That time God went crazy and killed all those children with a bear... only didn't.

One passage of the Bible people struggle with is that time when God went crazy and killed all those poor innocent children with bears just because they were mean, or at least that is how some people would like it to interpreted. It is found in 2^nd Kings 2, right after the bit about flaming chariots. And we do like to misinterpret this passage. If you have ever heard it described as it is above, then I am sorry to say but you have heard a poor interpretation and have probably come to some very strange ideas about God.

So let us take a look at a few things which might help us to understand what is going on here:

Gods people are under threat. Their culture is being threatened, this time from within. Usually we see threats to a way of life from without, an invading force is laying siege to a city. At the time of Elijah and Elisha that threat is coming from within; the rulers of Israel are pulling away from worshipping God and keeping their statutes to becoming a more pluralistic society. God's ways are being pushed to the side and the King is worshipping Baal, as are many of the religious leaders. Many of God's followers have abandoned their homes and are hiding in caves, fearing for their lives.

Elijah is bringing a message that Israel needs to return to worshipping God. As you can imagine, this doesn't go down very well. Remember we had little troubles like the War of Religion where a whole bunch of people killed each other because they had a difference of opinion over the Bible? Heard of anything about the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre or The Thirty Year War? Christianity can turn ugly and violent in the name of God. Of course there are other aspects to all this bloodshed, and we are okay allowing that when we discuss Christianity because we see ourselves as civilised. And yet when it comes to Ancient Israel we prefer to see things in barbaric black and white. More on this later.

There is a religious civil war going on in Ancient Israel one of the most revered characters on the God side, Elijah, has just died.

I realise that just by saying this I am treading on some deep held beliefs, but it is what the Bible is pointing towards. The idea of being 'taken up to Heaven' is found in other Ancient Near Eastern texts, and I am thinking specifically here of Adapa, son of Ea, who is taken up into Heaven looking for eternal life but ultimately is returned to earth, quite mortal. Then there's the flaming chariot itself. These are associated with the sun-god Shamash and the storm-god Hadad, and these two are hugely significant references.

Let us look at Hadad first; he is the storm-god who rides before his chosen king and does stuff like send fire down from heaven (quite a bit like the story of Elijah). Then there is Shamash, who when Gilgamesh is looking to cross the Sea Of Death was told that only Shamash had the power to cross that water, so there is a link to 'crossing over' into death.

Now none of this is conclusive, of course, but a lot of the imagery used indicates that, in Ancient Near Eastern speak, Elijah has died.

Oh yeah, and then his student Elisha goes and tears his cloak and possibly shaves his head, two common signs of mourning.

And now, with Elijah the leader of God's prophets dead, Elisha takes up the mantle. He still isn't popular, and people are out for his blood. Remember folks, there is a religious civil war going on here. And almost immediately he encounters these darling little children who are innocently minding their own business and only calling him names. Except that it's what the Bible says at all.

Most translations say that Elisha encounters 'small boys'. ū·nə·‘ā·rîm in Hebrew. This isn't exactly a wrong translation, only it doesn't give us the full scope of the word. The same word (according to some interpretors) is used in 1^st Kings to describe the 'young' men at court with Rehoboam, those who aren't elders but have 'grown up with' Rehoboam and whose advice he seeks. It is estimated that these men are up to forty years old, so when we encounter them in the story of Elisha we can assume that they are a group of young men, possibly in their late or early teens. Again this might not seem like much to us, a bunch of teenagers causing trouble, only these are socially men, they would have endured their rights of passage into manhood by this age, they are old enough to be conscripted into an army.

And then there is what these young men say to Elisha: Go up, Go up. This is the same words used to describe the death of Elijah. The initial goad goes something like this: Where your leader has gone, you should go the same way, just go die.

There is an obvious implication here of violence.

Then there is the 'bald head' side of it. Now we all have that one friend who has a five head not a forehead, and maybe they are okay with the occasional teasing, surely we don't deserve to be killed just for that. Again, that isn't the implication here. There are two possible interpretations of the 'bald head' reading. Either they were mocking Elisha's mourning and reinforcing the idea that she should die (i.e. be killed) or there is something else just as sinister here.

One reason people went bald back in the Ancient Near East was leprosy. To be a leper meant that you were to be shunned from society, you had no voice, you were to leave your family, with a little luck you would die sooner rather than later. We find evidence of this form of baldness in Leviticus 13, so none of this is without precedence, and had we been alive at the time of Elisha, we would understand better the language being used and its implication.

So at a time of civil war, the leader of God's side has died, his successor has taken over, and group of over forty young men are issuing him death threats. What does God do to protect the new leader of Team Yahweh? Send bears to kill them of course.

Even by the first century, many rabbis were discussing this as just symbolic, that God was commanding even nature to protect the chosen prophet. And it does sound fanciful, two bears against forty two men, it sounds like something the History Channel would do a sensationalised reconstruction of. And it is exactly because this story sounds fanciful that even way back then, God's followers saw it as metaphor. Was it bears or was it the followers of Elisha in this religious civil war period? The story does say bears, and that is hella cool, that Elisha was the Ursine Aquaman of the Ancient Near East. I am just going to leave you to decide on which side you land in that discussion.

Something we cannot avoid is the implication that God perpetuated violence against an oppressor in a time of war. Poor God, can't cut a break. When we see people oppressed and shipped off to death camps today we rail at God for not intervening, when we read the Bible and see that God does intervene we accuse God of being bloodthirsty and murderous and condemning enemy soldiers to Hell.

Some will say that God can do whatever God wants, feel like killing an army? No problem, that's God's will. Call it Manifest Destiny if killing innocents in the name of God makes it easier to swallow. Or just say that God did it directly.

It is wonderful to me that these passages are held in such disdain. It opens the conversation on a Just War Theory, that sometimes it is okay to kill others. Maybe the more people who are revolted by the idea of killing as a means of self defence will spark a debate around gun ownership, or do we only dislike killing when God does it? Is it okay for people to claim to love God and yet possess the means to kill others?

Of course, in the Ancient Near East, God would be killing people, that is just what gods did. Part of having a god was having a celestial force to fight while you fought. In our Bibles when Daniel is praying to God in exile an Angel comes and says about how they are fighting the opposing forces and that is why God couldn't answer his prayer sooner, God was a little busy getting in a fight.

These ideas seem odd to us, and that isn't a bad thing. The ancient world understood itself, and understood God as an integral part of that world. By the time we reach the Classical World, the one Jesus knew, we see far less of that idea of God, we see something far more Greek in influence which fitted that world.

And here is the big thing, if God can fit in those two very different times, maybe it is okay for us to find God in our own, not being a bastion of a bygone age. Jesus recognised that, and now maybe the call is for us to do the same.