Phrases in the Bible have the quality of being bones. They always wear the most essential form phrases of the human language can wear. There are no fineries, no baroque, no ornament, no strange turns or formulations. Always the bones of what can be expressed through the human language.
And yet, this is no generative grammar. Elijahʼs phrase is very poetic, in that it uses a very creative form. Itʼs still a bare bones form, but it is also a poetic form.
A very good way to use the language, that is the material made of words that God gave us in order to express ourselves.
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Elijahʼs raising to the sky without dying is a biblical precedent to Maryʼs Assumption. Though, a problem surely is that theologians call Maryʼs Assumption unique, in that Mary is unique. There are other unique people in the Bible. St. John the Baptist is the greatest of the prophets, and yet he is another Elijah.
How do we deal with such problems? Iʼd say that it can be said that as Jesusʼ advent is new and unique, this makes Mary and all that happened to her unique, too. This doesnʼt deny that other unique people of the Bible might have gone through another form of Assumption, different and lower than Maryʼs but not less real.
Elijah and Elisha dividing the waters and walking on dry land are a clear reprisal of Moses. This makes it more than just a deed, it makes it a theme and advises to look for hidden, universal meaning behind it.
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I think this passage is a bit of comedy in the Bible:
And they said unto him, “Behold now, there are with thy servants fifty strong men. Let them go, we pray thee, and seek thy master, lest perhaps the Spirit of the Lord hath taken him up and cast him upon some mountain or into some valley.” And he said, “Ye shall not send.” And when they urged him till he was ashamed, he said, “Send.” They sent therefore fifty men, and they sought three days but found him not. And when they came again to him (for he tarried at Jericho), he said unto them, “Did I not say unto you, ‘Go not’?” (2, 16-18)
How else could one explain it?
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It is pretty painful to see how a man who is something in the eyes of God can be harsh with a man who is nothing in the eyes of God. That, I think, is how Jesus treated demons and is also how I feel I am treated sometimes by righeout men:
And Elisha said, “As the Lord of hosts liveth, before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee. (3, 14)
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The next passage is very controversial. Human sacrifice, child sacrifice, your own son’s sacrifice. All this sounds bad, but the passage seems to underline that there is at least one god, to whom this king has sacrificed, who takes such sacrifice as legit and takes it into great consideration, as it gives the sacrificer the power to push away an entire army that was winning:
Then he took his eldest son who should have reigned in his stead, and offered him as a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel. And they departed from him, and returned to their own land. (3, 27)
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