Alright, now that our prayer time is done and consecrated our time, let's begin with lesson 7. This is entitled, Alicia, the spiritual first born son, of course of Elijah. As we talked about Elijah being the father of prophets in the last lesson, well, as a father, if you're a father, you have children, and so Alicia is going to be the spiritual first born son. And while it's been all this as we go through the lesson, you're in the first number of minutes here.
So this is going to tackle 2 Kings, chapters 1 through 7. It is obviously continuing the story. Alicia was dedicated, he was pinned down by God to be the successor of Elijah. We saw that back in 1 Kings 19.
So the story is continuing, which by the way indicates that the story used to probably be on one scroll in the Hebrew, in the Hebrew text, the Septuagint split this up, just like 1 2nd San, there were split up into two different scrolls. But it's all one story, probably all one original scroll, and we're just going to pick up right where we left off. So we're in Roman numeral 1 in your notes, and we're looking at chapters 1 through 2 to see how Alicia really becomes the spiritual heir and the successor, and as I said for the title of this lesson, the spiritual first born son of Elijah. But before we get to that part, chapter 1 has Elijah's final act of judgment against Ahaziah, and you had your chart that I gave you of all the Kings, which you can get in pretty much any commentary as well.
But Ahaziah is the son of Ahab and Jezebel, so he's not too good. You wouldn't imagine he's too good with parents like that. And so what happens in chapter 1, verse 1, Ahab dies, and Mohab or bells, there's all this kind of chaos going on. But it says in verse 2, Ahaziah fell through the lattice of his upper chamber in Samaria and he lay sick.
So he said, messengers telling them, go inquire of balls above the God of Echron, whether I shall recover from this sickness. So this is really sad and really depressing here. You've got the King of Israel, of the northern tribes of Israel, and he's injured and he's sick, he's not recovering. I don't know, maybe there's an infection in the wound or whatever's going on.
And he's getting really, really bad and he doesn't turn to God. The God of Israel, he turns to this false God, bells above, which is a famous title for Satan in the New Testament. You can check out your footnote, your footnote number 1. I kind of explained a little bit about your Catholic Bible dictionary and other commentaries.
I'll explain how bells above really is kind of an insulting twist on the words. So bells above means Lord of the Flies. That always makes me think of that terrible book I read in high school, where I was making you read these terrible books in public school. So in any case, the Lord of the Flies, but it's a twist on the original Zabbal, which is a ball prince ball.
So in any case, you check your footnote for that. The main point here is Ahaziah sends messengers to bells above, the God of Echron, if he's going to inquire of a recover from his injury, instead of going to the God of Israel. And that is a big problem here. It reminds me a little bit of Jeroboam.
You might remember if you go back to 1 Kings 14, Jeroboam, the sick and he sends his wife to inquire of, at least in that instance, it was good of the prophet of God. And the news was very, very bad because Jeroboam was super evil and he brought the sin of the golden calves into the northern king. It was all really bad. But this whole concept of the northern king getting ill, Jeroboam, at least in the very beginning of all this, he inquires of God and God's prophet.
But now it's gotten so bad here with Ahaziah many years later, they're not even going to consult God anymore. And this is important because, you know, spending probably too much time on this basic story, but the importance here is you see the progressive sinfulness of Israel more and more and more, so they're not even consulting Yahweh many of them don't. So of course, our Lord is going to have something to say about this. In verse 3, the angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, arise, go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and say to them, is it because there is no God in Israel that you're going to inquire of bells above the God of Echron?
Now therefore says the Lord, you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone, that you shall surely die, and Elijah went, and the messengers returned to the king. And he says, why have you returned? Like they come back really, really quickly. And he doesn't understand.
Well, that was a pretty quick journey. And they had to say, oh, we met this guy, he is this prophet, and he told us that you're not going to recover. You're going to die. Sorry about that.
You know, bad news. Wait a second, who is this guy? What did he look like? In verse 8, this is where highlighting will be important in a little bit.
In verse 8, they said, well, he wore a garment of hair, a cloth with a belt of leather about his loins. He's like, aha, it's Elijah the Tishbite. Everyone knows how Elijah addresses. He's got his distinctive Nordstrom threads.
