2 Kings, Chapter 9

More soap-opera tactics by the kings and Elisha.


Elisha tells one of his servants to find Jehu, son of Jehosephat, in Ramothgilead and annoint him king of Israel, then run away. So he goes, and annoints him, and instructs him to kill Ahab's entire family, especially Jezebel. Jehu leaves the room and his guards ask what the mad man wanted, proving that Punk'd is not as original as we all think. Eventually he convinces them and they run upstairs to blow trumpets announcing Jehu is king.


His first act as king is to conspire to overthrow Joram, who is in Jezreel recovering from his injuries suffered in battle with the king of Syria. He goes to Jezreel by chariot, where Ahaziah, king of Judah, is visiting Joram. A watchman spots Jehu's approach and Joram tells him to ask if Jehu's coming in peace. Jehu says he isn't an instructs him to fall in behind him. The watchman reports the messenger didn't come back. So Joram sends another, who also fails to return. We also find out that Jehu is the original crazy driver for he driveth furiously (v. 20)


Joram rather stupidly decides to go out and meet Jehu himself, so he and Ahaziah approach in their own chariots to ask if it's peace. Clearly not, you fool. Jehu responds with the ultimate yo' mama insult What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many? (v. 22) Joram, not swift with the comeback, doesn't know what to do, and whines to Ahaziah. Fortunately, Jehu kills him with an arrow to the chest. Jehu instructs his followers to cast the body into the fields.


Ahahziah, also slow on the uptake, finally flees. Jehu sends his mionions after him, and they manage to injure him severely enough that he dies later at Megiddo. He at least gets a state funeral in Jerusalem.


Jehu next turns his sights on Jezebel, who puts her make-up on - war paint, see - does her hair, and waits in the window. Jehu arrives and calls out from below Who is on my side? who? (v. 32) Two of her eunuchs throw her out the window. He tramples her with his horses, then goes inside for lunch. He then tells his servants to bury her, but when they go outside, they only find her skull, hands and feet, the dogs having eaten the rest, which, you will recall, god promised to do, in a heartening example of the biblical treatment of women.

2 Kings, Chapter 8

Elisha goes back to the woman whose son he restored to life a few chapters ago and tells her to move, because there's going to be a seven year famine. So she goes to the land of the Philistines. She returns seven years later and asks for her land back. The king turns to Elisha's servant and asks him for an exact accounting of Elisha's miracles. When he gets to the part about restoring the son, the woman cries out, like one-track mind much, lady? And Gehazi says it's her, like no one could tell. The king orders his officers to restore the woman's possessions.


Elisah, meanwhile, goes to the Syrian king, Benhadad, who is sick. Benhadad asks someone called Hazeal to ask Elisha if he'll recover. Elisha says he will recover, but he'll also die. Then he starts to cry. Hazeal asks why, and he says it's because he knows all the evil Hazeal is going to do to the Israelites. Hazeal asks if he has free will, and Elisha says he's going to be king one day. Hazeal goes back to his father and promises him he'll recover, then the next day waterboards him until he suffocates. Yes, the actual words are: he took a thick cloth and dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that he died (v. 15).


We get a quick update on the kings of Israel, in which we are told that Jeroham, of the tribe of Judah, is evil, but god keeps him around out of lingering affection for David. Edom revolts during his reign and there's a third Israelite king. Jeroham goes and smites them for their rebellion. Somehow, they keep waging civil war despite all being dead. Then another fire starts up when the people of Libnah start acting up. Then Jeroham dies.


He's replaced by Ahaziah, who is also evil. I'm pretty sure 'evil' is a synonym for 'human' here. Anyway, he teams up with the other Israelite king, Joram to fight the Syrians. They manage to injure Joram, who retreats to recover. Ahaziah visits him, a story I'm sure will pick back up in the next chapter.

2 Kings, Chapter 7

More miraculous deeds by Elisha.


First, he predicts the commodities markets and commits a little insider trading, telling his disciples how much flour and barley are going to cost the next day. One of them questions him and he threatens to have god smote him.


Next, four lepers enter the city and try to decide whether to just sit there until they die, or to throw themselves on the mercy of the Syrians. I'm pretty sure I know what Newt Gingrich would advise. They decide in the end to beg the Syrians for some food and wander over to their camp, which has been abandoned so quickly the horses are still tied up, because god made some trumpet noises and they thought the Hitites and the Egyptians had joined the Israelites against them, which should make it obvious how easy it actually was to defeat the Syrians in those days. The lepers set to plundering the Syrian tents.


