Elisha again

John Hobbins has been true to his fierce knowledge - but I am going to suggest that the power to kill as he rants about here and here and in many stories in the Bible is a power to kill 'by the sword of the word', that is for us who believe, by the death of Jesus - a death that results in healing.

This is a note that I will need to come back to. No killing of real people in the flesh by the political violence that is perpetrated by human governments or the vigilante subjectivism that could emerge from the thicket can be justified in human terms. Whose Spirit do we have?

On the bear front following the curing of the waters, Elisha needs a reading in this Spirit - if it is to be something other than a nasty story. I am not ready to defend this position. I have had to use the violent protection of the state personally - and I, like all hobbits, am protected by a greater human violence that plays itself out on distant shores, though it can affect lives not far from me.