He's got his distinctive attire. Everyone knows where he shops for his clothes. And of course, he's very austere and very humble and living out in the wilderness there. So everybody knows who this is.
So Elijah tells the messengers, just go back. Don't even bother going farther on your journey, which is why they return so quickly. And they give this terrible news to the king, which is actually justice is what that is. But as I will not hear of this, and the story goes on to summarize this next part.
Well, let's read a couple of verses. We're not in chapter 1, verse 9. The king sent a captain of 50 men, a captain of 50 men, and they went to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of the hill. That's interesting to be sitting on the top of the hill.
Explain why right now. And they said, a man of God thus says the king come down. But Elijah answered to the captain of 50, if I'm a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your 50, and then fire came down from heaven and just consumed them all. Like a massive barbecue.
Right. There's this act of judgment here against this captain in 50 who in their arrogance and in their rebellion and their opposition to God in his prophet, they want to arrest him and probably put him dead. And that's certainly not going to happen. Now, this whole, this happens again to a second captain of 50 men.
Then the third captain of 50 men learns his lesson, thankfully. He has words of humility and kindness and says, you know, have compassion on your servant and mercy on us. And God says, don't worry, go down with him. Don't be afraid of him.
And the verses 16 is when Elijah confirms the sentence face to face with the king and said, look, you went off the bells above instead of the God of Israel. So therefore, your punishment is going to be death. Enough is enough. It's time to just face the music as they say.
Well, this whole story here is really interesting about the fire coming down and consuming all these men. These act number would be 102, right? So there's a captain of 50 happens twice, 102 men are consumed by fire while Elijah is on top of a hill. This is obviously an echo or a redo, I guess you could say, of Carmel.
Remember, Carmel in the previous lesson, Elijah has confrontation with the false prophets of Baal and he got this big competition and the fire comes down and consumes the sacrifice of Elijah and his great magnificent Theophany and this wonder of God. And then they kill all the false prophets. So when it says that he's on top of the hill, people have conjecture. I don't think that you could prove it.
But people have conjecture. Well, maybe this is on Mount Carmel. Even if it's not on Mount Carmel, it's certainly an echo to Carmel because now they're not they're not 102 prophets who are killed by fire, but they're 102 soldiers. I guess you can say the secular power, the secular arm is trying to fight against God.
And so they're consumed with fire. So that's the story there. And it's really interesting how Haziah consults the God of Echron bells above and he dies. That to me also is an echo of King Saul.
Remember King Saul at the end of his life consulted this witch, this witch of end door, if I remember correctly. And of course, the punishment is going to be death. So when you consult these witches and sorcerers and false magic and whatever black magic, all this stuff, that's a no-no and the punishment is going to be death. So that's what seems to be going on here in this case.
This is Ahaziah ending his life with execution much like Saul died in battle because he had consulted that witch. So I think there's a parallel there as well for the previous story. All right. So there's a little bit of typology here.
Various commentators will point this out. It's really interesting. Let me just read this little passage in Luke chapter 9. And as soon as you hear it and be like, oh, okay, I get it.
I know what's going on here. So in Luke chapter 9, we're in actually, I want to go to verse 51. Let me just flip to this. In Luke chapter 9, verse 51, there's a little story of how Jesus and the apostles are traveling through Samaria.
And they go to a town, it's not very welcoming. You might remember in John chapter 4, the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus has a lot of success with her and with her whole town, who believe in him, but not so much the case in this particular town. Let me read it.
Luke chapter 9, verse 51, when the days drew near for him to be received up, he said his face to go to Jerusalem. Then he sent messengers ahead of him who went into a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him. But the people would not receive him because his face was set towards Jerusalem. And when it disciples James and John saw it, they said, Lord, you want us to bid fire to come down from heaven and to consume them.
But then he turned and rebuked them and he went on into another village. All right, so maybe it's to the woman at the well village. That's a possibility there. So it's just conjecture, but that's kind of interesting to think about.
