Yet right in the midst of all this self-serving prayer are some of the most noble and sublime utterances of the human spirit…. Or consider the same Elisha who had cursed the children, on another day showing mercy to a barren woman of Shunem and prophesying over her: ‘At this season, in due time, you shall embrace a son’ (2 Kings 4:16)….

In Simple Prayer, the good, the bad, and the ugly are all mixed together.”

–Richard Foster, Prayer pages 9 & 10 (where he also considers the good, the bad, and the ugly of Moses and the Psalmist).

Richardson, my point is that the curse is coincidentally effective. This morning I prayed for sunshine so that I could mow the lawn.

Hobbins, that’s the issue I’m wrestling with. Stay tuned for my next post. I’m certainly not denying inspiration. On the contrary asserting a common-sense understanding of the Bible in keeping with the authorial intention.

Excellent conversation. These are questions most people are afraid to ask, because they are awkward questions, but the questions are real.

My observation: often God gives us what we ask for, even if what we ask for will harm others, ourselves, or both.

That’s how Israel got a king, a central government. Because God gave Israel what it wanted, not what they needed.

God does not treat us like puppets. He allows himself to be used and abused by us. The history of God’s people, except for the part that is God’s sheer and amazing grace, is a story of our selfish use and abuse of God’s gifts.

Sometimes I hear: well, that’s what Israel did, or that what’s the Catholics do. But we true Christians (Baptists, Pentecostals, the truly regenerate), we don’t do that.

This, of course, is sheer wishful thinking.

David,

If you write off this passage as an invention and further, an indecent invention, I would suggest that you are denying that the passage is inspired.

For consistency’s sake, there are a number of passages in the NT you will have to deny inspiration to as well. Even if you do not deny their inspiration openly, you will deny it effectively.

This is how I hear you; please say so if I have misunderstood.

You are suggesting that the 2 Kgs passage does not tell us the truth about God and about man.

God is not anything like what the passage suggests God is like. He doesn’t allow himself to be crucified by us. Furthermore, someone who is truly filled with God’s Spirit is incapable of being as flawed and imperfect as Elisha (or Peter, or the slaughtered saints under the alter crying out for redress) reveals himself to be in this passage.

Parallel Passage: 2 Kings 1:9-12. Let’s face it, fire coming from heaven to toast 100 men just following orders ain’t a natural occurance. Somewhere we’ve either under-estimated the power of curses, or the wrath of God, or both. Probably both.

This is where I had my key problem with David’s exegesis – that the acts of the bears are made ‘coincidental’ (though what if we said they were ‘providential’?). It is not just that Elisha curses, but that his curse ‘works’.