The ax head is "borrowed." What does that suggest? Our bodies and everything we have in nature are "borrowed" of God and we must give an account of their use to God. Everything has to be accounted for with God. The discovery of what we are within, in the face of our responsibility to God, is not pleasant.
When a man is saved he is like a drowning man who just grabs for the life line. The work in his soul is real, but it isn't very deep. He has yet to find out what is inside himself. Unless we learn what's inside, we never discover what God is. We have to discover our need and wretched condition before we can discover the remedy and the full provision that is made for our soul. After we learn that our sins are forgiven, we discover that thing called "self'-this wretched I. "0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
What a wretched position this man was in. He has lost the very means by which he thinks he is going to build a place of rest down by Jordan. There he has lost it all. What is he going to do now? He is driven to this. "Alas, master! for it was borrowed." At least he comes to the right person. He comes to Elisha, who represents Christ.