The point being here is, as this quote I gave to you in your notes says, the episode of Elijah calling fire down to consume those captains and their men who are set against Elijah because he's a true prophet of God seems to be the back of the minds of James and John. So they also, because they know their Bible, they know their Hebrew scriptures, they know their stories and they know their tradition, they want to call down fire to consume the Samaritans in town because they're rejecting Jesus, the true definitive prophets. And they're not accepting him, right? So there's a parallel going on.
And James and John just don't seem to really understand that things have changed a little bit with Jesus. There is going to be, now this is really interesting, I want to share with you a little connection. So James and John now, what's so interesting is they want to call down judgment and fire upon these Samaritans, certainly echoing the story with Elijah. However, if you skip ahead to the story of an Acts of the Apostles, they do get their wish or at least John gets his wish about calling fire down upon the Samaritans.
If you open up to Acts 8, verse 14, it says, when the Apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the Word of God, they sent it to them Peter and John who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. The Spirit had not yet fallen on any of them, they'd only been baptized in the name of Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. Now this isn't so beautiful because obviously the fire of the Holy Spirit comes upon the Apostles at the last, not the last, everyone wants to say Pentecost with a tongues of fire and fire is one of the most consistent images of the Holy Spirit in the Old and the New Testaments.
So it's so beautiful here that John does get his wish, but he's not calling down fire upon them in vengeance. In anger, he's calling the fire of the Holy Spirit upon the Samaritans to convert them and to give them the power and love of the Trinity, the Triune God. So it's really, really beautiful, that little reversal there and the typology is really awesome. Okay, so going back to 2 Kings, chapter 1, verse 17, the very end of the chapter is when Ahaziah does die and his brother, Johorim, succeeds him.
Now you have to be aware here. So Johorim has a nickname. My nickname is Nicholas. My nickname is Nick.
Okay, so Nicholas, Nick, people call me Nick for short. So Johorim's short name is Johorim. So don't get confused on that. Johorim is the long version.
Johorim is the short version like Nicholas and Nick. Now the confusing thing also is that at this particular time, the King of the South and Judah has the exact same name. So if you're reading through this and you see Johorim or Johorim, you're like, okay, this is the northern king or the southern king. You know, these are the things that just keep us on our toes as we're reading the scripture a little bit.
So he dies. Johorim is the king. All right, fantastic. Now chapter 2 is the actual translation into Paradise or the Assumption into Heaven, whatever you're going to call it of Elijah.
There's a bit of an echo here, a little bit, because as we discuss Elijah being taken up into Heaven, this did happen one more time in the Old Testament and that's to Enoch back in chapter 5 of Genesis. So there's only these two guys in the Old Testament who did not die, who God took up. Now, it doesn't say anything about how Enoch was taken up into Paradise or into Heaven, but we do know that they're only two guys. There is a tradition that Moses, after he died, his body was taken up into Heaven in some way, but that's tradition is kind of alluded to a little bit in the Epistle of Jude.
We're not going to get into all of that. So Enoch and Elijah, those are the two guys in the Old Testament. Now let's read this. It's very interesting and very beautiful, the transition.
Now really, this is passing the baton from Elijah to Alicia. Alicia's training wheels are coming off. He's been training for a while now. We don't exactly know how long, but he's been being trained here by the Father of Prophets.
Training wheels are coming off. He's going to tag team this thing, pass the baton to Alicia in a very significant typological way. So here we are, chapter two verse one, says, when the Lord is about to take Elijah up to Heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Alicia were on their way from Gil-Gahl. And Alicia, excuse me, Elijah said to Alicia, carry her right back you for the Lord to set me as far as Bethel.
But Alicia said, as the Lord lives and as you yourself live, that's an oath formula. I will not leave you. So they went down to Bethel. And the sons of the prophets who were in Bethel came out to Alicia and said, Do you know that today the Lord will take away your master over you?
And he said, Yes, I know it. Hold your peace. Just be quiet. Zip it.
Shut up. I know it. So Alicia knows what's going on and he's following his master. Now this happens again as they're going to Jericho and then they go to the Jordan River.
So let's get down to verse six. So you have that, but you can see Gil-Gahl and it goes down to Bethel and then to Jericho and the Jordan River. There's this little pathway going south towards the Jordan River and the journey together here. Now really quickly, I just wanted to point out this whole concept of the sons of the prophets.
