Verse 23
(23) Went up.—From Jericho, in the plain, Elisha goes now to visit the prophetic community established at Beth-el, the chief seat of the illicit cultus.
By the way.—The way par excellence; the highroad leading directly up to the gates of the town.
Little children.—Young boys (or, lads). Na’ar is not used rhetorically here, as in 1 Chronicles 29:1; 2 Chronicles 13:7. The boys who mocked Elisha might be of various ages, between six or seven years and twenty. “Little children” would not be likely to hit upon a biting sarcasm, nor to sally forth in a body to insult the prophet (2 Kings 2:24).
Mocked.—Habakkuk 1:10. In Syriac and Chaldee the root implies “to praise, and to praise ironically,” i.e., to deride.
Go up.—Not “as Elijah was reported to have done;” for the Bethelites knew no more of that than the prophets of Jericho. The word obviously refers to what Elisha was himself doing at the time (2 Kings 2:23). He was probably going up the steep road slowly, and his prophet’s mantle attracted attention.
Thou bald head.—Baldness was a reproach (Isaiah 3:17; Isaiah 15:2), and suspicious as one of the marks of leprosy (Leviticus 13:43). Elisha, though still young—he lived fifty years after this (2 Kings 13:14)—may have become bald prematurely.
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