Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Kings 2:23

"And he went up from thence unto Beth-el; and as he was going up by the way, there came forth young lads out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou baldhead; go up, thou baldhead." — 2 Kings 2:23 (ASV)

Went up. — From Jericho, in the plain, Elisha now goes to visit the prophetic community established at Beth-el, the chief seat of the illicit cultus.

By the way. — The way par excellence; the highroad leading directly up to the gates of the town.

Little children. — Young boys (or youths). Na’ar is not used rhetorically here, as in 1 Chronicles 29:1; 2 Chronicles 13:7. The boys who mocked Elisha might have been of various ages, between six or seven years and twenty. “Little children” would not be likely to devise a biting sarcasm, nor to come out in a group to insult the prophet (2 Kings 2:24).

Mocked. —Habakkuk 1:10. In Syriac and Chaldee, the root implies “to praise, and to praise ironically,” i.e., to deride.

Go up. — This does not mean “ascend as Elijah was reported to have done,” for the Bethelites knew no more about that than the prophets of Jericho did. The word obviously refers to what Elisha himself was doing at the time (2 Kings 2:23). He was probably going up the steep road slowly, and his prophet’s mantle attracted attention.

Thou bald head. — Baldness was a reproach (Isaiah 3:17; Isaiah 15:2), and suspicious as one of the marks of leprosy (Leviticus 13:43). Elisha, though still young—he lived fifty years after this (2 Kings 13:14)—may have become bald prematurely.