In Front | Workbook: “Go up, Baldhead!”

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Let’s look at one more Messianic connection with Elisha to close the lesson. In this scene Elisha is jeered by a group of boys:

He went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!”

2 Kings 2:23 (ESV)

Caesarius of Arles (470-542), another early Christian commentator, connects this jeering with the scorn Jesus faced many centuries later before His crucifixion. He refers to Christ as “true Elisha.”

In this fact, too, the passion of our Lord and Savior was plainly prefigured. Just as those undisciplined children shouted to Elisha, “Go up, you baldhead; go up you baldhead,” so at the time of the passion (certain) Jews with impious words shouted to Christ the true Elisha, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” What does, “Go up you baldhead” mean except: Ascend the cross on the site of Calvary?

— Sermon 12.72

The connection made with Calvary—the place of Christ’s crucifixion—is a reference to the name of this place in the Gospels, “Golgotha.” Three of the Gospels tell us this means “Place of a Skull.” A skull is, of course, a type of bald head, and Caesarius is quick to connect this with the taunt of Elisha’s opponents of “Baldhead!” which resembles the vocal criticism Jesus would later experience.

These kinds of allegorical readings, and the details they draw on, feel strange to our modern sensibilities. But that doesn’t mean we should write them off. This is a different way of reading the Bible’s intertextuality than we are taught today, but that doesn’t mean it’s without value.

Whatever we think of allegorical reading, the fact remains that these early Christians are in one sense the ones who brought us the Bible—and in many cases, they were willing to die for it. Their relationship to the Bible, and the connections they made in it, deserves our respect— if not our agreement. Before we brush them off, we should sit with them awhile and look for Christ in places and people like Elisha. We might be surprised at what we find.

Source: Marco Conti, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament V: 1–2 Kings, 1–2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, 2008, pp. 149-150.

Record your observations of comparisons between Elisha and Jesus.

Kings and Chronicles, Part 1: The Demise of Kingship

Participants 7

In Front | Workbook: “Go up, Baldhead!”

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