Scholarly Essays

For centuries, Elisha has been remembered as the prophet who called bears to maul forty-two innocent children. But the Hebrew vocabulary, the historical significance of Bethel, and the military and political context of the Northern Kingdom point toward another possibility: the people who confronted Elisha may have been young men associated with the defense or security of Bethel. If so, the traditional accusation against Elisha rests on a profoundly misleading reading of the story.