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16 Then they asked Elisha, |Look! We have 50 valiant men here with your servant! Please let them go out and search for your master Elijah. Perhaps the Spirit of the LORD has taken him up on a mountain or into a valley.| Elisha responded, |Don't bother searching.| 17 But they persisted until he was frustrated, so he said, |Send them out!| So they sent out the 50 men, and they looked around for three days but did not find Elijah. 18 By the time they returned, Elisha was living in Jericho. Then Elisha asked them, |Didn't I tell you not to go?| 19 The men who lived in the city addressed Elisha. |Look now,| they said, |our city's location is good, as you have been observing, but the water springs here are bad and the land isn't sustaining crops.| 20 Elisha ordered them, |Bring me a new bowl and put some salt in it.| So they brought him what he had requested. 21 Elisha went out to the springs, threw the salt into them, and declared, |This is what the LORD says: 'I have purified these waters. Neither death nor barrenness is to flow from them anymore.'| 22 As a result, the water springs remain pure to this day, just as Elisha had declared. 23 Later, Elisha left there to go up to Bethel, and as he was traveling along the road, some insignificant young men came from the city and started mocking him. They told him, |Get on up, baldy! Get on up, baldy!| 24 He looked behind him, took note of the young men, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. Suddenly two female bears emerged from the woods and mauled 42 of the young men. 25 After this, he left from there to go to Mt. Carmel, and from there he went back to Samaria. 2 Kings 2:16-25, Intl. Standard Version. Copyright © 1995-2014 by ISV Foundation.
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