Now remember, Elijah was called the father of the prophets. And we're going to sum up his whole story just a little bit here, the significance of his story in scripture and salvation history and theology. But the whole concept of the sons of the prophets makes sense. There are these schools of prophets and there's a father figure, a spiritual father figure, and Elijah was considered a grand du bedaddy.
He was the father of the schools of the prophets. And so this is important. Now, there's these 50 sons of the prophets in these different towns. There is a thought.
Remember if you go back to the story of Mount Carmel when Elijah brings fire down upon the sacrifice and kills everybody. There's this character Obadiah who is the al-Haba'i. He was the chief minister of the grandpuba of the kingdom of the northern kingdom, right? Israel.
And he was faithful to God and he hid a hundred prophets. And so maybe they're split up into 50s in different parts. We're not exactly sure about that, but it is pretty interesting that maybe Obadiah hid some of these characters here. But let me just read this, this whole concept of the son of the prophets from your commentary, which says, prophetic guilds use the kinship language of father and sons for the senior prophet and his junior apprentices.
Hence, Alicia addresses his master Elijah as father, which we're going to see in a moment in chapter two or twelve. And Alicia himself is addressed this way after his succession to Elijah's leadership position. Communities of prophets live in Gilgal, Bethel, and Jericho, so presumably Elijah by making his final stops in these towns is bidding farewell to his disciples before his departure. In quote, I think that that's true.
That makes a lot of sense. He's getting ready to leave and he's handling business and these various places. And so that's when the sons of the prophets say to Alicia, hey, did you know this? And he's like, of course, I knew it.
Man, hold your peace, okay? So because he's very focused on what he wants to do here. But I like this whole concept of son to the prophets and Elijah and Alicia being called the father figure because spiritual fatherhood is a very biblical concept. Catholics are well known for, and he's a Orthodox are well known for calling priests father.
And of course, non-Catholic Christians, Evangelicals, fundamentalists, whatever are going to give Catholics a really hard time about this. But it's 100% biblical in the Old Testament. Priests were called father. You go back to the book of Judges.
There's a couple of powerful passages at the end about the priesthood is fatherhood. And even you got spiritual fatherhood in the prophetic guilds as well, the prophetic office. This is of course a big apologetic conversation. But Paul in 1 Corinthians 4, 15 says, I became your father in the faith.
He says this to the Corinthians and there's other passages as well to consider. But spiritual fatherhood is biblical priests and prophets and even kings are considered the father of the nation. So the New Testament priesthood is just following that tradition. When a priest baptizes people and gives them the sacraments, he spiritually begets them.
And he becomes the spiritual father. And it's actually incumbent upon the priest to remember that he is a father, which means that he provides for his flock. He cares for them. He's willing to die for them and teach them and so on and so forth.
And I really like this whole concept here in terms of understanding the relationship between spiritual leadership and the flock, which carries into the priesthood of the Catholic Church. So I wanted to say that. Now, as we saw here three times, Elijah tells Alicia to stay behind. And of course, Alicia is loyal.
He is committed. He refuses. I'm going to follow you and he swears and oath. I'm going to follow you.
So help me God. Now, if you see the path, certainly as your commentary said, I just read it to you. He's making these final stops to say goodbye to these schools or the sons of the prophets. But I think it's even interesting if you take a look at these locations, you can see that this path is reversing the progress made in salvation history by Israel.
So they go to Bethel, where why is Bethel important? Well, because Bethel is one of the central locations for this god-awful golden Catholicism. And then they go to Jericho. Why is Jericho important?
Well, that's because that is the place where Joshua first conquered this mega city, one of the biggest metropolis cities by their standards that they had at the time. It was a huge fortified city. So Jericho is significant for that. And then they go to the Jordan River and they cross over the Jordan River to the other side.
Why is that important? Well, because again, they're reversing the progress that they had made during the conquest. They're going back to the beginning of the conquest of the land because what's being symbolized here is that the sin of Israel and by extension Judah, the northern and the southern kingdoms. As I've said a number of times in the past lesson or two, they're becoming spiritually enslaved again.
