Superstition - a stepping-stone to true faith?

¹⁰ In the thirty-seventh year of Joash king of Judah, Jehoash son of Jehoahaz became king of Israel in Samaria, and he reigned sixteen years. ¹¹ He did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn away from any of the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit; he continued in them…

¹⁴ Now Elisha had been suffering from the illness from which he died. Jehoash king of Israel went down to see him and wept over him. “My father! My father!” he cried. “The chariots and horsemen of Israel!”

¹⁵ Elisha said, “Get a bow and some arrows,” and he did so. ¹⁶ “Take the bow in your hands,” he said to the king of Israel. When he had taken it, Elisha put his hands on the king’s hands. ¹⁷ “Open the east window,” he said, and he opened it. “Shoot!” Elisha said, and he shot. “The Lord’s arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Aram!” Elisha declared. “You will completely destroy the Arameans at Aphek.” ¹⁸ Then he said, “Take the arrows,” and the king took them. Elisha told him, “Strike the ground.” He struck it three times and stopped. ¹⁹ The man of God was angry with him and said, “You should have struck the ground five or six times; then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it. But now you will defeat it only three times.”

²⁰ Elisha died and was buried.

2 Kings 13:10-20

What a very strange story!

King Jehoash of Israel, not a king noted for his devotion to God (verse 11), hears that the old man of God, the prophet Elisha, is at the point of death. You might think he would rejoice at this news, or at least feel smugly satisfied.

But no: he “went down to see him and wept over hm. ‘My father! My father!’ he cried…” Doesn’t that sound like truly filial devotion?

Then he utters a strange cry: “The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” What’s that supposed to mean!

Elisha tells him to get a bow and arrows. He puts his feeble hands over Jehoash’s and tells him to shoot. Elisha declares this arrow to be “The Lord’s arrow of victory… over Aram!”

As if that’s not enough mystification, Elisha now tells Jehoash to take the remaining arrows and “strike the ground” with them. This Jehoash does; whereupon Elisha gets angry with him for limiting the strikes to just three - “You should have struck the ground five or six times!” Apparently this failure means that Jehoash’s victory over the Arameans will be less than total.

We might, I think, be forgiven for throwing up our hands in despair and exclaiming, “What on earth is going on here!”

Can we clear up some of the mystification? Well, we can but try…

First, when King Jehoash exclaimed, “The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” (verse 14) he was echoing the exact words of Elisha himself as a young man when he was adopted by Elijah as his successor (2 Kings 2:11-12). (Presumably Elisha at that moment had seen some kind of vision preparing for Elijah’s “assumption” into heaven.) By quoting those words now Jehoash was showing that he was familiar with what must have become a legend in Israel over perhaps fifty years. Was he expecting Elisha to go to God in the same way Elijah had done (if so verse 20 makes it clear that he was mistaken)? Whatever, he is showing great respect, even veneration, for the dying prophet.

Second, what sense can we make of the business with the bow and arrows?

This seems to have been a prophecy, though one acted out rather than spoken. Elisha is demonstrating to Jehoash what is going to happen regarding the enemy Arameans. His hands may be feeble, but by “putting them on the king’s hands” and by calling the first arrow “the arrow of victory over Aram!” he is saying, in effect, “God will use you to subdue the Arameans”.

Third, what about the puzzling business of “striking the ground” with the remaining arrows?

Jehoash does exactly as he is told – only for Elisha to tell him off angrily for failing to do it hard enough. I think we may assume that Jehoash and Elisha had built up a relationship over the preceding years (“My father! My father!” certainly implies that) and had had many conversations together. Perhaps Elisha had, over the years, sensed in Jehoash a half-heartedness which he detected here. Hence his anger.

Does that help? I hope so. But we are looking back to a place, a time and a whole religious culture which are very alien to where we are today. So to some extent we need to just let the puzzles be; they are not for us to fathom fully.

But I think there is something we can reasonably speculate on: the fact that there was a close relationship between the godless king on the one hand and the godly prophet on the other. It seems that Jehoash certainly wasn’t by any means anti-Elisha. He couldn’t help but be impressed by him and the prospect of his approaching death alarmed and even frightened him (“… he wept over him”). He had come to depend on him for his wisdom, even if he didn’t always follow it.

To me this has something to say to us about what we might call religious superstition - which is as much a reality today as it was nearly a thousand years before Christ.

Jehoash wasn’t a “godly” king; his “faith”, such as it was, seems to have emotional and superstitious rather than true; but the bond between the two men seems to have been genuine, and Elisha didn’t dismiss it.

Surveys tell us that most people pray, even if they are not involved in any kind of religious organisation or activity, and even if they say they don’t believe in God. The most recent surveys tell us that growth in outlandish views is accelerating, not least among younger people.

It’s as if we human beings are hard-wired to have a “religious” streak which surfaces especially at times of crisis or difficulty.

If this is right, what does it mean for us? I think at least this: that we needn’t be overly pessimistic when people dismiss our faith and convictions out of hand. We don’t know what is going on inside them -  God may be very much at work in ways we would never guess. Our business, especially if overt evangelism isn’t appropriate, is simply to live as Christlike a life as we can, and to pray that he will be seen even in us.

Even a shallow and superstitious faith may deepen and mature into the real, Christ-centred thing! The question is: are we offering the right kind of example and guidance?

Father God, let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me. I don’t know what may be going on deep down in the heart of my unbelieving neighbour, but I pray that even my poor, imperfect witness may have the effect of drawing them to Christ. Amen.