Finding the Spirit of Elijah in the Story of Elisha and the Lost Axe Head: 2 Kings 6:1-7 in the Light of 2 Kings 2

Rickie Moore

doi:10.17159/2312-3621/2018/v31n3a21

Abstract

Against a long-standing trend in biblical scholarship to demean and diminish the significance and purpose of the Elisha story of the lost axe head in 2 Kings 6:1-7, this paper shows this story’s strategic purpose in relation to a central theological theme of the Elijah-Elisha complex and the entire Kings corpus. By pointing out the striking literary parallels and connections between this Elisha story and the story of Elisha’s receiving the mantle of Elijah in 2 Kings 2, together with this latter story’s central thematic role not only in the Elijah-Elisha materials but in the Kings narrative as a whole, the story of the lost axe head reveals the pivotal divine purpose of transacting spiritual succession from one generation to the next. https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2018/v31n3a21

Highlights

Where is the spirit of Elijah, in the story of Elisha and the lost axe head? My title poses this question, and the following study proposes to answer it
Viewing 2 Kings 6:1-7 inter-textually in the light of a prime thematic thrust of the Elijah narratives generally and the culminating Elijah story of 2 Kings 2 in particular, this study suggests that this Elisha story about the lost axe head serves the key concern of these Elijah materials to see a divinely generated, life-empowering endowment passed from one generation to the
The axe head narrative is brief and compactly told as follows: (1) the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, “See the place where we dwell with you is too small for us. (2) Let us go, please, to the Jordan and take there, each man a timber, and make for ourselves there a place to dwell.”

Summary

Introduction

Where is the spirit of Elijah, in the story of Elisha and the lost axe head? My title poses this question, and the following study proposes to answer it. The story of the prophet Elisha recovering a lost axe head from the Jordan River in 2 Kings 6:1-7 has not occupied an especially distinguished place in the history of biblical interpretation.

Results

Conclusion