2 Kings 2:21

AT THE SPRING OF THE WATERS

‘He went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in there.’

2 Kings 2:21

‘The spirit of Elijah,’ they said, ‘doth rest on Elisha.’ It was true, yet who is not struck with the difference, with the contrariety, between them? At first sight the succession is a deterioration. The glow, the rush, the genius, the inspiration, the awe, the prowess, seem to have died with the master. Viewed in one aspect, no position was ever more level, no work more human, no office less heroic, than that of Elisha. Yet it is upon this life that ‘a double portion’ of Elijah’s spirit rested. If the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elias, it was ‘Eliseus the prophet’ who dimly prefigured Christ.

There is one point peculiar to this parable, and that is the stress laid upon ‘the spring of the waters.’ ‘The water is nought, and the ground barren.’ God’s prophet goes to the spring of the waters, and casts the healing ‘salt’ in there.

I. Man might have been satisfied to deal with the symptoms: with the water and with the ground.—When the miracle is interpreted into parable, we see how infinite may be its applications. It is the parable of thoroughness. It bids us go to the spring of our disease and never rest till the antidote is at work there.

II. There are two aspects of our earthly being, each impressive, each admonitory.—The one is that which represents it as a multitude, the other that which represents it as a unit. Our life is a unit life, and this is what gives significance and solemnity to its starting. We are here at the spring of the waters, and here therefore must a more than prophet’s hand cast in the salt. The Gospel of a free forgiveness for the sake of a dying, living Lord, the Gospel of a Divine strength given in the person of an indwelling Spirit—this is the healing ‘salt,’ this is the life-giving life, for the sake of which Christ came and suffered, and died, and rose. ‘He went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in there.… And the Lord said, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land.’

Dean Vaughan.

Illustrations

(1) ‘If Paradise Lost is to be regained, human life must be regenerated at its springs. If evil is to be vanquished, it must be crushed in the egg; if good is to be victorious, it must be nursed from the cradle. The physical deterioration and moral degeneration, which follow in the wake of overcrowding, do not fall so heavily on the grown-up man or woman, whose character is already formed, as on the sensitive, impressionable nature of the child. In giving charity it is better to support orphanages, to endeavour to save the children, than to give indiscriminately to the grown-up beggar who solicits our alms; and it is more important that a little child should be brought up in the temperance cause than that a drunken man or woman should be reclaimed. The nation’s greatest need is the salvation of the child-life.’

(2) ‘Like most of Elisha’s miracles, this was a miracle of mercy. With the solitary exception of the act recorded at the end of the chapter—for which there must surely be some extenuating explanation—his deeds were deeds of gracious, soothing, homely beneficence, bound up with the ordinary tenour of human life. This miracle was wrought with visible means, “a new cruse and salt therein.” Nothing, after all, is so wonderful as the familiar. Facts are stubborn things. It was worked at the fountain-head. The prophet went unto the spring of the waters. It is always wise to do this. Any poisoned fountain must be healed at its source if the cure is intended to last. This is what conversion does in the soul. It makes us new creatures in Christ Jesus.’