2 Kings 6 · An Iconic Story
The Floating Axe Head
A borrowed axe head slides off its handle into the Jordan, and a poor student cries out — because he cannot pay for it. The prophet's first question is not what were you doing, but where fell it?
An anonymous wood engraving, signed by its engraver in the lower right corner. It is one of very few pictures of this scene anywhere, there is no Doré plate for 2 Kings 6, and the story is almost never painted. Notice what the engraver chose: not the miracle but the last verse. Elisha stands at the centre; the man who lost the axe is flat on the bank with his arm in the river, reaching. That is exactly what verse 7 says, take it up to thee, and the man put out his hand and took it. The one liberty is the stick, drawn here as a long pole the prophet holds down into the water; the text says he cut it and threw it in.
A Borrowed Axe Goes Into the River
2 Kings 6:1–7, told plainly
The company of students who lived and learned with Elisha had outgrown their meeting room. They asked him whether they could go down to the Jordan, take a beam each, and build somewhere bigger. He said go. One of them asked him to come along, and he did.
Now the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, “Please take note that the place where we meet with you is too small for us. Please let us go to the Jordan, where each of us can get a log so we can build ourselves a place to live there.” “Go,” said Elisha.The chapter opens on a building problem, the kind of problem a growing school has.
They were felling timber at the riverside when one man's axe head came off the handle and went into the water. And he cried out, not bother, but a real cry — because the axe was borrowed. Elisha asked where it fell. The man showed him the place. Elisha cut a stick, threw it in there, and the iron floated. Take it up to thee. And the man put out his hand and took it.
As one of them was cutting down a tree, the iron axe head fell into the water. “Oh, my master,” he cried out, “it was borrowed!”The cry, and the reason for it, in one verse.
“Lift it out,” he said, and the man reached out his hand and took it.The prophet never touches the axe. The story's last act belongs to the man who lost it.
it was borrowed--literally, "begged." The scholar's distress arose from the consideration that it had been presented to him; and that, owing to his poverty, he could not procure another.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), on 2 Kings 6:5
Five Places the Retellings Drift
what the text actually says, against what the story has become
“IT WAS A SMALL MIRACLE”
It is small, and the text knows it, and that is the point of it. The commentators who took it most seriously did not explain the smallness away; they faced it, and found the prophet's character in it.
No doubt there is something startling in the trivial character of this miracle, and of the few others which resemble it. But, inasmuch as we know very little as to the laws which govern the exercise of miraculous powers, it is possible that they may be so much under their possessor's control that he can exercise them, or not exercise them, at pleasure. And it may depend on his discretion whether they are exercised in important cases only, or in trivial cases also. Elisha had evidently great kindness of heart. He could not see a grief without wishing to remedy it. And it seems as if he had sometimes used his miraculous power in pure good nature, when no natural way of remedying an evil presented itself.
Albert Barnes· Notes on the Old and New Testaments (1832–1869), on 2 Kings 6:6
“HE WAS UPSET ABOUT A TOOL”
He was facing a debt he could not pay. Two chapters earlier in this same ministry, a prophet's widow had creditors coming to take her two sons as slaves. That is what an unpayable debt meant in Israel, and it is what the man's cry is about.
Note, We ought to be as careful of that which is borrowed as of that which is our own, that it receives no damage, because we must love our neighbour as ourselves and do as we would be done by. It is likely this prophet was poor, and had not wherewithal to pay for the axe, which made the loss of it so much the greater trouble.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 2 Kings 6:5
“THE STICK MADE IT FLOAT”
Every commentator in the pool says the opposite, and says it plainly. The stick is a sign, not a mechanism, and the text claims nothing for it at all.
He cut down a stick - This had no natural tendency to raise the iron; it was only a sign or ceremony which the prophet chose to use on the occasion. The iron did swim - This was a real miracle; for the gravity of the metal must have for ever kept it at the bottom of the water.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on 2 Kings 6:6
“ELISHA FISHED IT OUT”
Verse 7 has Elisha say take it up to thee, and the man reach out his hand and take it. The prophet never touches the axe. The last act of the story belongs to the man who lost it.
