Immediately after the ascension of Elijah and the parting of the Jordan by his fallen mantle, Elisha set out toward Bethel — the seat of one of the great northern pagan shrines (Jeroboam's golden calf had been at Bethel for over a century). As he walked, a band of youths came out of the city and mocked him: 'Go up, baldhead! Go up, baldhead!'
Elisha turned, looked at them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. At that moment two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the band. The episode is one of the most violently theological in the Old Testament and has been the subject of much Christian commentary across the centuries: in context it is read not as an act of personal pique but as a divine sign at the boundary of the apostate city, addressed to youths old enough to have known better than to mock a successor of the great prophet Elijah just hours after his ascension. The episode has been the prompt for serious Christian reflection on the limits of mocking the holy.