Biblion Bible Commentary
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Strike the Ground
2 Kings 13:1-25
1 In the twenty-third year of Joash the son of Ahaziah, king of Judah, Jehoahaz the son of Jehu began to reign over Israel in Samaria for seventeen years. · WEB
A dying prophet gives a king arrows and a test of appetite — and a corpse thrown into his tomb stands up.
Jehoahaz begged Yahweh, and Yahweh listened to him; for he saw the oppression of Israel 2 Kings 13:4.
The northern kingdom is being ground down — Hazael has left it fifty horsemen and ten chariots, like the dust in threshing 2 Kings 13:7 — and a king who did that which was evil prays, and is heard. God gives Israel a deliverer and they go on living in their tents as before 2 Kings 13:5, and then keep the calves and the Asherah anyway 2 Kings 13:6. Mercy given to people who do not change is one of this book's steadiest reports.
Now Elisha became sick with the illness of which he died; and Joash the king of Israel came down to him, and wept over him, and said, "My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" 2 Kings 13:14.
The king weeping at the bedside quotes Elisha's own cry at Elijah's departure, word for word 2 Kings 2:12, and he means exactly what it meant then: this man was the nation's real defense. A king with ten chariots left is grieving the loss of his actual military asset — and it is a northern king who did evil in Yahweh's sight who understands it well enough to say so.
"Open the window eastward"; and he opened it. Then Elisha said, "Shoot!" 2 Kings 13:17.
The prophet's hands go on the king's hands on the bow, and the arrow is fired east, toward the lost territory across the Jordan, and named as Yahweh's arrow of victory over Syria. It is a promise delivered as an action.
He said to the king of Israel, "Strike the ground"; and he struck three times, and stopped 2 Kings 13:18.
The second act has no stated number, and that is the test. The king strikes three times and stops, and Elisha is angry: you should have struck five or six times. Then you would have struck Syria until you had consumed it, but now you will strike Syria just three times 2 Kings 13:19.
The scene is easy to misread as arbitrary. What it measures is desire. Given a symbol of victory and no limit on it, Joash performs the minimum required by the instruction — enough to comply, not enough to want anything. The deliverance is real and it is sized to the appetite of the man receiving it, and the book duly reports three victories and no more 2 Kings 13:25. It is the same principle as the widow's borrowed jars, where the oil stopped when the vessels ran out 2 Kings 4:6.
As soon as the man touched Elisha's bones, he revived, and stood up on his feet 2 Kings 13:21.
The last Elisha miracle happens after his funeral, and by accident. A burial party spots raiders, dumps the body into the nearest tomb, and the dead man stands up. The account is entirely matter-of-fact and offers no interpretation.
What it does is close the double portion. Elijah raised one child, Elisha raised one child, and then one more life comes out of Elisha's grave — the tally completed after the prophet is past benefiting from it. It also says something about the God being served: the power was never a property of the man, so his death did not end it.
But Yahweh was gracious to them, and had compassion on them, and favored them because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 2 Kings 13:23.
And the chapter's summary names the reason the northern kingdom still exists. Not repentance, not reform, not Jehu's dynasty — a covenant made with three men centuries earlier. The clause at the end is the one to notice: he didn't cast them from his presence as yet. The reprieve has a date on it, and the book knows what it is.
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