Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 74:1 (NA 2023)
Article: Purpose For Elijah And Elisha In The Books Of Kings
Author: Richard S. Hess

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Purpose For Elijah And Elisha In The Books Of Kings

Richard S. Hess

Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages
Denver Seminary
[email protected]
Abstract

The study of 1 and 2 Kings often assumes that the division between the two books was an arbitrary one that was made about halfway between the beginning and end of the text of Kings. The investigation of this question reveals not only a rationale behind the division between the two ‘books’; it also raises the larger question of the contrasting roles played by the kings who begin and end the text, and by the prophets whose central role in the books provides hope and life. By tracing major narrative arcs across the beginning and end of 1 and 2 Kings as well as across the appearances and departures of Elijah and Elisha, the themes of physical death and spiritual life set a dramatic tone in the pages of these accounts and provide hope in the midst of judgement.

1. Introduction

This paper will consider the role of 2 Kings and especially the roles of Elijah and Elisha as providing the conclusion, or, better, the greater and more lasting fulfilment, of what was begun in 1 Kings.1 It is clear that the figures of Elijah and Elisha play key roles in the central chapters of the books of Kings, from 1 Kings 17 to 2 Kings 13. Their prominence and the centrality of much of their work are so key to this part of the text that it regularly interrupts the normal and expected sequence of the kings of Judah and of Israel.

The result has been a great deal of repositioning of the biblical text in order to fit everything in the manner that it supposedly should fit. Not only

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does this take place with modern scholarly research;2 it has also occurred with both the Septuagint (as for example witnessed in Codex Vaticanus – LXX^B) and the Lucianic (LXX^L) recension.3 Indeed, ‘The textual history of the books of

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Kings (3–4 Kingdoms) is by far the most complicated one in the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint, only rivalled by that of the books of Samuel.’4 While the assumptions that the Old Greek was based on a proto-Masoretic Text, as they have been traditionally understood, are probably not valid, the increasingly popular view that the MT and...