Oil, a Room, a Child, and Bread

The sons of the prophets could marry and raise families. The law allowed a debtor’s children to be taken as bondservants, to be released in the seventh year (Exodus 21:2; Leviticus 25:39–41). Later Jewish tradition, found in Josephus and the Targum, made her husband Obadiah, who had fed the hidden prophets.

The word for her pot, asuk, appears only here and seems to mean a small flask for anointing oil, not a storage jar. Elisha asks two questions, what can I do and what do you have, and the second sets the terms for the first.

“Borrow not a few” is literally “do not make them few”. The size of the miracle is left in her hands before it begins, measured in the neighbours’ empty pots.

At Zarephath, Elijah stood in the widow’s house while the meal and oil held out. Elisha sends this widow home to act behind a shut door, and he is not in the room when it happens.

The Hebrew verbs are continuous: they kept bringing, she kept pouring. The two sons whom the creditor wanted as slaves are the ones carrying the vessels.

“Stayed” means stopped, literally “stood still”. At Zarephath the oil “failed not” for as long as the famine lasted (1 Kings 17:16); here it runs until there is nowhere left to put it.

Olive oil was one of Israel’s chief trade goods; Solomon paid Hiram of Tyre partly in pure oil (1 Kings 5:11). A house full of it could be sold in any market, and the debt paid in the currency the creditor wanted.

Shunem lay on the slope of the hill of Moreh, across the Jezreel valley from Mount Carmel; Abishag, who nursed David in his old age, came from there (1 Kings 1:3). A “great woman” was a wealthy and prominent one, and “constrained” means she pressed him to stay.

She is the only person in the Book of 2 Kings to call a prophet “holy”. She speaks to her husband, but the perception and the plan are both hers.

A “chamber on the wall” is a walled upper room built on the roof, more permanent than a shelter of branches. The stool is kisse, the same word as throne, and the candlestick is a menorah, a lampstand, the same term used for the lampstand of the tabernacle.

“It fell on a day” renders “and the day came”, a phrase the chapter uses again at verse 18 to mark the day the child goes to the reapers. The first day brings rest in the room; the second will bring the child’s body to it.

Gehazi appears by name for the first time. Although she is summoned and stands in front of Elisha, the prophet speaks to her through his servant, the formality of a man of standing with a go-between.

“Careful for us with all this care” uses the root charad, which means trembling or anxious effort; she has gone to a great deal of trouble. The offer to speak to the king or the army commander shows how much weight Elisha now carried at court after the Moabite campaign.

“Her husband is old” echoes Sarah’s own words about Abraham, “my lord being old also” (Genesis 18:12). Gehazi supplies what the woman did not say and would not have said.

She stands in the doorway, as Sarah stood listening at the tent door when the promise of a son was spoken (Genesis 18:10). She does not come into the room.

“According to the time of life” is the phrase of the LORD’s promise to Abraham (Genesis 18:10, 14), a year from now when the season comes round again. The Hebrew for “embrace” pictures her holding the child in her arms.

The fulfilment repeats Elisha’s words exactly: at that season, according to the time of life. Throughout the chapter the boy is never named.

Reaping meant the height of the grain harvest, the hottest part of the year. The boy is old enough to walk out to the fields where his father was overseeing the reapers.

“My head, my head” suggests to many readers sunstroke in the harvest heat, though that is an inference from the setting. The father does not go with him; he sends the boy home with a servant and stays with the harvest.

The time is given precisely: from the morning in the field until noon on his mother’s lap. The chapter does not say what the mother did or said in those hours.

She shuts the door as the widow did in verse 5, and says nothing to anyone. Even her husband will not be told, and the next verses show her keeping the secret from him deliberately.

She asks for a donkey and a servant and promises to “come again”, which is true as far as it goes. She says nothing about the boy.

Visiting a prophet on new moons and sabbaths was apparently customary, and Amos 8:5 shows the northern kingdom still kept both days. Her reply is one Hebrew word, shalom, which ends the conversation without answering the question.

She saddles the donkey herself. The servant runs alongside driving the animal, and she tells him not to slow down for her sake unless she says so.

Carmel was about twenty-five kilometres from Shunem across the Jezreel valley, a hard ride in the heat. Elisha sees her coming from a distance, which shows how open the ground below the mountain was.

Three questions, well with you, with your husband, with the child, and one answer: shalom. She gives Gehazi the same word she gave her husband and keeps moving.

Clasping the feet was the gesture of a desperate suppliant. “Vexed” is marah, bitter, the word Naomi used for herself when she said “call me Mara” (Ruth 1:20).

“Deceive” here is a different Hebrew verb from “lie” in verse 16, one that means to lead on or raise false hopes. She quotes herself, and sharpens the word as she does.

Girding the loins meant tucking the long robe into the belt so a man could run. Greetings on the road were long courtesies, and Gehazi is forbidden to stop for any of them.

The prophet had meant to send Gehazi and stay. The woman’s oath changes the plan, and the verse ends with the man of God following her.

“Neither voice, nor hearing” is the phrase used of Baal at Carmel, where the prophets cried all day and “there was no voice, nor any that answered” (1 Kings 18:26). Gehazi reports the failure gently: “The child is not awaked”, as though he were asleep.

The boy lies on Elisha’s own bed, in the room built for the prophet. “Behold” lets the reader see what Elisha sees as he enters.

This is the third shut door of the chapter, after the widow’s in verse 5 and the mother’s in verse 21. Elijah likewise prayed alone over the widow’s son in an upper room (1 Kings 17:20).

Mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands: the prophet matches the boy limb for limb. Elijah stretched himself on the widow’s son three times (1 Kings 17:21); Elisha’s posture is described in closer detail, and warmth is the first sign.

“Stretched himself” renders gahar, a rare verb used elsewhere only of Elijah crouching on Carmel with his face between his knees (1 Kings 18:42). Walking “to and fro” is literally “once here and once there”, pacing the house between the two efforts.

“Take up thy son” is three words in Hebrew. Elijah had said “See, thy son liveth” (1 Kings 17:23); Elisha gives no explanation, only the instruction to take him.

She falls at his feet a second time, as at Carmel, but now without a word. The same woman returns in 8:1–6, where her land is restored by the king as Gehazi tells her history.

The disciples “sitting before him” are seated as pupils before a teacher. Pottage is a boiled stew, the same word as the red pottage for which Esau sold his birthright (Genesis 25:29).

The wild gourds are commonly identified as colocynth, a trailing vine with a bitter fruit that acts as a violent purgative. “His lap full” means gathered in the fold of his robe, as a man carried grain or produce.

Colocynth is intensely bitter, so the danger would have been tasted at once, which fits their crying out while they were eating. They address him by title, “O thou man of God”, and stop eating.

Meal is flour. The pattern of an ordinary substance thrown in to heal something undrinkable recalls the tree Moses cast into the bitter water of Marah (Exodus 15:25). “No harm” is literally “no evil thing”.

Baal-shalisha lay in the land of Shalisha, where Saul once searched for his father’s asses (1 Samuel 9:4). Firstfruits belonged to the priests (Numbers 18:13), but in a kingdom whose priests served the calves, a faithful man brings them to the man of God instead.

“Servitor” renders mesharet, the word for Joshua as Moses’ minister and for Elisha as Elijah’s (1 Kings 19:21). His objection is a practical one about quantity, not unbelief.

Barley loaves were small flat cakes, the bread of poor people; a barley cake is the symbol of humble Israel in Gideon’s dream (Judges 7:13). Twenty among a hundred is one small loaf for every five men, and there is food left over.