Jesus comes telling parables, so that seeing they might not see and hearing they might not understand. Yahweh does the same in Kings; He tells and enacts parables that are understood only by those who have received the wisdom that comes from God. It is, as with Jesus and Paul, a wisdom that runs counter to the wisdom of the world, and yet in undermining, fulfills it. One suspects that the original, presumably exilic readers of Kings puzzled over its riddles and parables. Surely by the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had completely missed the subversive force of 2 Kings 5 and 7.
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