When Bears Attack
How could God condone the killing of little children? While these verses may seem strange to unbelievers, Christians understand that there is more to this event than meets the eye.
2 Kings 2:23-24
Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him, and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!”So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.
I’ve seen this particular story being recalled countless times by unbelievers to show God’s lack of love. However, there’s much more to the story than we read in these two verses.
THE MOCKERY
First, the phrase “Go up” these kids were shouting most likely refers to how Elijah (Elisha’s mentor) didn’t die but was simply called by God (2 Kings 2:11). The kids were not just mocking Elisha, but also Elijah and God. These weren’t teenagers; these were young kids. Even though the Hebrew for “boy/youth” is used here, which can vary in its usage when describing age, it is preceded by “קטנים” which means young. These were relatively young kids.
APOSTATE BETHEL
Second, the prophet Elisha was going to Bethel, which was a center of apostasy in those days.
You see one kid, or even five, calling you bad names, you could just shrug it off, but if you have dozens, or hundreds, of kids calling you names and threatening you, it becomes a dangerous situation. This event reminds me of a case in Europe that occurred some years ago. A man asked kids, no older than 12, to stop throwing eggs at his car, but there were 8-10 of them, and they sent an adult to the hospital. The kids started to beat him up badly, and he ended up in a coma for a while.
AN ACTUAL DANGER
Third, another point to keep in mind is that it wasn’t just 42 kids total in there; it was 42 kids that the bears managed to maul. After all, once the first kids started to get torn apart, I’m sure everyone started to run for their lives rather than stand in a perfect line waiting, one by one, to be attacked by bears. I wouldn’t be surprised if their numbers were in the hundreds. It was a large pack of miscreants.
And finally, Elisha must have feared for his life to have God send out those two bears to defend him. The fact that God sent out those bears to attack those kids, rather than just scare them off, is just further proof that the prophet was in real danger.
SEVERITY MUST NOT BE MINIMIZED
It is worth noting that I’ve read some progressive teachers say that the attack by the bears was just to break this group up, and the word “mauled” meant there were only wounds, not casualties. The Hebrew word used for mauled here is “ותבקענה” which literally means to be ripped apart/ripped open (or as the NET Bible reads: “ripped to pieces”). Those two bears tore apart the kids who were trying to inflict injury on the prophet. Stop trying to make hard passages of Scripture palatable to unregenerated hearts.
CONCLUSION
Just as the people who rejected and mocked the prophets of old were punished for it, so are the people in today’s world still being punished for the rejection and mockery of Christ, who died for their sins. The punishment for such mockery and rejection will be known to them once they stand before God, but it will be too late for them to repent of their sins by then. Repent of your sins and believe in the gospel while you still can.