Hard as it may be to believe, there are things I don’t understand. Tonight, purely on a whim, I shall ponder one of them. I rarely know what I think about anything, after all, until I’ve written it out.
When Elisha became sick with the illness of which he was to die, Joash the king of Israel came down to him and wept over him and said, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” Elisha said to him, “Take a bow and arrows.” So he took a bow and arrows. Then he said to the king of Israel, “Put your hand on the bow.” And he put his hand on it, then Elisha laid his hands on the king’s hands. He said, “Open the window toward the east,” and he opened it. Then Elisha said, “Shoot!” And he shot. And he said, “The LORD’S arrow of victory, even the arrow of victory over Aram; for you will defeat the Arameans at Aphek until you have destroyed them.” Then he said, “Take the arrows,” and he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground,” and he struck it three times and stopped. So the man of God was angry with him and said, “You should have struck five or six times, then you would have struck Aram until you would have destroyed it. But now you shall strike Aram only three times.” (II Cor. 13:14-19, NASB 95)
A little background, as I understand it: When you read the Old Testament prophets (which you definitely should do), you get the impression that the Israelites, especially those of the northern kingdom of Israel, pretty much apostatized. Turned their backs on Yahweh. Because the prophets are always condemning them for doing just that.
But if you pay attention to the historical books, you get a little more nuance. Very few of the kings seem to have gone so far as to convert to the Canaanite religion. They recognized the Lord as the God of their people, but (like all their contemporaries) they assumed religion was an ethnic thing. We’ve got our God, they’ve got theirs. And of course, when you did business, political and mercantile, with the pagans, you had to accommodate them. Show up for the occasional feast. Authorize construction of a temple to Baal or Ashtaroth here and there. Diversity is our strength, right? And the people of Israel had old traditional ties to the golden calves set up by Jeroboam; you had to be sensitive to that sentiment.
So the prophet Elijah had raged at King Joash (reigned around 801–786 BC) , and Joash had tolerated it. Now the old man was dying, and, like a small boy summoned to the deathbed of an uncle with whom he’d never gotten along, he paid a visit out of a sense of obligation.
Then the dying prophet asks him to do a crazy thing. He tells him to open a window and shoot an arrow out. Then he tells him to strike the rest of the arrows on the ground. Joash sighs (probably), and to humor the old man he strikes the arrows down three times, then stops. And in one final act of nagging, Elijah tells him he did it wrong. He should have struck more times. Then he gets the last word by dying.
This is a story that’s always troubled me. I identify strongly with Joash here. I grew up in an environment where both disinterest and enthusiasm were likely to get you in trouble. I respond to challenges cautiously, in a measured way. But God so often wants all-out enthusiasm. Jesus says, in Matthew 11:12, “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force.” (There’s dispute on the meaning of that verse, but I take it as condemning weenies like me.) Jewish culture celebrates “chutzpah,” audacity, a quality I lack almost entirely.
Jordan Peterson has reminisced about his youth in a small town on the Alberta prairie. He said that there were only two groups of guys to hang around with there – the bad boys, who got into trouble and mostly had poor futures in store, and the church boys. But he didn’t like the church boys either. They were “good,” he says, not because they loved virtue, but because they were afraid of taking risks.
That hits home at my house.
I wish the world understood this. I wish they understood that “church boys” like me are not actually Jesus’ target market for disciples. I’d wager there wasn’t a guy like me among all the twelve disciples. Sentimental illustrations always depict the Apostle John (for instance) as a clean-shaven, long-haired, slightly effeminate figure. Yet Jesus called him and his brother James “the Sons of Thunder.” They got in trouble with their buddies for asking for the top spots in the coming Kingdom (Mark 10:37). Chutzpah on parade.
All my life I’ve gotten into trouble (ironically) because I have difficulty asking for anything. Were James and John even embarrassed by their audacious request? Maybe the other disciples were upset because they didn’t think of it first.
“For such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.” (John 4:23)