He said, “Take the arrows;” and he took them. He said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground;” and he struck three times, and stopped.
Parallel Translations
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He said, “Take the arrows;” and he took them. He said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground;” and he struck three times, and stopped.
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And he said, Take the arrows. And he took them. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground. And he smote thrice, and stayed.
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And he said: 'Take the arrows'; and he took them. And he said unto the king of Israel: 'Smite upon the ground'; and he smote thrice, and stayed.
Cross-references (6)
Passages linked to 2 Kings 13:18 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- 2 Kings 4:6 When the containers were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another container.” He said to her, “There isn’t another container.” Then the oil stopped flowing.
- Exodus 17:11 When Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed. When he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.
- Isaiah 20:2-4 at that time Yahweh spoke by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, “Go, and loosen the sackcloth from off your waist, and take your sandals from off your feet.” He did so, walking naked and barefoot. Yahweh said, “As my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and a wonder concerning Egypt and concerning Ethiopia, so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Ethiopia, young and old, naked and barefoot, and with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.
- Ezekiel 4:1-10 “You also, son of man, take a tile, and lay it before yourself, and portray on it a city, even Jerusalem. Lay siege against it, build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it. Also set camps against it and plant battering rams against it all around. Take for yourself an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between you and the city. Then set your face toward it. It will be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel. “Moreover lie on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it. According to the number of the days that you shall lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity. For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be to you a number of days, even three hundred ninety days. So you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. “Again, when you have accomplished these, you shall lie on your right side, and shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah. I have appointed forty days, each day for a year, to you. You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm uncovered; and you shall prophesy against it. Behold, I put ropes on you, and you shall not turn yourself from one side to the other, until you have accomplished the days of your siege. “Take for yourself also wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel. Make bread of it. According to the number of the days that you will lie on your side, even three hundred ninety days, you shall eat of it. Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day. From time to time you shall eat it.
- Ezekiel 5:1-4 “You, son of man, take a sharp sword. You shall take it as a barber’s razor to yourself, and shall cause it to pass over your head and over your beard. Then take balances to weigh and divide the hair. A third part you shall burn in the fire in the middle of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled. You shall take a third part, and strike with the sword around it. A third part you shall scatter to the wind, and I will draw out a sword after them. You shall take of it a few in number, and bind them in the folds of your robe. Of these again you shall take, and cast them into the middle of the fire, and burn them in the fire. From it a fire will come out into all the house of Israel.
- Ezekiel 12:1-7 Yahweh’s word also came to me, saying, “Son of man, you dwell in the middle of the rebellious house, who have eyes to see, and don’t see, who have ears to hear, and don’t hear; for they are a rebellious house. “Therefore, you son of man, prepare your stuff for moving, and move by day in their sight. You shall move from your place to another place in their sight. It may be they will consider, though they are a rebellious house. You shall bring out your stuff by day in their sight, as stuff for moving. You shall go out yourself at evening in their sight, as when men go out into exile. Dig through the wall in their sight, and carry your stuff out that way. In their sight you shall bear it on your shoulder, and carry it out in the dark. You shall cover your face, so that you don’t see the land, for I have set you for a sign to the house of Israel.” I did so as I was commanded. I brought out my stuff by day, as stuff for moving, and in the evening I dug through the wall with my hand. I brought it out in the dark, and bore it on my shoulder in their sight.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (12 sources)
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 2Ki 13:18 And he said, Take the arrows. And…
2Ki 13:18 And he said, Take the arrows. And he took [them]. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground. And he smote thrice, and stayed.
Ver. 18. And he took them.] He is very morigerous to the prophet, as expecting good from him; only he stayed striking before he should, and that was to his loss. He should have continued smiting till the prophet had said, Enough.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Smite upon the ground: the former sign portended victory,…
Smite upon the ground: the former sign portended victory, and this was to declare the number of the victories.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And Elisha died, and they buried him,.... In Samaria.…
And Elisha died, and they buried him,.... In Samaria. Epiphanius says (n), in Sebastopolis of Samaria, Samaria itself was called Sebaste in later times; though the Jews say (o) he was buried in Mount Carmel, in the cave of Elijah; according to the Jewish chronology (p), he died in the tenth year of Joash, and he prophesied more than sixty years; sixty six, as Abarbinel, since he began to prophesy in the nineteenth year of Jehoshaphat; and, according to Clemens (q) of Alexandria, when he was forty years of age; but it seems rather, as Kimchi observes, that he died in the beginning of the reign of Joash, and even before his father's death, when he was a partner with him in the throne, and before any salvation or deliverance from the Syrians was wrought:
and the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year; at the spring of the year, when there was fruit on the earth, those troops of robbers came to plunder and spoil; several of the Jewish writers observe, that in the word for "coming", is instead of and so may be rendered "in that year", in that selfsame year that Elisha died; and so read the Syriac, Arabic, and the Vulgate Latin versions.
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(n) De Vitis Prophet. c. 6. (o) Cippi Heb. p. 46. (p) Seder Olam Rabba, c. 19. (q) Stromat. l. 1. p. 326.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Smite - The former sign portended victory, this was…
Smite - The former sign portended victory, this was to declare the number of the victories.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 18. Smite upon the ground] As he was…
Verse 18. Smite upon the ground] As he was ordered to take his arrows, the smiting on the ground must mean shooting arrows into it.