So spiritual slavery means you're going to be cast out of the land. And so Elijah and Alicia, when they pass the baton here and Alicia becomes the successor, they're going back to where it all started because Alicia is going to continue the mission of Elijah and echo the story of the conquest to try to get Israel to hit that reset button, to get rid of all the idolatry, to embrace God and to love him and to reset the button, reset the conquest of the land and purify the land again. That's why this is important to go from Bethel, which is awful idolatry to Jericho, the first town, back across the Jordan River to where it all began. The geography is significant.
And so when they go to the Jordan River, they cross over on dry land. That's another echo of the Exodus, obviously, because you have the story of the party of the Red Sea. You have the story about the crossing the Jordan River the first time that we were just talking about. So those are more echoes of Exodus.
And that's by the way, we're going to do this particular lesson just like we did in the last lesson. I want to share with you how all the stories, super awesome stories of Elijah, they look backwards, echoing the Exodus, and they look forward pointing forward to Jesus Christ. The same thing is going to happen here with, I think, with a little bit more punch, with a little bit more interesting connections. Now, Elijah served really over one king, Alicia served over many kings here, so he's got more miracles.
I'm going to talk about the miracles just in a second. Alright, so what happens next in verse 9, let's read on, when they across, Elijah said to Alicia, ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you. And Alicia said, I beg you, let me inherit a double share of your spirit. And he said, you've asked a hard thing, yet, if you see me as I'm being taken from you, it shall be so for you, but if you do not see me, it shall not be so.
And as I still went on and talked, behold, the chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind to heaven, and Alicia saw it and cried, my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and his horsemen, and then he saw him no more. So his request is granted. Alright, now what does this mean to be a, to have and to receive a double share of Elijah's spirit? What that means is he doesn't want to be double what Elijah was, he just wants to be considered his spiritual firstborn son, thus the title of the lesson.
He wants to be considered the spiritual firstborn son. So if you go back to the laws of Deuteronomy, and I got the reference for you, Deuteronomy, and really it's found all the way down. The firstborn son of the father had the birthright and the blessing, and the birthright was a double portion of the material inheritance, because the firstborn son was supposed to protect and take care of and provide for and lead the rest of the family. So Alicia is saying, I want to be considered your spiritual firstborn son, give me a double share of your spirit, and of course the prophetical spirit goes upon the rest of the sons as well.
Although that's not discussed, it's kind of presumed that you're going to carry the analogy a little bit farther. It seems that when Elijah's taken up, Alicia certainly is now considered the father and the new leader, but there's a blessing upon all of them. But that's what he's asking for, to be the spiritual firstborn son. So I have a really quickly here, I have a footnote for you from another commenter Hamilton who says, in making such a request, Alicia is asking Elijah to be made the successor to Elijah, not nearly a successor.
And that's the whole point, that's what Alicia is asking for. So this is demonstrated because he sees Elijah being taken up in the whirlwind, the chariots of Israel and fire all this great in the off and here. And you see that not only is he accepted as the new leader and the spiritual firstborn son of Elijah, the father of prophets, but it's demonstrated in the text and the narrative in a literary way, because there's a doubling of miracles that takes place. Elijah performed eight miracles, and Alicia, as you read on, is going to perform 16 miracles.
And I'm going to summarize all the miracles in the next lesson when we talk about Alicia's life and his after his death, we'll talk about his whole life, and I'm going to draw all these connections here for you as we conclude his life, just like I'm going to summarize Elijah's life just in a moment. But eight miracles versus 16 miracles, clearly there's a doubling going on here. And by the way, what does eight mean? Eight is the number of the new creation, renewal, rejuvenation, new beginnings.
So Elijah is trying to renew Israel and to bring them about to a really new exodus as we've been talking about, but thereby become a new creation, and Alicia is going to continue that entire thing. So now the training wheels are off and now that the baton is passed. Now, some of these miracles, I should say quickly before I forget, 16 versus eight, but even some of the miracles are doubled. So Elijah does one resurrection story.
