Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Kings · About this commentary
The Ax Head and the Iron
2 Kings 6:1-7
1 The sons of the prophets said to Elisha, “See now, the place where we live and meet with you is too small for us. · WEB
A borrowed tool sinks in the Jordan, and the prophet who parted that river stops to recover it — the smallest miracle in the book.
"See now, the place where we live and meet with you is too small for us" 2 Kings 6:1.
The prophetic community is growing and needs a bigger house, so they propose to cut their own timber by the Jordan. It is a building project undertaken by poor men with borrowed tools, and Elisha is asked to come along — please be pleased to go with your servants 2 Kings 6:3 — for no stated reason except that they want him there.
As one was cutting down a tree, the ax head fell into the water. Then he cried out and said, "Alas, my master! For it was borrowed" 2 Kings 6:5.
The distress is about the borrowing. Iron was expensive and this man does not own the tool; the loss is a debt he cannot pay, of the same kind that nearly cost a widow her sons two chapters earlier 2 Kings 4:1. His cry is the honest reflex of somebody poor who has just broken something belonging to someone else.
The man of God asked, "Where did it fall?" He showed him the place 2 Kings 6:6.
The question is practical, which is worth noticing in a passage about a miracle. He asks for the location, and the man has to point to it.
He cut down a stick, threw it in there, and made the iron float. He said, "Take it." So he put out his hand and took it 2 Kings 6:6–7.
A stick does not raise an ax head, any more than salt heals a spring or meal detoxifies a stew, and the account keeps its habit of attaching an ordinary object to a word. The last instruction is the passage's character in three syllables: take it. The iron surfaces and the man has to reach in and pick it up himself.
It is the smallest miracle in the book and almost the most striking for that reason. There is no king present, no army, no theological argument being settled — nothing hangs on it except one workman's liability for a neighbor's ax. Set it beside the same prophet dictating Syrian troop movements in the next paragraph, and the range is the point: the man who tells the king where the enemy will camp will also stop a building project to find a piece of iron in a river because somebody would otherwise be in debt over it.
That is the shape of Elisha's whole ministry, and the reason this book gives him so much room. Elijah's miracles are mostly public judgments; Elisha's are mostly private kindnesses, done for people with no standing in a kingdom already under sentence.
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