Before beginning the subject of these few verses, we would like to recapitulate the history of the “sons of the prophets” as this book presents it. We have seen that the sons of the prophets represent the prophetic remnant of Israel, brought into relationship with the Messiah by His Spirit at the time of the end.
In 2 Kings 2 They are still scattered here and there, some at Bethel, others at Jericho. They have a partial knowledge of God’s thoughts; they know from prophecy that the Lord will take up Elijah, but they lack true intelligence. They are not yet joined together, with a common character that forms them, so to speak, into a vessel of testimony. Some remain at Bethel, attached to the promises of God, others at Jericho, feeling the weight of the curse of God against His people. They do not stop at Jordan and in figure, do not understand its value. Nor do they know all the efficacy of the death of Christ which they contemplate at a distance (2 Kings 2:7). They show their ignorance of His resurrection, for in seeking Elijah’s body they seek “the living among the dead.”
We see them next (2 Kings 4:1-7) in distress; death occurs among them, and their widows lack the means of subsistence. It is then that, in type, the oil they need—the Spirit—is poured out for them by the ministry of Elisha. We find them thereafter gathered together in one body of testimony around the prophet at Gilgal. Self-judgment, affliction, and repentance characterize them—always in type. It is then that they learn the value of the holy humanity of Christ, come into the world to bring life when “there is death in the pot” because they were unable to distinguish good fruit from bad. It is there that, in their extreme poverty at a time of famine and of tribulation, the Lord feeds these poor witnesses. At last in this same place where at one time Israel had been when she had entered into Canaan, they feed in figure upon Christ in humiliation and in resurrection, and come to know Him. Little by little their spiritual intelligence increases, marked by a growing appreciation of the Lord.
After these things, the Jordan, already presented previously as the death followed by the resurrection of Christ, is shown in 2 Kings 5 to be the only means of purifying the Gentiles, for whom it begins to manifest its influence before the prophetic remnant has part in it. But, while dwelling at Gilgal, this prophetic remnant cannot remain there indefinitely. This time of grace in relation to the Gentiles now comes to its completion. “Behold now, the place where we dwell before thee is too strait for us”(2 Kings 6:1). They want to go a step further, to find a dwellingplace other than the one, however precious it may be, of affliction and of repentance. This place is the Jordan. Now they know the value of the Jordan. There death had been annulled by the power of the spirit of Elijah; the prophet had passed through it to go to heaven. Elisha had returned there in power to bring blessing to them. They already know the death of Christ as the only way possible to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. They had come to know it as the purification for the defilement of the Gentiles, at the very time when this defilement had been attached to unfaithful Israel (Gehazi). This marvelous Jordan which had healed Naaman’s uncleanness is the source ever open for Israel’s uncleanness. The remnant want to build themselves a house and dwell there; at last the remnant recognizes that for them this death is the place of blessing and of rest. This is the point the faithful reach. When they reach this place they remain there, they dwell together there. They have found rest, a rest like the swallow, a house like the sparrow.
Elisha approves of their plan and puts them to the test, saying to them: “Go ye.” But how shall they go without him? They must dwell there under the direction of the Spirit of Christ, or else there will be no blessing with them. How shall the Spirit of Christ remain at Gilgal while they go to dwell at Jordan without Him?
Just like the Lord when Jairus appealed to Him, so Elisha consents to come with his servants. He says, “I will go” (2 Kings 6:3). Once come to the banks of the Jordan, they go to work. But suddenly the work is interrupted. One of the sons of the prophets loses his tool in the river, a tool that was not even his own, for he had borrowed it. His poverty, his incapacity are thus manifested: he has no resources. The river of death has swallowed up all his hope. Elisha alone—Christ in Spirit with the remnant—can bring the remedy. Death is conquered; it not only has the gift of cleansing, but it restores to the believer the power he has lost of laboring in the work of Christ and of making Israel to dwell in safety. Everything comes from Him, from the power of His Holy Spirit, from the virtue of His death. He it is who directs the work, who gives the means of accomplishing it, who fills the hearts of His own with the feeling of their own incapacity, who establishes the work of their hands (Psa. 90:17). Without this event the prophetic remnant might have had confidence in its own capacity to do the work of God in Israel. The Spirit of Christ alone has the secret of putting strength in their hands so that they might labor at His work.
Let us note that all this takes place in the midst of the ruin of the people, and that we have not yet the type of the peaceful possession of the millennial blessing. Elisha alone could dwell at Carmel. Here it is a matter of the gradual experience of the prophetic remnant, occupied with building a house of habitation where Elisha might be with them during the reign of the profane king. This is the moment described in Psalm 90 when Christ repents concerning His servants (Psa. 90:13). He comes to their aid in all their infirmities. The same means which had in times past changed the waters of Marah into sweet waters gives power for the remnant’s work and causes death to restore that which seemed to be lost, by the same stroke also destroying every pretension of this poor people’s creditor to reclaim that which had been confided to them under the system of the law.
We cannot insist enough upon the prophetic value of these accounts. It is not, as we shall see, that we cannot find a gospel application in them, as in every other portion of Scripture. But let us state that it is good to keep these events in their natural setting in order to avoid wild interpretations. Now that we have said this, let us examine the moral explanation of this account, that which is applicable to our own circumstances.
The Jordan is an excellent dwelling place for the believer. He must always abide there where he is crucified with Christ. This is where we find the power of the Lord with us. It is there that, gathered about Him, we realize the unity of the Church: “Let us make us a place there, where we may dwell” (2 Kings 6:2). There the Lord gladly comes along with His own to give them His help and His power when they invite Him there. He recognizes and approves of their simplicity of heart, which realizes that blessing is found at the place where the nothingness of man has been proven by His death. Without His personal presence with His people, all our work would be ineffective. Thus, His help is not wanting when we put our hand to the work.
The ax head of the man of the sons of the prophets had not been, as in Israel’s case, an instrument of death for his neighbor (Deut. 19:5); yet even in this case there was a resource for the people who, in their ignorance, had been instrumental in the death of Christ, for they might flee to the city of refuge.
In the scene before us, the work is simply interrupted, work that had been undertaken for the family of God. But what a world it is in which a son of the prophets does not even have a tool of his own. Christ answers, nonetheless, to the very least need of the sons of His people. He is full of compassion for the anguish of a poor human heart concerning a lost tool. This loss, however infinitesimal it may be, moves His heart. The miracle is childish, so to speak but it is a miracle of love. The world, in reading this passage, may well greet it with a mocking sneer. Is it possible, the world will say, that God would reveal such infantile things to us? The believer understands this tender care and rejoices in it, worshipping. He knows that God is for him, and that He who delivered up His own Son for us will also give us all things with Him. He provides for the very least need of his own, pouring the same love into the work that He supplies for the greatest needs. Christ Himself, who humbled Himself unto death, can, far more than did Elisha for the prophets, sympathize with our infirmities and provide for them.
This passage offers us yet another instruction. At Marah, a stick, symbolic of the cross of Christ, had removed the bitterness of the waters, symbolic of death; here the same means abolishes the power of death which was holding the object it had seized. Death from which no one returns, is man’s natural destiny since the time man has sinned. The cross alone, from the moment it is brought in, is able to vanquish and annul this inexorable power; it comes to our help to restore our goods to us. And death vanquished can withhold nothing that belongs to us.