II KINGS 6:1-7: THE FLOATING AX HEAD

The miracle in this passage is a rather strange one. Elisha helps a fellow prophet retrieve a missing ax head by floating it to the top of the Jordan River. We know that all things are possible with God, and this seems to be a rather easy miracle for Him to have accomplish. Nevertheless, it somehow appears to be less "believable" that other OT miracles.

Skeptics have said that this is a fabricated demonstrating the belief by ignorant people in sympathetic magic. By throwing an object that floats into the water, it would transfer those properties to the iron. I think we can dismiss that possibility, but I felt for years that this was the hardest miracle in the Bible for me to personally believe in -- until I looked into it a bit further. As a scientist, such an apparent changing of a physical characteristic of iron as decreasing its specific gravity just rubbed me the wrong way even if I knew that God certainly had the ability to accomplish it. Let's apply some of the criteria for the believability of miracles that are given below:

1. Is it Helpful?: Yes, it seems to be helpful, but...

2. Is it Meaningful?: on the other hand, I considered that it was a rather trivial matter for God to have intervened into.

3. Is it Consistent with Human Nature?: It seemed as if the man who lost the ax head and Elisha were both making a big deal over nothing.

4. Is it Consistent with God's Nature?: This miracle appears to have come out of the clear blue and is not consistent with how God acts elsewhere, either through natural or supernatural means.

5. Is it a Matter-of-fact Narration?: The event is told rather simply, but Elisha's actions seem to be unnecessarily elaborate. Why didn't he just say, “Ax head, float?”

6. Is it Improbable by Natural Means?: We will deal with this in a second.

The first three criteria are related, but remember that (a) the ax head was needed to build a place to house those who were being taught by Elisha and (b) since the Hebrew word translated “borrowed” has the connotation of “begged,” it is obvious that the school of prophets didn't have the material means to replace the ax head they had lost. The man who lost it might have even been forced to become a slave to the person he borrowed it from until the item was paid for.

Regarding the fourth criterion, I couldn't think of any other times when God had intervened in the same manner. But two commentators pointed out the similarity between this occurrence and the time Jesus met the financial needs of a follower (Peter in that case) by pointing out where in the water a fish could be found with a coin in its mouth. But that was a case of miraculous knowledge, not a nature miracle. So I looked again at the fifth item. First, why did Elisha have to ask for the rough location of the missing ax head (which apparently couldn't be seen in the muddy water or river bed)? Then he is said to have cut off a stick (the Hebrew verb has the more exact meaning of fashioning the stick to a particular shape and size). Then I reasoned that if God through His divine providence directed Elisha's throw so that the stick or pole stuck in the socket of the ax head, then the whole thing would naturally float to the surface and could be retrieved.

Concerning the last criterion, how likely is it that someone could blindly throw a stick into muddy water and have it wedge itself into a hole in an ax head? It could have happened naturally, but it would be highly unlikely. So this is my current understanding of what happened: it wasn't what we would call a nature miracle, but an example of God's special providence that was obviously memorable enough to be included in the Bible.