And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of
Israel, and the horsemen thereof.'--2 KINGS ii. 12.
'...And Joash, the King of Israel, came down unto him, and wept over
his face, and said. O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and
the horsemen thereof.'--2 KINGS xiii. U.
The scenes and the speakers are strangely different in these two
incidents. The one scene is that mysterious translation on the further
bank of the Jordan, when a mortal was swept up to heaven in a fiery
whirlwind, and the other is an ordinary sick chamber, where an old man
was lying, with the life slowly ebbing out of him. The one speaker is
the successor of the great prophet, on whom his spirit in a large
measure fell; the other, an idolatrous king, young, headstrong, who had
despised the latter prophet's teaching while he lived, but was now for
the moment awed into something like seriousness and reverence by his
death.
Now the remarkable thing is that this unworthy monarch should have come
to the dying prophet, and should have strengthened and cheered him by
the quotation of his own words, spoken so long ago, as if he would say
to him, 'All that thou didst mean when thou didst stand there in
rapturous adoration, watching the ascending Elijah, is as true about
thee, lying dying here, of a common and lingering sickness. My father,
my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.' Seen or
unseen, these were present. The reality was the same, though the
appearances were so different.