Eventually they decide that hanging out in a deserted camp is a bit creepy, so they go to the king's palace, where they tell the porter what they've just seen. The porter is sufficiently impressed to go and wake the king, who is skeptical, thinking the Syrians are trying to lure his people out of the city. He is convinced by another servant to survey the camp in a chariot. He goes out and isn't attacked so the people come and raid the camp, causing the price of flour and barley to go up (or down, it isn't clear) as Elisha predicted.


The man who questioned Elisha is trampled to death by the returning scavengers. Lovely.

2 Kings, Chapter 6

More miraculous works of Elisha the super-prophet.


Some of the sons of the prophets want to build a new city over by the Jordan river. Elisha agrees to go with them. As one of them is chopping down trees, his shoddy, Wal-mart-bought axe head flies off and lands in the river. The man dispairs because apparently axes are in short supply, but Elisha is there with his magic staff and he touches the water with it and behold! the axe head floats to the surface and starts swimming around. Freaky.


Next, the Syrians invade. No, the transition sequences in this book are not well done. Anyway, they invade and set up camp somewhere. Elisha warns the Israelite king not to go where the camp is. And he doesn't! Apparently that counts as a miracle. The Syrian king is frustrated at his inability to capture the Israelite king and asks his servants which of them is the mole, but it's none of them, because Elisha can hear what he says in his chambers. Spooky! He sends some of his chariots to capture Elisha.


Elisha is in the town of Dothan when the chariots arrive. His servants are afraid, but he's relaxed. He prays and suddenly a bunch of chariots and horses appears out of a mountain and surrounds him. Then he asks god to make the Syrians blind. He also makes them stupid, because Elisha then asks them to follow him, and takes them all the way to Samaria, where he asks god to restore their vision.


The king of Israel isn't quite sure what to do with the Syrians, and asks Elisha if he should smite them or what. Elisha is an early follower of the Geneva convention and orders him not to smite them but instead to give them food and water, then send them home. They don't come back for awhile.


When they do come back, they besiege Samaria for so long that an ass' head becomes worth 80 shekels and people are eating dove dung. One day, the king is taking a tour around the walls when a woman cries out to him that her neighbour proposed eating her son for dinner that day, and the neighbour's son the following day. So they did, only now the neighbour has hidden her son. Bet you never heard this story in Sunday school. He rends his clothes and sends for Elisha, but the people are getting mighty skeptical about god.


To be continued in the next chapter...

2 Kings, Chapter 5

Naaman is the captain of the Syrian army and a leper. His Israelite slave girl tells his wife that Elisha can probably cure his affliction. She tells Naaman, who convinces the Syrian king to write a letter on his behalf begging the services of the prophet. He also sends some money and cloth, which I think were more convincing.


The king, of course, has no idea how to cure leprosy, as no one did then, and has a fit. Elisha hears about it and offers to heal Naaman. His cure: bathe seven times in the Jordan river. Somehow I think even the most devout believer in biblical inerrancy would still opt for drugs in this situation.


Naaman is equally dissatisfied, because he was expecting Elisha to ask for god's help, and he's more than a little put out at traveling all this way to bathe in a river when there are perfectly good rivers at home. His servants remind him that he was prepared to do something difficult for this cure, so he shouldn't balk at doing something so easy. He gives in to the incontrovertible logic and takes his bath, which clears his skin right up. I think we need to chalk this incident up to looser definitions of 'cure.'


Nevertheless, the improvement is enough that he offers a gift to Elisha, who refuses. So Naaman asks if he can take home some earth from Elisha's garden, and vows never to worship another god. He does add a clause to his contract that when the king of Syria goes to worship and he has to help him into the temple, he shouldn't be punished. Then he leaves.


One of Elisha's servants still wants a present, so he chases after him. He catches up to Naaman and says two sons of the prophet have just arrived and want a tribute. The servant takes the loot home and sends his servants away before dumping it on the floor. He goes back to Elisha, who asks where he's been. He lies and says nowhere, but Elisha says he saw him receiving the present and punishes him and his children with leprosy.

2 Kings, Chapter 4

A woman comes up to Elisha and complains that her husband has died and her two sons are about to be put into slavery to pay off his debts. He tells her to go and get all the pots she can find. Then he repeats Elijah's trick with the olive oil, filling all the pots to the brim. Then he tells her to sell the bread and free her sons.


Next, as he's walking, a woman asks him to come inside and 'eat bread.' He starts going there a lot to 'eat bread.' He 'eats' so much 'bread' that the woman turns to her husband and says, Behold now, I perceive that this is an holy man of God, which passeth by us continually. Let us make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall; and let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick: and it shall be, when he cometh to us, that he shall turn in thither. (v 9-10). Finally, it occurs to Elisha to thank the woman for all her 'bread.' He asks her what she wants: an introduction to the king? to the general? Nah, she's happy at home. What she doesn't have is a child, and her husband is old. Elisha promises her a son in one year. It shouldn't take long with all that 'bread eating' he's been doing.


