Two Kingdoms · c. 850 BC
Chapter 8
Elisha’s Wonders
So she went, and came to the man of God to Mount Carmel. When the man of God saw her afar off, he said to Gehazi his servant, “Behold, there is the Shunammite.Please run now to meet her, and ask her, ‘Is it well with you? Is it well with your husband? Is it well with your child?’”She answered, “It is well.”
For parents
This chapter tells of a war against Moab. When the king of Moab is losing the battle, he sacrifices his oldest son as a burnt offering on the wall (2 Kings 3:26–27). It also tells how a widow’s two children are about to be taken as slaves for a debt (4:1), and how a young boy dies on his mother’s lap and Elisha brings him back to life (4:18–37). None of it is told in gory detail.
In ’s eighteenth year as king of Judah, ’s son became king of Israel in . His reign lasted twelve years. He did evil in the Lord’s eyes, but not the way his father and mother had: he did away with the pillar of that his father had made. Still, he held on to the sins of son of Nebat, who had led Israel into sin, and he did not give them up.
king of was a sheep breeder. He had been sending Israel’s king a hundred thousand lambs, along with the wool of a hundred thousand rams. After Ahab died, though, the king of Moab broke away from the king of Israel.
At that time King Jehoram marched out of Samaria and gathered all Israel for war. He sent word to Jehoshaphat king of Judah: “Moab’s king has rebelled against me. Will you come with me to war against Moab?”
“I will go,” Jehoshaphat answered. “We are one and the same: my people are your people, and my horses are your horses.”
Then he asked, “Which way should we go up?”
“By the road through the wilderness of ,” Jehoram answered.
So the king of Israel set off with the king of Judah and the king of Edom. They marched for seven days on a roundabout route. Then there was no water for the army, or for the animals that came along behind them.
“Oh no!” cried the king of Israel. “The Lord has called these three kings together to hand them over to Moab!”
But Jehoshaphat said, “Isn’t there a of the Lord here, so that we can ask the Lord through him?”
One of the king of Israel’s servants answered, “ son of Shaphat is here, the man who poured water on ’s hands.”
“The Lord speaks through him,” said Jehoshaphat. So the king of Israel, Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to see him.
Elisha said to the king of Israel, “Why should I have anything to do with you? Go to your father’s prophets and your mother’s prophets.”
“No,” said the king of Israel. “The Lord has called these three kings together to hand them over to Moab.”
“I stand in the presence of the Lord of Armies,” Elisha said, “and as he lives, I wouldn’t even look at you or see you if I didn’t respect Jehoshaphat king of Judah. But now bring me a musician.”
The musician played, and as he did, the Lord’s hand came on Elisha.
“The Lord says, ‘Make this valley full of ditches,’” he said. “This is what the Lord says: ‘You will see no wind and no rain, yet this valley will be full of water. You will drink, and so will your livestock and your other animals. That is an easy thing for the Lord. He will also hand the Moabites over to you. You will strike down every walled city and every one of their finest cities. You will chop down every good tree, block up every spring, and ruin every good piece of land with stones.’”
In the morning, at about the time the was offered, water came from the direction of Edom, and the whole land was filled with water.
When the Moabites heard that the kings had come up to fight against them, they gathered everyone who could put on armor, young and old, and stood at the border.
They were up early in the morning, and the sun shone on the water in front of them. To the Moabites it looked as red as blood.
“This is blood!” they said. “The kings have been destroyed for sure. They have struck each other down. Now, Moab, go and plunder them!”
When they came to Israel’s camp, the Israelites rose up and struck the Moabites, and the Moabites ran from them. The Israelites pushed on into the land, attacking the Moabites as they went.
They tore down the cities. On every good field each man threw a stone, until the field was full of them. They blocked every spring of water and cut down all the good trees. In the end, in , all they left was its stones. Even so, the men with surrounded it and attacked it.
The king of Moab saw that the fighting was too hard for him. He took seven hundred men armed with swords and tried to break through to the king of Edom, but they could not.
Then he took his oldest son, who would have reigned after him, and sacrificed him on the wall as a . There was great wrath against Israel. They left him and went back to their own land.
There was a woman whose husband had been one of the . She cried out to Elisha, “My husband is dead. You know he . Now the man we owe money to has come to take my two children for himself, as slaves.”
“What should I do for you?” Elisha asked her. “Tell me, what do you have in the house?”
“I have nothing in the house,” she said, “except a jar of oil.”
“Go and borrow empty jars from all your neighbors,” he said, “and not just a few. Go in, shut the door on yourself and your sons, and pour oil into all those jars. Set aside the ones that are full.”
So she left Elisha and shut herself and her sons inside. Her sons brought her the jars, and she poured. When every jar was full, she told her son, “Bring me another one.”
