[34] 2 Kings ii. 14. LXX., καὶ οὐ διῃρέθη; Vulg., Percussit aquas, et non sunt divisæ.
[35] Mal. iv. 4-6.
[36] Bava-Metzia, f. 37, 2, etc. His name is used for incantations in the Kabbala. Kitsur Sh'lh, f. 71, 1 (Hershon, Talmudic Miscellany, p. 340). The chair set for him is called "the throne of Elijah." For many Rabbinic legends see Hershon, Treasures of the Talmud, pp. 172-178. The Persians regard him as the teacher of Zoroaster.
[37] The name Elisha means "My God is salvation."
[38] Gen. xiii. 10. "The city of palms" (Deut. xxxiv. 3).
[39] Jos., B. J., IV. viii. 3; Robinson, Bibl. Researches, i. 554.
[40] Abarbanel's notion that they meant "Ascend to heaven as Elijah did" is absurd.
[41] קֵרֵהַ This means bald at the back of the head, as נִבֵּהַ (gibbeach), means "forehead-bald" (Ewald, iii. 512). Elisha could not have been bald from old age, since he lived on for nearly sixty years, and must have been a young man. Baldness involved a suspicion of leprosy, and was disliked by Easterns (Lev. xxi. 5, xiii. 43; Isa. iii. 17, 24, xv. 2), as much as by the Romans (Suet., Jul. Cæs., 45; Domit., 18). Elisha's prophetic activity lasted through the reigns of Joram, Jehu, Jehoahaz, and Joash (i.e., 12 + 28 + 17 + 2 years).
[42] The κατέπαιζον of the Vat. LXX. implies persistent and vehement insult. The Post-Mishnic Rabbis, however, say that Elisha was punished with sickness for this deed (Bava-Metzia, f. 87, 1).
[43] There are great difficulties in the statement (2 Kings iii. 1) that he began to reign in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat. I have not entered, nor shall I enter, into the minute and precarious conjectures necessitated by the uncertainties and contradictions of this synchronism introduced into the narrative by some editor. Suffice it that with the aid of the Assyrian records we have certain points de repère; from which we can, with the assistance of the historian, conjecturally restore the main data. In the dates given at the head of the chapters I follow Kittel, as a careful inquirer. Some of the approximately fixed dates are (see [Appendix I.]):—