Elijah Taken Up, Elisha Commissioned

"As the LORD liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee." At Bethel and at Jericho the sons of the prophets ask Elisha: "Knowest thou that the LORD will take away thy master from thy head to day?" "Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace." Elijah wraps his mantle, strikes the Jordan, "and they two went over on dry ground."

"Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me." "Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so." "There appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof."

Elisha strikes the waters with Elijah's mantle: "Where is the LORD God of Elijah?" They part. Fifty men search three days for Elijah and do not find him. At Jericho he throws salt into the spring: "I have healed these waters." On the road to Bethel "there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head." He curses them in the name of the LORD; "there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them."

A "double portion"

Hebrew pi-shnayim is the firstborn son's share of inheritance (Deuteronomy 21:17): two shares. Elisha asks to be Elijah's heir, not necessarily twice as powerful. The library's Greek and the Vulgate render "double spirit."

The bears

Ne'arim qetannim can mean small boys, or young men (the same word ne'arim is used of soldiers and servants). "Tare" (bq') means mauled or tore; the text does not say all forty-two died. Bethel was the royal sanctuary of the northern cult, and "Go up" may mock Elijah's ascent. None of this removes the story's severity; readers have struggled with it for centuries, and the site does not explain it away.

Chariots of fire

The fiery chariot echoes the heavenly armies of 6:17 and the title Elisha himself receives at his death (13:14). Modern readings of it as a spacecraft are speculation with no evidence; the image belongs to ancient descriptions of God's heavenly host.