Elisha - Pt 4

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you.” And Elisha said, “Please let there be a double portion of your spirit on me.” And he said, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it shall be so for you, but if you do not see me, it shall not be so.” And as they still went on and talked, behold, chariots of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it and he cried, “My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” And he saw him no more. Then he took hold of his own clothes and tore them in two pieces. And he took up the cloak of Elijah that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. Then he took the cloak of Elijah that had fallen from him and struck the water, saying, “Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?” And when he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over. Now when the sons of the prophets who were at Jericho saw him opposite them, they said, “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.” And they came to meet him and bowed to the ground before him. And they said to him, “Behold now, there are with your servants fifty strong men. Please let them go and seek your master. It may be that the Spirit of the LORD has caught him up and cast him upon some mountain or into some valley.” And he said, “You shall not send.” But when they urged him till he was ashamed, he said, “Send.” They sent therefore fifty men. And for three days they sought him but did not find him. And they came back to him while he was staying at Jericho, and he said to them, “Did I not say to you, ‘Do not go’?” (2 Kings 2:9-18 ESV). The Hebrew language is as different from English as any two languages can be. The structure of its grammar, the ways that words connect to make meaning, and even the range of meaning of individual words make reading the Hebrew Bible a profoundly cross-cultural experience. Not to mention a perennial challenge for translators! One passage that has confounded translators for centuries has to do with how many times Elisha strikes the waters of the Jordan River. The confusion is created by a peculiar grammatical construction in the Hebrew. The act of striking the water is narrated twice, once before and once after Elisha’s cry: “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” (v. 14). The second narration can read either: “When he had struck the waters, they were parted,” or “And again, he struck the waters.” So, did he strike once or twice? Does it matter? It does! If Elisha had to strike twice, this means his first attempt at dividing the waters failed, and he had to call on the name of the Lord and try again. I think Elisha’s first act as a prophet was a failure. The waters did not part for him immediately. But he reoriented himself toward God and tried again, this time with success! Maybe this is a reminder that if we ask for the “double portion” (more on that tomorrow), we should be prepared to persevere even in the face of what seems to be failure.