a judgment on a guilty land, he houseth his servants. Noah was taken into the ark before the flood. Lot sent out of Sodom before the overthrow.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
2Ki 13:20 And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year.
Ver. 20. And Elisha died. ] Accisis corporeis viribus gloriosam exhalavit animam. Elisha was one of those few that lived and died with honour.
And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land.
a Sedar Olam.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
died. He was called in the days of Ahab (1Ki 19:19), and ministered fifty years.
coming in of the year: i.e. the spring. Compare 2Sa 11:1.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
am 3167, bc 837
buried him: 2Ch 24:16, Act 8:2
the bands: 2Ki 5:2, 2Ki 6:23, 2Ki 24:2
the Moabites: 2Ki 3:5, 2Ki 3:24-27, Jdg 3:12, Jdg 6:3-6
Reciprocal: 1Ch 20:1 – after the year was expired Act 19:12 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
2Ki 13:20. Elisha died, and they buried him In or near Samaria. The spirit of Elijah rested on Elisha, and yet he is not conveyed to heaven in a fiery chariot as Elijah was, but goes the common way of all flesh out of the world, and is visited with the visitation of all men. If God honour some above others, who yet are not inferior to them in gifts or graces, who shall find fault? May he not do what he will with his own? The bands of the Moabites invaded the land The mentioning this, immediately on the death of Elisha, intimates, that the removal of Gods faithful prophets is a presage of judgments approaching.