Humm...intresting how the "hard and fast" Christians never make an appearance on threads such as these. I d like to know why. If your reading this ...explain to me how this scripture makes sense to believe in . Explain to me how its WORTH believing in this scripture.
I would not label myself as a ” hard and fast” Christian but this account in the bible makes sense to me.
In my many years of reading the Scriptures I find that the accounts of any event that is created by man is attributed to man. An event that is not directly recognized as being produced by man, is attributed to a God.
Until recently, catastrophic acts of nature, were called by insurance companies as acts of God.
If you replace the name of God by Mother Nature in this account of Elisha for the sake of understanding , you may find it more and realistic and believable
I agree with the information provided in Sylvia’s link . I would like to add other comments in addition to it.
I would like to briefly tell of two experiences with bears both involving she-bears with cubs.
In my early twenties, in wilds of BC while hunting for game birds for supper, I came across a she-bear with two cubs. I froze in my tracks, but the cubs between me and their mother were coming closer and closer to me. My small 22 rifle would not stop the bear. What to do? I hollered and fired over the mother’s head. All I remember are flashes of the events. I saw the cubs run squealing towards their mother. I saw the mother stand up on two legs, beating the air with her two paws. growling fiercly. I remember running about ten-twenty paces, while trying to pump another shell into the rifle chamber, but the previous casing was jammed in the breach. I stopped dead and stood still behind a small tree and turned to see the mother bear standing in the same spot I had just vacated. Again she was standing on hind legs, facing towards me growling frantically. I heard this puzzling thumping beating sound and realized it was my heart pounding. I and the bear stood for some moments facing one another. Finally she dropped down to all fours and went off after her cubs. To this day. whenever a bear is in my vicinity, whether I can see them or not, I can smell them.
The second experience is that of my teen age son, about a dozen years ago. While riding bicycles down a woodland trail with two other companions who were ahead of him, two cubs suddenly ran across the trail in front of him and he crashed off his bike. He heard the mother bear coming for him from behind, he held up his bike to ward off the bear and finally threw it at her. She backed off and realizing her cubs had run off safely, went off after them.
So getting back to Elisha’s bears and their Nature, aka the what is of events, aka Jehovah who causes to be what conclusions can we come to.
The hoodlums who came out from the city. This shows that coming out they had an agenda, they had a mission to taunt and harass Elisha. The adults of the city probably had the same attitude as their offspring, they did not discourage them. The attackers were a collective group, acting in unison, not standing along the roadside, but cowardly following behind Elisha, as mimicking a group of followers, calling him the equivalent of “peckerhead” Finally, Eligah turned, and “cursed” them, not in his own name, but in the name of Jehovah that is using expressions such as what God had promised Abraham centuries earlier: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. Gen: 12:3
So this group of rowdies, having just gotten away with mocking God, on a high with excitement, go along and meet first one bear and then a second. The account says she-bears, how do you recognize a she-bear from a male bear? When you see a lone adult bear, how do you know what sex it is? The only way you can tell is if there are cubs present, then it is female, male bears do not accompany cubs, the female chases them away.
Were the female bears hungry? If so why didn’t they kill one or two and stop to eat them. They killed forty-two and then stopped to eat?
Did the fool-hardy group kill the cubs? I doubt it, the bears would find their bodies, and attack only any foolish bystanders remaining there. No, in my opinion, the rampaging teenagers captured the cubs, either with a noose or net, and the squeals of the cubs, provoked a continued attack by the bears to protect their cubs.
Why didn’t the crowd run away, why not scatter as some have suggested. Because they are a mob. Mobs don’t run away from each other, they feel there is safety in numbers. However there were more than forty-two there. It states that forty-two of them were killed. So those on the fringes of the mob mentality did manage to get away. The ones most reckless, fool hardy and persistent did not escape.
Two other references in the Bible refer to she-bears bereaved of their cubs:
An evil [man] seeketh only rebellion: therefore a cruel messenger shall be sent against him.
Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his folly. Prov: 17:11,12
Therefore I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way will I observe [them]:
I will meet them as a bear [that is] bereaved [of her whelps], Hosea 13:8
I realize I am making a scenario of this account, but I believe I have reasonable basis for it.
belbab