Meditation

Meditation — December 15, 2021

Volume 2 | Issue 11
Rev. Nathan J. Langerak
And he [Elisha] went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. 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. And he went from thence to mount Carmel, and from thence he returned to Samaria.—2 Kings 2:23–25

Bethel! A name that brings to mind the patriarch Jacob and God’s sweet vision and promise to
Jacob. Bethel was the true church that had the
word of God and was the place where the fathers worshiped.

In 2 Kings 2 there was a very different Bethel.

Bethel had rejected the word of God. That Bethel was revealed in her children. That Bethel was judged in her children.

Bethel is thought-provoking especially in light of Jericho and the healing of her waters.

19. And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth: but the water is naught, and the ground barren.

20. And he said, Bring me a new cruse, and put salt therein. And they brought it to him.

21. And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in there, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land.

22. So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake. (2 Kings 2:19–22)

Jericho is the city that brings to mind man’s rebellion and God’s curse.

Elisha the prophet, successor of Elijah, crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho. There he performed a miracle—a miracle of astounding power to heal and to give life again to a cursed land.

Then, at Bethel, Elisha performed a miracle of astounding, swift, and awful judgment.

Do not separate those miracles! Together they illustrate the full reality of the power of the preaching of the gospel. The healing of Jericho’s waters was first and foremost and thus also first in the history. The mauling of Bethel’s children was second and secondary and thus second in the history. But those miracles cannot be understood properly apart from one another.

That they cannot be understood separately from one another is especially important to see in connection with the person of the prophet Elisha. His name means my God is salvation. His whole ministry was devoted to the declaration of that truth. As a prophet he was the instrument by which God’s saving word came to his people: an earthen vessel that held a treasure of great price.

So the salt that healed Jericho’s waters came in an earthen vessel. The salt healed, yet that salt could not come without the earthen vessel. That was not because the earthen vessel was anything. The vessel’s very earthiness assures us that it was nothing; it was not a bowl of silver or of gold but of earth, and thus the vessel was common—yet it was sanctified by the will and word of God to be the instrument by which the healing salt of the promise of God’s covenant came to heal his people and their children. Out of them had come only that which was foul, but after their healing, out of them came living waters. That ministry of the word the people of Jericho took to themselves; and by that ministry of the word, they were healed with their children, their fields, their flocks and herds, and their whole land.

Bethel stood in stark contrast to Jericho. The word and ministry of the word had come to Bethel too. By that word Bethel was revealed. Bethel could not have been revealed until the ministry of the word of the gospel came; and in that very coming of the ministry of the word, the true spiritual character of Bethel was shown.

The issue in the text is not first of all the children or the children’s mockery of the prophet or even the prophet himself.

The issue is, what was Bethel, and then what was Bethel’s relationship to those children?

Bethel was a city and a place of worship. By her own confession Bethel was a place, if not the place, for the worship of Jehovah God. Bethel was situated in a heavily wooded area about twelve miles north of the city of Jerusalem. From the walls of Jerusalem on a clear day, the smoke from the sacrifices on the great altar at Bethel was visible. On a still day it was possible to hear the steady thumping of the drums, the intoxicating twang of the viols, and the loud singing of the hymns from the worship in Bethel as the people sat down around the golden calf and arose up to dance and to play.

The contrast between Bethel and Jericho, then, is clear.

If Jericho was the cursed city that was representative of the wrath of God against sin, then Bethel was the blessed city. Jericho was synonymous with rebellion. Bethel was synonymous with religion and religious zeal. Bethel’s very name means the house of God. Bethel’s claim and its name meant that God dwelled there; and where God dwelled, the people were blessed by his gracious presence. In God’s house were also his children because the owner of the house made those who dwelled in his house his children, companions, and friends. A more religious place on earth could hardly be found, rivaled only by Jerusalem, Mount Moriah, and the temple precinct.

Bethel also had a long history of religion. Was it not at Bethel where Abraham, after coming into Canaan, first made an altar and there called on the name of Jehovah his God? It was to Bethel that Abraham returned to worship during the trying times with Lot. It was at Bethel where the patriarch Jacob saw angels ascending and descending on a stairway to heaven. There God appeared to Jacob in order to comfort him with the truth that God was his God, as he was the God of Abraham and of Isaac his father. To Bethel Jacob returned after his exile in Haran, and there he worshiped the God who spoke to him. When Israel had initially secured the land of Canaan, the tabernacle of God rested at Shiloh, not far from Bethel.

