2 Kings 13:10-21

The Reign of Joash or Jehoash of Israel. During this reign Elisha died. He is represented, as in 2 Kings 6, as Israel's champion in the great war with Syria, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof (cf. 2 Kings 2:12).

2 Kings 13:16 f. The action is a piece of sympathetic magic (cf. Exodus 17:9; Joshua 8:18; Joshua 8:26), but it is something more. The Hebrews thought of the prophetic word as achieving its own fulfilment (Isaiah 55:10 f., Ezekiel 37:4). Still more would this be so with the prophetic act, for such the king's act was made by Elisha's participation. It is not mere symbolism, it does not simply announce the future, it sets in motion the forces which are to create the future. Hence the prophet's anger at the king's slackness, when two or three more arrows would have sealed Syria's doom. The eastward direction is rather strange. Damascus, the object to be hit, lay more to the N. than the E. On Aphek see 1 Kings 20:26 *.

2 Kings 13:21. In primitive psychology the bones of the dead are often believed to retain the psychical powers possessed in life. See ERE, ii. 791f. A. S. P.]