He smote thrice, and stayed.] The prophet knew that this shooting was emblematical: probably the king was not aware of what depended on the frequency of the action; and perhaps it was of the Lord that he smote only thrice, as he had determined to give Israel those three victories only over the Syrians. Elisha's being wroth because there were only three instead of five or six shots does not prove that God was wroth, or that he had intended to give the Syrians five or six overthrows.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain 2Ki 13:18-19. Smite upon the ground — The former…
2Ki 13:18-19. Smite upon the ground — The former sign portended victory: and this was to declare the number of the victories. He smote thrice, and stayed — Through his inattention to, or unbelief of, the sign just given, concerning war with, victory over, and deliverance from Syria, or through indifference about that deliverance. The man of God was wroth with him — Whether Joash, before this interview with Elisha, was acquainted or not with the nature of those parabolic actions, whereby the prophets were accustomed to represent future events, he could not but perceive, by the comment which Elisha made upon the first arrow, which he calls the arrow of deliverance, that his shooting was a symbolical action, and intended to prefigure his victories over that nation; and, therefore, he might easily understand that this second action, of striking the ground with the arrow, was to portend the number of victories he was to obtain. And if, added to this, we may suppose, with the generality of interpreters, that the prophet had apprized him beforehand that such was the symbolical intent of what he now put him upon, that the oftener he smote upon the ground, the more would be the victories which his arms should obtain; and that thus, in some measure, his success in the war was put into his own power; the king’s conduct was utterly inexcusable, if, diffident of the prophet’s promise, and considering the great strength of the kings of Syria, more than the power of God, he stopped his hand after he had smote thrice, supposing that the prediction would never have been fulfilled, had he gone on and smote upon the earth oftener. Upon the whole, therefore, the prophet had just reason to be offended at the king for not believing God, who had done so many signal miracles in favour of the Israelites; for not believing him, who, according to his own acknowledgment, had been a constant defender of the state, and now, in his dying hours, was full of good wishes and intentions for his country. See Dodd, Le Clerc, and Patrick.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Smite upon the ground - Some prefer to render…
Smite upon the ground - Some prefer to render - “Shoot to the ground;” i. e. “Shoot arrows from the window into the ground outside, as if thou wert shooting against an enemy.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Still. This shewed a degree of remission. (Haydock) ---…
Still. This shewed a degree of remission. (Haydock) --- It was natural for the king to conclude, that the more he struck the earth, the greater would be his success; (Calmet) and the prophet had, perhaps, insinuated as much. (Menochius)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 18. Take the arrows] By the previous symbolical act,…
18. Take the arrows] By the previous symbolical act, the prophet has directed the king to go eastward with courage against the enemy, assured that the Lord will be with his arrows, and will regard them as His own. He now proceeds to test the zeal of Joash.
Smite upon the ground] The Hebrew indicates the direction of the blows ‘towards the ground’. It appears as though the prophet wished blows to be aimed as if intended to strike down a foe. So the sense is equivalent to ‘strike (some one) down to the ground’. It does not seem that there was to be any shooting of the arrows in this second figurative action, but only a series of blows made with them as they were grasped, and aimed at some imaginary enemy who was to be brought down.
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And he smote thrice, and stayed] On ‘stayed’ in this sense of ‘ceased’ cf. on 2Ki_4:6 above. The act, which was intended to be an index of his earnestness, is very feebly performed, and so the promise is curtailed: ‘now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice’.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (18) And he said.—LXX., “and Elisha said unto him,”…
(18) And he said.—LXX., “and Elisha said unto him,” which, as Thenius remarks, is more appropriate here, in introducing the account of the second symbolic action.
The arrows—i.e., the bundle of arrows.
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Smite upon the ground.—Rather, smite (or, strike) earthwards; as if striking an enemy to the earth.
He smote thrice.—Three being a sacred number.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain And he said, Take the arrows. And he took…
And he said, Take the arrows. And he took them. Elisha bade the king take into his band the remainder of the arrows which the quiver contained. This the king did, and held them in a bunch, as archers do when they have no quiver. And he said unto the King of Israel, Smite upon the ground. It is disputed what this means The LXX translate Pataxon eijv thn ghn "Strike upon the ground;" and so Ewald, De Wette, and Thenius, who regard the order as one to strike with the arrows against the ground (i.e. the floor) or in the direction of the ground. Keil and Bahr, on the contrary, think that the order was to shoot the arrows down from the window and hit the earth with them. But some contrast seems to be intended between the "shoot" (hry) of ver. 19 and the "strike" ( of the present passage. Ewald"s explanation is thus to be preferred. And he smote thrice, and stayed. Joash struck with the arrows against the floor three times, and then paused, thinking he had done enough. He did not enter into the spirit of the symbolical act, which represented the smiting and slaying of enemies. Perhaps he had not much faith in the virtue of the symbolism, which he may even, with the arrogance of a proud and worldly minded man, have thought childish.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 13:18-19 Jehoash failed to act on his knowledge that…
13:18-19 Jehoash failed to act on his knowledge that the arrows signified victory over Aram (13:17). By striking the ground only three times, he unwittingly limited his own success against the Arameans; final victory came only later in the days of his son Jeroboam II (14:25-28).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.