Yep, that up there was in my devotions this morning! While I have read about the young man falling asleep and to his death during a long winded sermon of Paul’s, I have somehow missed the first one..
Frankly, I am not sure how I have overlooked this…umm, how do I put it??? Interesting story in the life of Elisha:
It is 2 Kings 22:23-25. In case you don’t want to drop what you are doing and look it up yourself:
Another time, Elisha was on his way to Bethel and some little kids came out from the town and taunted him, “What’s up, old baldhead! Out of our way, skinhead!”
Now, this portion of scripture is kind of funny on it’s own, but if you read on it gets a little more serious:
Elisha turned, took one look at them, and cursed them in the name of God. Two bears charged out of the underbrush and knocked them about, ripping them limb from limb—forty-two children in all.
So, yeah…
Ummmm,
I don’t know what to say about this one!
That version up there is from The Message; you can look it up in different versions (as I did) hoping I was missing something in translation, but nope! It’s pretty much the same any way you read it. Other versions are more specific about the fact that it was female bears who did the ripping of the limbs. And, it seems the children stuck with the specific taunt of “baldhead” instead of adding the variety of “skinhead” that The Message uses.
Imagine having to tell this little ditty instead of Noah’s Ark or Moses parting the Red Sea in Sunday school and VBS!
This is going to be my theme of the summer! Every time a fight breaks out, a complaint is made about the food in the pantry, and of course; whenever a name is called or a someone gets teased, I am going to use this as my go to!
“Stop teasing your brother; don’t make me call the bears!”
“Aren’t you glad you were born now, instead of when bears ate you for being a little jerk?!!”
I am going to choose happy this week and probably for the rest of the summer because this passage while quite confusing and very violent shows to me two things:
1). I will never fully understand scripture.
2). I’m pretty sure this is how Big Foot got his start…think about it; a man in an old, dirty cloak calling bears out of the bushes to take care of a band children who taunted bald men! It just evolved over the centuries; I am sure of it.
HAPPY SUMMER!
Consider the Birds... 