One day a few years later, the kid goes outside to where his father is threshing, complaining of a headache. They carry him into the house, where he promptly dies. His mother lays him on the bed then rides off to find Elisha. She collapses at his feet and tells him the story. He sends his servant home with her with instructions to tap the boy on the face with his staff. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work. Elisha then repeats the trick of lying on the boy, along with a little mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which has better success, as the boy awakes with seven sneezes.


Later on, Elisha comes to Gilgal, where there is a famine. He instructs his servant to put a pot on the fire and cook up some soup. The men, clearly not the sharpest spoons in the drawer, go around gathering up herbs and spices without any knowledge of which ones might be poisonous, and lo and behold, the resulting stew is tainted. Elisha nonchalantly orders them to bring him some meal, which he throws into the pot, curing them all.


For his final party trick Elisha turns a man's few ears of corn and barley into a feast for the whole village.

2 Kings, Chapter 3

Sacrificing your children to prove what a crazy mofo you are and scare off your enemies. The bible, ya'll!


Jeroham becomes king of Israel. He's bad, but not in the Baal-worshiping sense, he worships that second set of golden calves that Jeroboam made. The king of Moab sends him 100 000 lambs, 100 000 sheep, and some wool. Then he rebels.


Jeroham goes to Jehosephat, king of Judah, and asks him to support him against the Moabites. Jehosephat agrees. They raise an army and march seven days towards the Moabites. Along the way, they run out of water. Jeroham is ready to give up and go home, but Jehosephat remembers Elisha and sends for him. Elisha tells Jeroham to fuck off and ask the gods his parents worshipped. He also says god did this to deliver them into the hands of the Moabites. However, because he has some respect for Jehosephat, he agrees to help them and asks for a minstrel. Apparently prophesying goes better with music.


Once he has some accompaniment, Elisha tells them to dig some ditches and in the morning they'll be filled with water. Then they'll be able to beat the Moabites. He instructs them to go all General Sherman on them and burn down everything, including the trees, which lots of people point out is forbidden in Deuteronomy. Big book, lots of verses, who can be expected to keep track of every single one? Only people who really, really care about denying gay rights. Not tree-huggers.

In the morning, as predicted, there is water in the ditches (miraculous dew!). The Moabites see it at sunrise and it's red, so they assume the Israelites slaughtered each other and go to grab the spoils. The Israelites pick them off like fish in a barrel, then tear down their city walls, cover the fields with stones, block the wells, hack down the trees and generally wage total war. The Moabite king tries to escape into Edom, but can't. In desperation, he sacrifices his oldest son, which convinces the Israelites that they are dealing with a proto-Kaiser Soze and gets them to leave. Hm...

2 Kings, Chapter 2

Is this what Sarah Palin means when she talks about 'momma grizzlies'? Seriously read to the end and tell me.


Elijah is getting old and god has promised to carry him to heaven on a whirlwind. As David Plotz points out, this is the first mention of heaven and the only person who goes there on a whirlwind. I think this book was written at different times by different people and so yeah, it's inconsistent. There's some back and forth with Elisha, his apprentice, who knows Elijah's dying, even though he's not supposed to know. Elijah keeps running around the country trying to die in peace, but Elisha insists on going with him each time.


Finally, they come to the Jordan river, which Elijah smacks with his mantle so it parts, just like Moses did! Elijah tells Elisha to make a wish. Elisha asks for a double portion of his spirit, not that he's greedy or anything. Elijah says if he sees him after his death, he'll get it, but otherwise he won't. Then Elijah dies, and not only does a whirlwind appear, a horse and chariot comes, too! Ya'll, I think this might be a metaphor. I think Elijah got an elaborate funeral, possibly featuring show ponies. Elisha cries for a bit, then picks the mantle up and hits the river with it. It parts! I guess this is where the expression 'passing the mantle' comes from.


The other prophets acknowledge him as their new leader, then go looking for Elijah's body. They look for 3 days but don't find it. Then they start getting him to do tricks. First, they say the city's water sucks, so he throws some water in the river and 'heals' it. Then, as he's leaving the city, some kids start making fun of his bald head. He curses them, and two she-bears come out of the forest and kill 42 of them. Awesome! Go team god!


Now, Christian apologists will bend themselves into knots trying to say that the 'small boys' were really men up to age 40 and they deserved it and so on. Here's the thing: this didn't happen. It's a fairy tale written by a bitter bald guy to scare his mouthy kids into shutting up about his follicle issues. Or something like that. My explanation is just as good as the book's.