2 Kings 4 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~850 BC, during Elisha's long ministry under the later kings of the house of Ahab
Location
Northern Israel, moving between the prophetic community at Gilgal, the town of Shunem in the Jezreel Valley, and Mount Carmel on the coastal ridge
Audience
Later Israelite and Judean readers, many of them poor or displaced, hearing how God's prophet acted toward ordinary households rather than palaces
Situation
Four short episodes show Elisha meeting household emergencies: a widow's oil multiplied to pay off a creditor, a wealthy Shunammite woman promised a son and later seeing him raised from death, a poisonous stew made edible during a famine, and twenty loaves feeding a hundred men.
Key Background
Under Israelite debt law a creditor could take a defaulting family's children as bonded servants until the debt worked off, so the widow's crisis is legal as well as financial. Building a small walled roof chamber for a traveling holy man was a recognized form of patronage, giving a household standing and a claim on the prophet's help. Firstfruits offerings, like the twenty barley loaves brought to Elisha, were normally handed to priests at a sanctuary, and the fact that they come to a prophet instead reflects how far the northern kingdom's official worship had drifted from the temple in Jerusalem.
One of the wives of a man from the cried out to Elisha, "Your servant, my husband, is dead. You know he was someone who Yahweh. Now the creditor is coming to take my two boys as
Elisha asked her, "What can I do for you? Tell me — what do you have in the house?" She said, "Your servant has nothing in the house except a small jar of
Elisha said, "Go out and borrow from all your neighbors — empty Get as many as you can."
"Then go inside, shut the door behind you and your sons, and start pouring oil into all those containers. As each one fills up, set it aside."
So she left him and shut the door behind her and her sons. They kept bringing her containers, and she kept pouring.
When every container was full, she said to her son, "Bring me another one." But he said, "There aren't any more." And the oil stopped flowing.
She went and told the of and he said, "Go sell the oil and pay off your debt. You and your sons can live on whatever is left over."
One day Elisha was passing through and a who lived there urged him to stay for a meal. After that, whenever he passed through, he would stop there to eat.
She said to her husband, "Look, I'm sure this man who keeps passing our way to
"Let's make a small on the for him with walls around it, and put a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp in it. Then whenever he comes through, he can stay there."
One day Elisha came and went up to the room and rested there.
He said to his servant "Call this woman." So he called her, and she stood before him.
Elisha said to Gehazi, "Tell her: 'You've gone to all this trouble for us. What can we do for you? Can we put in a word for you with the king or the army commander?'" She answered, "I'm fine right here among my own people."
So Elisha asked, "Then what can be done for her?" Gehazi said, "Well, she doesn't have a son, and her husband is old."
Elisha said, "Call her." So he called her, and she stood in the doorway.
Elisha said, this you'll be holding a son." She said, "No, my master, man of God — don't mislead your servant!"
But the woman did become pregnant, and she gave birth to a son at the time Elisha had told her — right on schedule, the following year.
The child grew. One day he went out to his father, who was with the
He said to his father, "My head! My head!" His father told a servant, "Carry him to his mother."
The servant picked him up and brought him to his mother. The boy sat on her lap until noon, and then he died.
She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, shut the door, and left.
She called to her husband and said, "Send me one of the servants and a donkey so I can hurry to the man of God and come right back."
He said, "Why are you going to him today? It's not the or the She said,
She saddled the donkey and told her servant, "Drive fast. Don't slow down for me unless I tell you."
So she set out and came to the man of God at When the man of God saw her in the distance, he said to his servant Gehazi, "Look — it's the Shunammite woman!"
"Run out to meet her and ask, 'Are you alright? Is your husband alright? Is the child alright?'" She answered,
But when she reached the man of God on the mountain, she and held on. Gehazi came over to push her away, but the man of God said, "Leave her alone — she's in and Yahweh has hidden it from me. He hasn't told me what's wrong."
She said, "Did I ask you for a son, my master? Didn't I say, 'Don't get my hopes up'?"
Elisha said to Gehazi, "Tuck your cloak into your belt, take my and go. If you meet anyone, don't stop to greet them. If anyone greets you, don't answer. Lay my on the boy's face."
But the boy's mother said, "As and as you I won't leave without you." So Elisha got up and followed her.
Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff on the boy's face, but there was no sound, no response, nothing. He went back to meet Elisha and told him, "The boy hasn't woken up."
When Elisha arrived at the house, there was the boy, lying dead on his bed.
He went in, shut the door behind the two of them, and to Yahweh.
Then he got on the bed and lay on top of the child — mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. As he the boy's body began to warm up.
Elisha got up, walked back and forth in the room once, then got back on the bed and stretched over the boy again. The boy sneezed and opened his eyes.
Elisha called Gehazi and said, "Call the Shunammite woman." So he called her. When she came in, Elisha said, "Pick up your son."
She came in, at and bowed to the ground. Then she picked up her son and left.
Elisha went back to There was a in the land. While the prophets' group was meeting with him, he told his servant, "Put the large pot on the fire and make some stew for the prophets."
One of them went out into the field to gather herbs and found a vine. He picked a lapful of from it and came back and sliced them into the pot of stew — not knowing what they were.
They poured some out for the men to eat. But as soon as they tasted the stew, they cried out, "Man of God, there's in the And they couldn't eat it.
Elisha said, "Bring some He threw it into the pot and said, "Now pour some out for the people to eat." And there was nothing harmful in the pot.
A man came from bringing the man of God twenty loaves of made from the of the along with some fresh grain in his sack. Elisha said, "Give it to the people to eat."
His servant said, "How am I supposed to feed a hundred people with this?" But Elisha said, "Give it to the people to Because this is what Yahweh says: 'They will and have some
So he set it before them. They ate, and they did have some left over, just as Yahweh had said.