GETTING BIBLICAL
The Bible’s Elisha Explains Why He Made 2 Bears Maul 42 Children
2 Kings 2:23–25:
23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.
Hi, everyone. Elisha from the Old Testament here. I’ve been paying close attention to all your contemporary generation’s buzz about social justice and “Cancel Culture,” and I’d like to clear the air about a certain incident in my past that nowadays with your advanced morality maybe reflects a little poorly on my character.
Specifically, I’m talking about the incident with the two bears.
I may be infamous in top-ten lists of “weirdest stories from the Bible,” but you moderns need to remember that we’re all products of the time periods we were brought up in, and the era I lived in was quite different from 2023. I hope you don’t judge my character too harshly based upon one bad day I had 2,800 years ago. Of course, I’m not trying to make an excuse for my behavior, I’m only trying to explain the context of that fateful day.
