Monday, July 11, 2022

David Marcus on Elisha and the rude boys of Bethel

  

Elisha and the rude boys of Bethel

 

The final piece of evidence concerning juvenile delinquency in the Hebrew Bible is in 2 Kings 2. The prophet Elisha, on his way to Bethel, is accosted by a throng of children who jeer him and call him “baldy.” Elisha curses them whereupon some bears come out of the woods and maul the children. Verses 23-25 read as follows:

 

From there he went up to Bethel. As he was going up the road, some little boys came out of the town and jeered at him, saying, “Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!” He turned around and looked at them and cursed them in the name of the Lord. Thereupon, two she-bears came out of the words and mangled forty-two of the children. He went on from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.

 

The action by Elisha, and the ensuing cruel punishment, has troubled both ancient and modern commentators alike. Both groups interpret the story as a fable. Arising out of the discussion of this passage in the Talmud (BT Sotah 46b-47a), two of the terms used in the story have entered the later language as an idiom connoting an imaginary tale or a complete fabrication. Thus the Hebrew phrase lō’ dubbîm welō ya’ar literally means “no she-bears and no forest,” and describes something completely imaginary, a cock-and-bull story. There were really no she-bears, nor was there really a forest, it is all made up!

 

In the same vein modern scholars have interpreted the story as a Bubenmärchen (literally, a boys’ folktale), a type of folktale used to frighten the young into respect for their elders (J. A. Montgomery, Kings, ICC [Edinburgh, 1951, 355). The question that concerns us is: are these boys juvenile delinquents? Mere taunting of prophets or others does not appear to us as delinquency, but the author of the story, and presumably his listeners, may possibly have thought it a grave enough offense—even if only fictional—to warrant such a severe penalty. In this respect it parallels the severe penalties which were stipulated for showing contempt to parents. Apparently contempt of parents has to be interpreted in its widest sense as contempt of elders in general, which would then certainly include such authority figures as prophets. (David Marcus, "Juvenile Delinquency in the Bible and the Ancient Near East," Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 13, no. 1 [January 1981]: 51)