“IRON WAS ORDINARY”
An iron head on a wooden helve was a real capital item in this period, which is exactly why a poor student had to ask someone else for one, and exactly why losing it was a crisis.
The Jews used iron for the heads of axes at a very early date (see Deu 19:5). They probably acquired a knowledge of the smelting process in Egypt, where iron was employed at least from the time of the third Rameses.
Albert Barnes· Notes on the Old and New Testaments (1832–1869), on 2 Kings 6:5
A School With a Building Problem
who these men were, why they walked to the river, and what an axe cost
“The sons of the prophets” were not a metaphor. They were companies of students gathered around Elisha, living together and sitting under his teaching, and he moved between them on a circuit. The room in this story is a schoolroom.
The place where we dwell with thee - literally, the place where we sit before thee, i. e. the place where we assemble and sit to bear thy teaching. Elisha visited the sons of the prophets in circuit, staying a short time at each place where a school was established. Perhaps he was now visiting Jericho.
Albert Barnes· Notes on the Old and New Testaments (1832–1869), on 2 Kings 6:1
And the reason they had outgrown it is worth stopping on. This is the northern kingdom at its worst. Ahab's dynasty, Baal in the streets, Syria at the border, and the schools were filling up. The chapter opens with a building problem caused by revival.
The place - is too strait for us - Notwithstanding the general profligacy of Israel, the schools of the prophets increased. This was no doubt owing to the influence of Elisha.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on 2 Kings 6:1
So they walked to where the wood was. Timber was hard to come by in the hill country and easy at the river, and these men were not hiring builders, they were cutting their own beams and putting up their own walls.
Trees were rare in most parts of Palestine, but plentiful in the Jordan Valley. Jericho was known in early times as the city of palms Deu 34:3; Jdg 1:16.
Albert Barnes· Notes on the Old and New Testaments (1832–1869), on 2 Kings 6:2
Every man a beam - They made a sort of log-houses with their own hands.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on 2 Kings 6:2
Which leaves the axe. The Hebrew word behind “borrowed” is the ordinary verb to ask, in the passive: the axe had been asked for. And the law on asked-for property is not vague. If a borrowed thing is lost while its owner is not with it, the borrower makes it good. The man's cry is a legal position, not a mood.
If a man borrows an animal from his neighbor and it is injured or dies while its owner is not present, he must make full restitution. If the owner was present, no restitution is required. If the animal was rented, the fee covers the loss.The law standing behind the panic: he owed for it, and he had nothing.
What the Text Refuses to Tell
four silences, named as silence and left that way
Seven verses. Almost everything a reader wants to know is missing, and the gaps are not accidents of a short account, they are what a short account looks like when it reports only what happened.
Why Elisha cut a stick at all
The action is recorded and never explained. Every account of what the stick wasforis a reader's account, and the old commentators say so themselves , they rule a mechanism out rather than proposing one.
cut down a stick, and cast it in thither--Although this means was used, it had no natural adaptation to make the iron swim. Besides, the Jordan is at Jericho so deep and rapid that there were one thousand chances to one against the stick falling into the hole of the axe-head.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), on 2 Kings 6:6
How the iron behaved
“The iron did swim.” That is all. The verb is one the Hebrew Bible uses three times in total, and this is its only miracle. Scripture does not say whether the head rose, or drifted, or sat on the surface, or how long it stayed there.
Who the man was, and who owned the axe
The student is anonymous and so is the person he asked. The one character the story gives a name to is the prophet, and the one thing it gives a description to is the iron.
Whether the house was ever finished
Verse 7 ends the scene and verse 8 opens a war with Syria. The beams, the site and the building drop out of Scripture entirely. The story was never about the house.
Where This Points, and Where It Honestly Does Not
the New Testament never quotes this passage, and the page will not pretend otherwise
No apostle cites 2 Kings 6:1–7. There is no New Testament reading of the axe head, no reading of the stick, and no reading of the water. That is worth saying plainly, because plenty of pages would rather quietly invent one.
What the passage does carry is its own theology, and it is in the smallness. In a book of sieges and famines and burning chariots and kings dying badly, God stops for a student's debt over a borrowed tool. And the prophet's first words are not what were you doing? or whose was it? They are where fell it? — the question of someone already intending to help.