“There are no more jars,” he told her. Then the oil stopped flowing.
Then she came and told the man of God. “Go and sell the oil,” he said, “and pay off your debt. Then you and your sons can live on what’s left.”
One day Elisha went to . An important woman lived there, and she talked him into having a meal. From then on, every time he passed by, he stopped in there to eat.
She said to her husband, “Listen, I can tell that this is a holy man of God who keeps passing by us. Please, let’s make a little room on the roof for him, with a bed, a table, a chair and a lampstand. Then whenever he comes to us, he can stay there.”
One day Elisha came there, went up to the room, and lay down. He told , his servant, “Call the woman from Shunem.” Gehazi called her, and she came and stood in front of him.
Elisha said to Gehazi, “Tell her, ‘Look, you have taken such good care of us. What can be done for you? Would you like someone to speak to the king for you, or to the commander of the army?’”
“I live among my own people,” she answered.
“So what can we do for her?” Elisha asked.
Gehazi answered, “The truth is, she has no son, and her husband is old.”
“Call her,” said Elisha. So Gehazi called her, and she came and stood at the door. “When this season comes around next year,” Elisha told her, “you will have a son to hold.”
“No, my lord!” she said. “Man of God, don’t lie to me.”
The woman became pregnant. When that season came around again, she had a son, as Elisha had said she would.
The child grew older. One day he went out to his father, out where the men were harvesting the grain. “My head! My head!” he said to his father.
His father said to a servant, “Carry him to his mother.” The servant took him and brought him to her, and the boy sat on his mother’s lap until noon. Then he died.
She went up and laid him on the man of God’s bed. Then she shut the door on him and went out.
She called to her husband. “Please send me one of the servants and one of the donkeys,” she said, “so that I can go quickly to the man of God and then come back.”
“Why would you want to go to him today?” he asked. “It isn’t a or a .”
“It’s all right,” she said.
Then she saddled a donkey and told her servant, “Drive on! Keep going! Don’t slow down for me unless I say so.”
So she went, and she came to the man of God on . He saw her a long way off and said to Gehazi, “Look, there’s the woman from Shunem.
“Please, run and meet her, and ask her, ‘Are you well? Is your husband well? Is your child well?’”
“It is well,” she answered.
When she came to the man of God on the hill, she grabbed hold of his feet. Gehazi moved in to push her away, but Elisha said, “Let her be. She is troubled deep inside. The Lord has kept it hidden from me and has not told me.”
Then she said, “Did I ask you for a son, my lord? Didn’t I say, ‘Don’t deceive me’?”
Then Elisha told Gehazi, “Tuck your cloak into your belt, take my staff in your hand, and be on your way. If you meet someone, don’t greet him, and if someone greets you, don’t answer. Lay my staff on the child’s face.”
The boy’s mother said, “As the Lord lives, and as you live, I won’t leave you.” So Elisha got up and followed her.
Gehazi went on ahead of them and laid the staff on the child’s face, but there was no sound and no sign that the boy heard. So Gehazi came back to meet Elisha. “The child hasn’t woken up,” he told him.
When Elisha came into the house, there was the child, dead, lying on the bed. He went in, shut the door on them both, and prayed to the Lord.
Then he climbed up and lay on the child, with his mouth on the boy’s mouth, his eyes on the boy’s eyes, and his hands on the boy’s hands. He stretched himself out on him, and the child’s body grew warm.
Elisha got up and walked back and forth in the house once. Then he climbed up and stretched himself out on him again. The child sneezed seven times, and he opened his eyes.
Elisha called Gehazi. “Call the woman from Shunem!” he said. So Gehazi called her, and when she came in, Elisha said, “Pick up your son.”
She went in, fell at his feet, and bowed down to the ground. Then she picked up her son and went out.
Elisha came back to Gilgal. There was a famine in the land, and there was hardly any food. The sons of the prophets were sitting in front of him, and he said to his servant, “Get out the big pot and cook some stew for them.”
One man went out into the field to gather herbs and found a wild vine. He picked wild gourds from it until his lap was full, then came and cut them up into the pot of stew. None of them knew what they were.
They served it out for the men to eat. As they were eating the stew, they shouted, “Man of God, there’s death in the pot!” And they couldn’t eat it.
“Then bring some flour,” said Elisha. He threw it into the pot. “Dish it out for the people, so they can eat,” he said. And there was nothing harmful in the pot.
A man from Baal Shalishah came and brought the man of God some bread made from the first of the harvest: twenty barley loaves, and fresh heads of grain in his sack. “Give the people this to eat,” Elisha said.
His servant said, “What? Should I set this in front of a hundred men?”
But Elisha said, “Give the people this to eat, because the Lord says, ‘They will eat, and will have some left over.’”
So he set it in front of them. They ate, and they had some left over, as the Lord had said.