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And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

New Defender's Study Bible Notes

2:24 cursed them. Elisha did not curse “little children,” as the King James Version translates the phrase (II Kings 2:23). The Hebrew expression frequently connotes young, unmarried men of any age up to about thirty. This was evidently a gang of young hoodlums, instigated by the heathen priests of Baal to ridicule Elijah’s successor. The jeering exhortation to “go up, thou baldhead” (II Kings 2:23) was both a sarcastic reference to Elijah’s supposed ascension (which they disbelieved) and a personal insult to God’s chosen prophet. This challenge to Jehovah and the authority of His prophet could not be excused, so God made good on a warning issued long before: “And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me;...I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children” (Leviticus 26:21-22).


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