Very strange verses in Kings

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Interesting thread , this is well aligned with St John of Damascene’s comment that those who are against the saints are against all that is good and perfect and well in fact against God.
 
Logic goes out the window in many biblical stories…that’s very obvious. I don’t find your responses credible in the least either.
 
It’s not my responses, it’s Fr Grondin’s discussions of Talmudic tradition. As Joe said, why don’t you find these credible? He’s a good apologist and has written many pieces for Catholic Answers.
 
I will take the easy interpretation: the literal one. It happened as described and is no allegory.

Lesson: you don’t mess around with God’s men. The consequences could be grave.

These boys weren’t just “teasing.” They were mocking not just anyone, not even just “a prophet of God”, but The Man himself, Elisha. The guy who can make an ax head float. The Chuck Norris of Omrid-era Israel.

Elisha didn’t call on bears. He cursed the boys for their sacrilege. The decision to send the bears was God’s, and since God is God, he probably had his reasons.

The other thing we draw from this is to change our perspective. Instead of starting with our own effete, lame, snowflake 21st-century sensitivities and say “oh, the boys didn’t deserve that”, we start with, “those boys DID deserve it had it coming.” That teaches us what WE deserve and have coming. Then we realize how merciful God is to US because instead of mauling us AS WE DESERVE, he spares us instead and gives us the chance to repent.

What happened is between him and those boys. We better be on the lookout for our own souls.
 
The allegory one just has the fact that it’s a tradition and that’s pretty much it. The other ones I like and it makes more sense.
 
PeaceBeWithYou said:
I’m currently reading the book of Kings. 2 Kings 23-24 is just bizarre. Elisha calling down a curse in the name of the Lord on boys for calling him ‘baldy.’ Then presumably God sent two bears to maul the 42 boys and I’m guessing kill them? God kills countless people in the Bible so I suppose this isn’t a surprise. I struggle with all the bloodshed though. Are we to not take this story literally? What lesson is it teaching?
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They were disrespectfully saying “go away”.

Haydock Commentary
Ver. 24. Cursed them. This curse, which was followed by so visible a judgment of God, was not the effect of passion, or of a desire of revenging himself; but of zeal for religion, which was insulted by these boys, in the person of the prophet, and of a divine inspiration; God being determined to punish in this manner the inhabitants of Bethel, (the chief seat of the calf-worship) who had trained up their children in a prejudice against the true religion and its ministers. Ch.

— The boys themselves were not so little as not to be aware of the insult they were offering to a minister of the God of Juda; and probably they acted thus out of hatred to him, at the instigation of their idolatrous parents. Sanc. C.

— Lord. He called on him (M.) to revenge his own cause, (H.) “that the people might learn to take care of their souls, by the fear of death.” S. Aug. D.
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This is a video explains the story quite well. It’s from an Evangelical scholar who specializes in defending Christianity against Muslim polemics (which is why it starts with Muslim looking man). I think it’s really well done. Evangelicals really know the Bible. It’s pretty much all that they do. I learn a lot from them.

 
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