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.Not a comment on 2 Kings 6, but the same God, describing Himself. Sparrows, and the hairs of a head.
Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.Scripture's own teaching about size: the smallness of a worry is not a reason to carry it alone.
Those two are placed here as Scripture's teaching about God's character, not as commentary on this chapter. The connection is real; the citation is not.
The old devotional reading of the iron heart
Preachers have read the sunk iron as the human heart and the stick as the cross for centuries, and Matthew Henry does it in the middle of his own sober note on the verse. It is a beautiful piece of seventeenth-century devotion and it is presented here as exactly that, a preacher's application, not a claim the chapter makes.
We need not double the miracle by supposing that the stick sunk to fetch up the iron, it was enough that it was a signal of the divine summons to the iron to rise. God's grace can thus raise the stony iron heart which has sunk into the mud of this world, and raise up affections naturally earthly, to things above.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 2 Kings 6:6
The Commentators Who Took It Seriously
four men who refused to be embarrassed by a small miracle
The temptation with this passage is to apologise for it, to make it stand for something larger so that it earns its place in the canon. Albert Barnes does the opposite. He names the problem out loud, admits how little anyone knows about how miracles work, and then says the honest thing: Elisha was kind, and this is what a kind man does with power.
No doubt there is something startling in the trivial character of this miracle, and of the few others which resemble it. But, inasmuch as we know very little as to the laws which govern the exercise of miraculous powers, it is possible that they may be so much under their possessor's control that he can exercise them, or not exercise them, at pleasure. And it may depend on his discretion whether they are exercised in important cases only, or in trivial cases also. Elisha had evidently great kindness of heart. He could not see a grief without wishing to remedy it. And it seems as if he had sometimes used his miraculous power in pure good nature, when no natural way of remedying an evil presented itself.
Albert Barnes· Notes on the Old and New Testaments (1832–1869), on 2 Kings 6:6
Why this page is short
Most pages on this shelf carry a rank of teachers on their subject. This one carries four commentators and stops. The reason is simply that this is where the good writing on these seven verses is: the passage has drawn careful old expositors and very little else, and padding it out with voices who never taught it would make the page longer without making it truer. A seven-verse story gets a seven-verse treatment, done properly.
Read the Great Books
the works that have carried this teaching: go further than this page
Notes on the Old and New Testaments
Albert Barnes · 1832–1869
Barnes is the reason this page exists in its present shape, he faces the smallness of the miracle head on instead of explaining it away, and lands on Elisha's kindness.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Commentary on the Bible
Adam Clarke · 1832
Clarke works the Hebrew of the cry, and gives the flat sentence the whole passage turns on: the stick had no natural tendency to raise the iron.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Commentary on the Whole Bible
Matthew Henry · 1710
Henry sees the debt before he sees the miracle, the student was poor, and had nothing to pay with, and then preaches it, as Henry always does.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown · 1871
The shortest and most practical of the four: what “borrowed” really says in the Hebrew, and why the Jordan at Jericho makes any natural explanation worse rather than better.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Where Fell It?
“Where did it fall?” asked the man of God. And when he showed him the place, the man of God cut a stick, threw it there, and made the iron float.The question comes before the miracle, and it is the only thing Elisha asks.
The story is seven verses long and it never grows. Nobody is healed of anything, nothing is decided, no army moves. A poor man loses a tool he cannot replace, a prophet asks him to show the exact spot, and the iron comes back up, and then Scripture goes straight on to a war. It is left in the Bible at its own size, which may be the most useful thing about it: the God of 2 Kings is not too busy with Syria to ask a student where the axe went in.
GO ON FROM HERE
Built from MannaFest's research brief on 2 Kings 6 and the gate-verified quote pool for the Kings stories — public-domain commentary quoted word for word (Adam Clarke, Albert Barnes, Matthew Henry, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown). Hebrew word data verified against the site's own word-level text of 2 Kings 6. Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible, fetched live from the site's text. Artwork: an anonymous engraving, public domain, license-verified at Wikimedia Commons.