Bethel as the house of God was the former sanctuary of the patriarchs. Surely, if they had been alive in Elisha’s time, they would still be worshiping in Bethel. And even more, after the history of Ahab and the worship of Baal, Bethel was a place of revival and reformation in the worship of Jehovah. Even while Judah was in the grip of idolatry, worship at Bethel carried on and even increased.

The Bethel that Elisha approached was the Bethel as reimagined and remade by Jeroboam. When Jeroboam rebelled against the house of David, Jeroboam instituted a new doctrine and a new worship at Dan and at Bethel, but Bethel had the preeminence. In Bethel Jeroboam built a grand altar. In Bethel he fashioned a golden calf and taught the people of Israel that the calf was their God who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. In Bethel Jeroboam instituted a new priesthood not from the house of Aaron but, nevertheless, committed to sacrificing on Jeroboam’s new altar. In Bethel Jeroboam created new feast days that were not according to the law of Moses, but they looked like the feasts commanded in the law of Moses.

Jeroboam turned to the new worship of Bethel to deliver himself from the dire predicament in which he found himself when he rebelled against the house of David: if the people went up to Jerusalem, then their hearts would be turned to David’s house, and the people would kill Jeroboam and return to David. Drawing on all of Bethel’s past religious significance, Jeroboam pressed that into the service of a new doctrine, a new worship, and a new king. The doctrine was the lies and ignorance of the golden calf. The worship was that of a new altar with a new priesthood made from the lowest and most ignorant men. All that to direct the people’s attention away from David—and thus from Christ—in order to consolidate Jeroboam’s rebellious rule and kingdom.

Bethel had been set up to be a bold, public rival of Jerusalem. In Bethel there was an air of religious enthusiasm, the claim to a long and distinguished religious pedigree, and a confession to be orthodox. Bethel’s purpose was to rival Jerusalem in the affections of the people, to replace Jerusalem, and eventually to destroy it. Bethel vigorously maintained itself against any criticism, jealously guarded its prerogatives, and shamelessly promoted itself as having the true worship of God.

What was Bethel’s sin?

Rejection of the word of God.

Bethel substituted the word and commandments of men for the word and commandments of God. Bethel rejected God’s word that he cannot be known any other way than in his revelation in the law and the prophets. Bethel rejected the word of God that he can only be worshiped in the way he commands and that he cannot be worshiped by images. Specifically, Bethel rejected God’s word that he must be worshiped in Jerusalem, by means of the sacrifices offered by the priesthood of Aaron, and out of hearts that loved and believed the promise of God. Bethel rejected the gospel of Christ. Therefore, in changing the truth of God into a lie and rejecting the true worship of God, Bethel rejected God. 

The true worship of God—the truth—is the charge that God gives to his people; and in departing from that truth, they depart from him.

God does not necessarily dwell where there is a long religious pedigree, where there are the most people, or where the worshipers are the most enthusiastic and loud.

But God dwells where his word is received. Where his word is obeyed, received, and believed, there is the sure sign of his presence. There God is, and God is blessing his people. There is the true Bethel. Where there is the heartfelt confession of and repentance from sin as typified in the sacrifices; where there are true prophets, priests, and kings ordained by God; where the worship of God is carried on as God ordained, so that the word of truth is preached, and the sacraments are rightly administered, and the songs of God are sung—there is Bethel, the house of God. And where God is, there God blesses and fills his people with his goodness, grace, and mercy. There the people of God rejoice before the Lord their God and sing unto him. There, in the covenant presence of God, his people behold God’s beauty and can inquire in his temple. Where God is, there is life and blessing for the believer and his children.

But that new, shameful Bethel. What was she?

She was a type ordained by God to be a sign of a New Testament spiritual reality. Bethel was typical of that institution and spiritual communion that calls itself church in the world, that exists in closest connection and proximity to the church of God in the world, that resembles the church of God, and that even at one time may have been the house of God but is corrupt to the core. Bethel was also the spiritual reality of the world in a unique sense. Bethel was the world as that world manifests itself in the apostatizing church and covers itself in a religious veneer.

