**FORTY-TWO** is a dark theatrical retelling of one of the strangest and most disturbing episodes in the Hebrew Bible.
The song is based on **2 Kings 2:23–25**, where the prophet Elisha is mocked by a group of youths on the road to Bethel. He turns, curses them, and the text says that **two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of them**.
The biblical account itself is extremely brief. It gives no names, no description of the injuries, no explanation of what happened afterward, and no extended moral. It simply records the curse, the bears, the number forty-two, and then moves on with Elisha’s journey.
This track expands that short passage into a dramatic narrative, imagining the fear and chaos of a bear attack while keeping the core events anchored to what the text actually says. The graphic details of the attack are dramatic reconstruction rather than claims that those specific wounds are described in the passage.
From a historical-critical perspective, the song does not attempt to defend, condemn, or explain the event theologically. It simply tells the story preserved in the text and leaves the listener with the same unsettling questions the passage itself leaves behind.
**Source:**
2 Kings 2:23–25
**Content Advisory:** This track contains graphic imagery involving a violent animal attack and injuries to youths and may be disturbing to some listeners.
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