2 Kings 13:14 - Exposition

Now Elisha, was fallen sick of his sickness whereof he died. Elisha, who was grown to manhood before the death of Ahab (l Kings 2 Kings 19:19 ), must have been at least eighty years old at the accession of Joash: His illness was therefore probably the result of mere natural decay. And Joash the King of Israel came down unto him. The visit of a king to a prophet, in the way of sympathy and compliment, would be a very unusual occurrence at any period of the world's history. In the East, and at the period of which the historian is treating, it was probably unprecedented. Prophets waited upon kings, not kings upon prophets: If a king came to a prophet's house, it was likely to be on an errand of vengeance ( 2 Kings 6:32 ), not on one of kindness and sympathy. The act of Joash certainly implies a degree of tenderness and consideration on tits part very uncommon at the time, and is a fact to which much weight should be attached in any estimate that we form of his character. He was, at any rate, a prince of an amiable disposition. And wept over his face — i.e; leant over the sick man as he lay on his bed, and shed tears, some of which fell on him— and said, O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. As Elisha had addressed Elijah, when he was quitting the earth ( 2 Kings 2:12 ), so Joash now addressed the dying Elisha, using exactly the same words, not (certainly) by a mere coincidence. Joash must have known the circumstances of Elijah's departure, which had probably been entered before this in the 'Book of the Kings,' and intended pointedly to allude to them. "O my father, my father," he meant to say, "when Elijah was taken from the earth, thou didst exclaim that the defense of Israel was gone" (see the comment on 2 Kings 2:12 ): "how much more must it be true that it is gone now, when thou art on the point of departure! He left thee as his successor; thou leavest no one!"