Bethel manifests itself today wherever there is that institution and that spiritual communion that historically in its generations held to and confessed the word of God and has departed from the word of God but yet maintains a cover of religion, maintains its claim to be church, and in its departure insists all the while that its religion is both right and proper.

Bethel is that spiritual reality where the word of God is deliberately, persistently, and unrepentantly rejected and yet where an outward claim of piety and faith is maintained.

Bethel is that spiritual reality present yet today in which the truth of God is changed into a lie, so that the preaching of the truth is rejected, and in its place a false doctrine and thus a corrupt worship are fashioned after the imaginations of the hearts of men, and all the while that corrupt worship and false doctrine are called the worship of God.

From Bethel opposition to the prophet Elisha came in an unusual form: children. On his way from Jericho, the prophet passed by Bethel. He did not intend to go into Bethel. A group of children came out from Bethel and mocked the prophet: “Go up, thou bald head! Go up, thou bald head!”

There should not be any doubt about the age of the children. It is true that the Hebrew word for children can mean babies to adolescents and even young men. Nevertheless, the Bible adds the word “little.” They were “little children.” Some argue that the children were young men. They claim this in order to charge the children with a certain measure of responsibility in the crime. Since they were young men, so the argument goes, they should have known better. It was really the fault of those evil children, who might even have been the exception in Bethel.

The point of the text is precisely the opposite. They were little children, who might not even have known their right hands from their left. Those little children of Bethel came out deliberately and maliciously to mock the prophet in the same way children might come out to play a game. They could not help it. It was ingrained into them; it was part of their very nature and environment. They said, “Go up, thou bald head!” The bald head was a reference to two things: to Elisha’s prematurely bald head and to the association that baldness had with leprosy. To call him a “bald head” was the equivalent of calling him a plague on the land and nation.

When the children said, “Go up,” they showed their unbelief. They were unbelieving children. “Go up” was a reference to the report they had heard of the wonderful miracle that God had performed, in which he vindicated the entire ministry of Elijah by taking him to heaven in a whirlwind without dying. The children did not believe a word of that miracle and ridiculed it. But at least Elijah and with him the terrible and disturbing message and his awful condemnation of Israel were gone from the land. And those children wished the same thing for Elisha: “Go up with him! You plague!” That was not only disrespect of the prophet but also unbelief of the word and the wonders of God.

From little children!

But they were Bethel’s children.

And the little children were revelatory of Bethel. Little children reveal their parents, and those children revealed Bethel.

Where did those children learn that disrespect and unbelief?

They learned it in Bethel. They learned it from the priests in Bethel and from the parents of Bethel and from the schools in Bethel. At the root of all that Bethel was and all that Bethel did—worship of the golden calf, rejection of the house of David, and all the changes in doctrine and worship—was unbelief, which unbelief was Bethel’s hatred of God.

You might say to me that this is a rather harsh assessment of Bethel. Bethel, after all, spoke about Jehovah and Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. Bethel had worship and sang too and was even enthusiastic in its religion. Bethel had priests and sacrifices, and Bethel was the chapel of the king of Israel himself. Bethel had the numbers, the crowds, the festivals, and many, many things that commended Bethel as a very religious place. Bethel’s name was that it was the house of God, where God was and where God dwelled. Certainly, no evil thing could be spoken of Bethel. Bethel herself said, “We believe the truth.” Bethel made its claims to religion and jealously guarded its religious inventions from all criticism.

But in Bethel’s children those claims were revealed to be lies. Bethel’s spiritual condition was revealed by Bethel’s children. The source of Bethel’s departure was unbelief. The source of Bethel’s unbelief was hatred of God. The end of Bethel’s departure was judgment. Bethel could never result in faith and salvation. The children were a window into the religious attitudes of Bethel and into all the religious instruction that went on in Bethel. The children were a window into what that produces and what that brings forth as its seed.

The true church has her seed, and the false church has her seed.

Bethel’s unbelief manifested itself particularly in the rejection of the preached word as that came in the ministry of the prophet. Bethel never would have admitted that she did not love God, that she did not worship God, or that she was irreligious.

But where the word of God is rejected, there is Bethel. Where the word cannot receive a hearing, there is Bethel. Where the word is mocked and ridiculed, there is Bethel. And where Bethel is, there is the appalling wickedness of hatred of God and unbelief in his word, all the while claiming faith and the worship of God.

