2 Kings 2:23

23. Unto Beth-el Whence he had lately come down with Elijah, and where was a school of the prophets. 2 Kings 2:3.

Little children Youths; persons who had attained to youthful manhood, as distinguished from the middle aged and the old. The word נער is often used for a youth, without determining at all his exact age, and with קשׂן , little, means a young man who has not arrived at maturity, a lad. Compare 1 Samuel 20:35; 1 Kings 11:17. ילדים , rendered children in 2 Kings 2:24, is often used in the same sense, and in 1 Kings 12:8 is applied to the young men who had grown up with Rehoboam, in contrast with the old men who had acted as the counsellors of Solomon. So that by little children, here, we are not to understand infantile or irresponsible children, but young persons from fifteen to twenty or twenty-five years old. Some have plausibly conjectured that they composed the school of some teacher in that city. If so, the school was probably established to offset and counteract the influence of the school of the prophets in that place, and to advance the interests of the calf-worship, which had its principal seat at Beth-el. The pupils of such a school would naturally soon learn to mock and scoff at every holy person and thing connected with the true worship of Jehovah. They were, as Kitto says, “a rabble of young blackguards.”

Go up That is, ascend into heaven. They had heard of Elijah’s ascension, and were taught to treat the story with ridicule; and now when Elisha, the most distinguished follower of Elijah, is approaching the town, they go out on purpose to meet him and treat him with derision.

Bald head If Elisha were really bald headed, it was not the result of age, for he was yet a comparatively young man. But the word might have been applied to Elisha out of pure contempt, and not because he was actually bald. The term “was one of great indignity with the Israelites baldness being usually seen among them as the effect of the loathsome disease of leprosy. It was a term of contempt, equivalent to calling him a mean, unworthy fellow, a social outcast. In this sense it is still used as a term of abuse in the farther East, and is often applied as such to men who have ample heads of hair.” Kitto.