2 Kings 13:21

21. They spied a band of men That is, a band of those marauding Moabites just mentioned. The sight of the invaders caused the haste with which they cast the dead man into the wrong sepulchre.

When the man was let down Literally, The man went and touched against the bones of Elisha. That is, his body was thrust into the tomb, so that it came in contact with the bones of Elisha. “Among the Israelites the dead were neither enclosed in coffins nor covered with earth, but only wrapped in linen cloth and laid in tombs, so that one body might touch another, and, on returning to life, would not be hindered from moving. It was not the dead body of Elisha, but the living God, that gave life again to the dead; and Omnipotence worked by contact with the dead Elisha to show that the Divine efficiency that was in the prophet had not disappeared from Israel with his death. The special object of the miracle was to convince most effectually people and king that the promise of victory over the Syrians was sure, and would come to pass just as the dying Elisha had announced to king Joash by the laying of his hands upon the hands of the king. The historian intimates this object when, immediately after the account of this miracle, he records the historical fulfillment of that promise. 2 Kings 13:22-25.” Keil.

On the contrast between Elijah and Elisha, see note at the beginning of chap. 4. “It was Elijah,” says the son of Sirach, “who was covered with a whirlwind; and Elisha was filled with his spirit; whilst he lived he was not moved by any prince, neither could any bring him into subjection. No word could overcome him, and after his death his body prophesied. He did wonders in his life, and at his death were his works marvellous.”

The miracle of Elisha’s bones has been the subject both of criticism and of allegory. The rationalist, of course, admits no miracle. In his view the deceased was a person only apparently dead, fallen into a trance, perhaps, but suddenly brought to his senses again by the shock of being roughly cast into Elisha’s tomb. Others admit a real miracle, but seem to look upon it with suspicion. “This,” says Clarke, “is the first, and, I believe, the last, account of a true miracle performed by the bones of a dead man. And yet on it, and such like, the whole system of miracle-working relics has been founded by the popish Church.” “Elisha’s works,” says Stanley, “stand alone in the Bible in their likeness to the acts of mediaeval saints. There alone, in the sacred history, the gulf between biblical and ecclesiastical miracles almost disappears. In this, as in so much besides, his life and miracles are not Jewish but Christian.” By others the miracle is made a type of Jesus’s power to raise to life by his own death and burial those who are dead in trespasses and sins. “So, too,” says Wordsworth, “the apostles and evangelists being dead yet speak to all the world in the Gospels and Epistles, and by the word of God in them they raise souls to life eternal.”