Bethel’s appalling wickedness was revealed in the appalling wickedness of her children, which they did not have enough guile to cover. Bethel, that Bethel, had become Bethaven: not a house of God but a house of wickedness.

And in her children Bethel was judged. That was God’s word in the law concerning his haters, who manifest their hatred of him in their lies and corrupt worship: he visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of those who hate him.

That iniquity of departure from God in the matter of doctrine and worship, God says he visits upon the children. This means that there is judgment upon the generations of those who depart from God in doctrine and worship. The church that departs from God in worship, whether in form or doctrine, worships under the judgment of God. That church is not a progressive church but a dying church, inasmuch as there is no blessing of God upon that worship.

That church will be judged in her children.

You say to me, “But they were children. They did not know any better.” That explains Elisha’s reaction to them. He turned and looked. He stopped dead in his tracks at that terrible fruit and awful judgment of God upon Bethel’s departure and rejection of the word of God. If it had been Sodom’s children, or Gath’s children, or Zidon’s children, then we would understand. But Bethel’s children! Astounding!

Understand, God did not judge Bethel first through the bears, but God judged Bethel through the unbelief of her children. That was not an isolated incident among Bethel’s children, but many, many, many of her children were unbelieving. That already was the judgment of God.

Is not the reality that when the parents depart from God, then judgment falls heavily on the children? They are not taught the truth, and they do not know the truth. They are taught lies, and they parrot those lies. They are taught hatred against the word and the ministry of the word, and they parrot that hatred.

As God saves believers and their seed, he judges unbelievers and their seed. In the true house of God, God makes effectual his promise in the line of believers and their seed, so that the children of believers, as children, believe.

In God’s judgment on Bethel’s departure from him, he gave the parents unbelieving children. That is literally the meaning of the Hebrew word translated as “children” at the end of verse 24. One could also translate that word as seed or offspring. Here we have the spawn of Bethel’s departure and rejection of the word. When the man of God came to Bethel, then Bethel mocked him in her children. That is what Bethel had begotten.

And God’s judgment upon Bethel’s unbelief was the curse of God. Elisha turned and looked, and he cursed the children in the name of Jehovah. That Elisha cursed the children means that he spoke the word of God’s wrath over them, which word worked the children’s destruction. That Elisha cursed them in the name of Jehovah means, first, that the curse was not Elisha’s private sentiment but the actual word of God upon the children; and second, that the curse was a true revelation of who God is. He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he wills he hardens. All the despisers of the Lord shall be consumed. That is not out of character with God. That is not something that happened only once either, but that is always the reality of the coming of the word. On the one hand, the word heals. On the other hand, there is in that same word a word of wrath that works the curse of the unbeliever and his seed. And in their very rejection of the word, God’s attitude toward them is revealed.

About this reality the apostle Paul spoke when he said that the ministry of the word is a savor of life unto life and a savor of death unto death. This is the double power of the preaching of the word. It saved, astoundingly and against all expectation, Jericho and her children. For God has mercy on whom he will have mercy. And the word hardened, astoundingly and against all expectation, Bethel and her children. For whom God wills he hardens. And that same word judges them in their wicked opposition to it.

The word had to come to Bethel in order for Bethel to be exposed in her true, spiritual condition and in order that Bethel’s mask and pretension at faith and piety would be torn away. It was not God’s will that Bethel be converted, and Bethel herself revealed her astounding wickedness in and through her children in the presence of the word. As long as Bethel was without the word, she lay hidden under her claim of religion. But when the word came, Bethel was exposed and judged.

Here is the call to the true church to maintain the word and worship of God. To maintain the truth and to maintain the proper worship of God. Here is the call to marvel at the astounding works of God: that he saved Jericho, and he judged Bethel!

Here is a warning against trusting in ourselves. If God spared not Bethel, the house of God; the heir of such a rich, spiritual tradition; the very sanctuary of the patriarchs, then he will not spare departure from him and corruption of his truth. In departure there is no blessing but a curse.

And do not overlook the last words of the text. God passed on with his word. The word of God comes and works its work and passes on. The word does not return. The word passes on from the place it curses. There is no failure in that. The work of God has been accomplished.

—NJL

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by Rev. Andrew W. Lanning
Volume 2 | Issue 11