ELISHA
159
ELISHA
parting, does not anywhere appear, but there is no liint of his ever having worn it. Elijah was emphat- ically a destroyer. His mission was to slay and to demolish wliatever opposed or interfered with the rights of Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts. The nation had adopted a god of power and force, and they were shown that he was feebleness itself compared with the God whom they had forsaken. But after Elijah the de- stroyer comes Elisha the healer. " There shall not be dew nor rain these years" is the earliest proclamation of the one. " There shall not be from thence any dearth or barren land" is the first miracle of the other. What may have been the disposition of Elijah when not engaged in the actual service of his mission we have unhappily no means of knowing. Like most men of sti'ong, stern character, he probably had affec- tions not less strong. But it is impossible to conceive that he was accustomed to the practice of that benefi- cence which is so strikinglj^ characteristic of Elisha, and which comes out at almost every step of his ■ca- reer. Still more impossible is it to conceive him ex- ercising the tolerance towards the person and the re- ligion of foreigners for which Elisha is remarkable — in communication, for example, with Naaman or Ha- zael ; in the one case calming with a word of peace the scruples of the new proselyte, anxious to reconcile the due homage to Kimmon with his allegiance to Je- hovah ; in the other case contemplating with tears, but still with tears only, the evil which the future king of Syria was to bring upon his country'. That Baal-worship was prevalent in Israel even after the efforts of Elijah, and that Samaria was its chief seat, we have the uvidence of the narrative of Jehu to as- sure us (2 Kings x, 18-27), but his mission is not so direct!)' to rebuke and punish it. In the eulogium of Elisha contiiined in the catalogue of worthies of Ec- clus. xlviii, 12-14 — the only later mention of him save the passing allusion of Luke iv, 21- — his special char- acter is more strongly brought out than in the earlier narrative : " Whilst he lived he was not moved b}' the presence of any prince, neither could any bring him into subjection. No word could overcome him, and after his death his bodj' prophesied. He did wonders in his life, and at his death were his works marvel- lous."
This thaumaturgic view of Elisha is indeed the true key to his Biblical history, for he evidently appears in these records chiefly as a worker of prodigies, a pre- dicter of future events, a revealer of secrets, and things happening out of sight or at a distance. The working of wonders seems to be a natural accompaniment of false religions, and we may be sure that the Baal-wor- ship of Samaria and Jezrcel was not free from such arts. The story of 1 Kings xxii shows that even be- fore Elisha's time the prophets had come to be looked upon as diviners, and were consulted, not on questions of truth and justice, nor even as depositaries of the pur- poses and will of the Deity, l)ut as able to foretell how an adventure or a project was likelj' to turn out, wheth- er it migiit lie embarked in without personal danger or loss. But if this degradation is inherent in false wor- ship, it is no less a principle in true religion to adjust itself to a state of things already existing, and out of the forms of the alien or the false to produce the pow- er of the true. Thus Elisha appears to have met the habits of his fcdlow-countrymen. He wrought, with- out reward and without ceremonial, the cures and res- torations for which the soothsayers of Baalzebub at Ekron were consulted in vain : he warned his sovereign of dangers from the Syrians which the whole four hun- dred of his prophets had not succeeded in predicting to Ahal), and thus in one sense we maj' say that no less signally than Elijah he vanquished the false gods on their own field.
The frequency and unparalleled nature of his mir- acles also furnish perhaps tjie best explanation of Eli- jah's behest of "a double portion of his own spirit"
upon Elisha (2 Kings, ii, 9). The ordinary meaning put upon this phrase (see, for example, J. H. Newman, Subj. of the Da;/, p. 191) is that Elisha possessed double the power of Elijah. This, though sanctioned by the renderings of the Vulgate and Luther, and adopted by a long series of commentators from Eiihraem Syrus to Krummacher, would appear not to be the real force of the words. The expression is Cld ""S, literally "a mouth of two" — a double mouthful — the same jihrase emploj'ed in Deut. xxi, 17 to denote the amount of a father's goods which were the right and token of a first-born son. Thus the gift of the "double portion" of Elijah's spirit was but the legitimate conclusion of the act of adoption which began with the casting of the mantle at Abcl-meholah years before. It was this which Elisha sought — not a gift of the spirit of prophecy twice as large as Elijah himself possessed. This carries im- probability on the verj' face of it ; for with what propri- ety' could a man be asked to leave as an inheritance to another double of what he himself possessed ? Nor did Elisha get an}' such superlative endowment ; his posi- tion as a prophet was altogether of a dependent and secondary nature as compared with Elijah's ; and the attempts that have been made to invert the relation of the one to the other, proceed upon arbitrary' and super- ficial considerations. Not less arbitrary is the view of Ewald, that the request of Elisha must be understood as indicating a wish for two thirds only of Elijah's spirit (Gesch. iii, 507) — a view that requires no refuta- tion. The proper explanation is, that Elisha here re- garded Elijah as the head of a great spiritual house- hold, which included himself as the first-born and all who had since been added to the fraternitj' under the name of" the sons of the prophets ;" and what he now sought was, that he might be constituted Elijah's heir in the spiritual vineyard, by getting the first-born's double portion, and therewitii authority to continue the work. For a curious calculation bj' Peter Damianus that Elijah performed twelve miracles and Elisha twen- ty-four, see the Ada Sanctorum, July 20.