Alicia does two. Elijah has one food multiplication. Alicia has two and so on and so forth. In fact, as we're going to see, Elijah performs a miracle even when he's dead, which is pretty amazing.
So here you go. That is the passing of the baton. Now what happens in verse 13 is, let's just read this here. Okay.
He took up his, actually the second half of verse 12. He took up his own clothes and tore them into two pieces, which is very symbolic, right? So he's tearing apart his old life. He's no longer just an apprentice.
I guess that's when the training wheels come off. He tears his clothes in half. Then he takes the coat of Elijah, which is super cool because that's the very same coat or cloak that was thrown on him back in first, first name of chapter 19, I believe it is. So there's the continuity there, which is awesome.
So he took up the coat and had fallen and he went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan, then he took the coat and struck the water and said, where is the Lord, the God of Elijah? And when he had struck the water, the water was part of the one side of the other, and then Elisha went over. So now the reset button has been set. Now, Elisha is going to try to reboot the conquest, right?
He's trying to reboot the conquest, trying to rid the land of idolatry and immorality and claim Israel back for God. That's what he's trying to do here. Okay. Alrighty.
So with that then, what are the echoes of the Exodus in this story? Well, point one or letter A in your note, maybe if you go back to Dude Rana 34, there's a passage of numbers as well, but it says that the spirit of Moses rested upon Joshua. Now here, the spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha because the very next verse, by the way, I should read verse 15, is when the sons of the prophets who are Jericho saw him against them, they said the spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha. So that's the first throwback that Joshua was being trained as well.
We talked about all of this in the story of Joshua and his biography in the beginning of the Bible study on Joshua as well as in the Pentateuch as well. Joshua was being trained his pretty much his whole adult life. He had trained the eudianology. He had training wheels on for a long time, right?
And so Moses passed the baton to Joshua and the spirit rests upon him. So the same thing is going on with Elisha. All right, so that's the first point. And then it also says that, or the second point is that just as Moses and then Joshua parted waters, so now to both Elijah and then Elisha parted waters as well.
Okay, so you've got the doubling going on here with the Moses, Joshua versus the Elijah, Elisha motif, and that's very, very important to see in just a little bit. So here this is the state of permanence. I should point out here that when the spirit rests upon Elisha, that means there's a sense of duration going on. It's not like in the judges where the spirit would come upon, Samson, let's just say, and he's able to fight off the Philistines and then he just rests after that.
So there's the echo to the Exodus, looking backwards, also looking forward. This whole story of Elijah being taken up into heaven and then passing on his perfect spirit upon Elisha, his successor, was 100% looking forward and being a type of the ascension. This Jesus' ascension, Jesus is brought into heaven and then he sends his spirit upon the apostles to continue his mission and the apostles perform even greater miraculous signs. So like, Elisha performs more signs than Elijah, the apostles perform greater signs than Jesus said as much.
If you go back to John 14 verse 12, Jesus says, on Holy Thursday in the upper room, it's better that I go because when I do, you will perform even greater works than these. And that's exactly what happens. You go to Acts of the Apostles. We'll talk a little bit about this next week.
But there are stories all over the place where Peter and Paul, they're doing these miracles that Jesus never performed. I mean, Jesus never healed somebody with his shadow. That's just one example, talking more in the next lesson. Okay.
So here's a quote from St. B. Now, St. B nails it.
He's one of the greats. This is what he says. I took this quote. It's written in a couple of different books.
It says, If you go to Acts chapter one is what you see. Jesus is talking with the apostles like Elijah is talking with Elisha. Then Jesus is taking it to heaven like Elijah was. Then the spirit comes upon them.
And it's just amazing. And they perform all these miracles to continue the mission and the vocation of Jesus and Elijah respectfully. So it's really amazing to see that connection. Many church fathers have pointed this out.
Hey, this is Doc Neck. Thank you so much for listening to this course sample. If you enjoyed it and want to listen to the entire lesson, please become a student over at ScriptureandTradition.com where you can listen to this entire course, but also all the other courses that we have available in the S&T audio library where you can listen to them on demand, however, and whenever you want. So thank you so much.
God bless you and keep studying your Bible. .