ELISHA’S MIRACULOUS MINISTRY
2
Kings 4:1-44
The
ministry of Elisha is characterized by a plethora of miracles. Beginning with the dividing of the
Why
is this the case?
Why after so many years is there a sudden manifestation of the power of
God? Is it because Elisha was so
special? Or was it because God was
choosing to do something special?
On
the one hand, Elisha DID ask for a special anointing from God. He requested a “double mouthful” of the
Spirit which had characterized the ministry of Elijah. And he received it. Elisha is described as performing many more
miracles that Elijah. At the same time,
God was about to do something very special.
And the abundance of miracles drew attention to that which God was about
to do. Miracles do that. That is why they are called miraculous
SIGNS. The whole purpose of a sign is to
point to something. It calls attention to
something. There are three specific eras
in Biblical history which saw a great outpouring of miracles.
(1) The era of Moses and Joshua.
(2) The era of Elijah and Elisha.
(3) The era of Jesus and His Apostles.
What
made each of these eras so special? Each
era was special because it was a time when God was revealing His Word to
men. Each was a time of revelation.
|
Three Eras of Revelation |
||
|
First Era |
Second Era |
Third Era |
|
Moses & Joshua |
Elijah & Elisha |
Jesus & His Apostles |
|
The Law |
The Prophets |
The New Testament Gospels
& Epistles |
There had been prophets prior
to Elijah and Elisha. But now the
prophets of
Chapter 4 lists four major
miracles of Elisha. They can be grouped
into two major categories.
|
4:1 |
4:8 |
4:38 |
4:42 |
|
Widow of a Prophet |
Shunammite Woman |
Sons of the Prophets |
Man from Baal-Shalishah |
|
She was faced
with unpaid debts |
Her son died |
Their Stew was
Poisonous |
Brought food to
Elisha |
|
Her oil was
miraculously increased to pay the debt |
Her son was raised
from the dead |
The Stew was
rendered palatable |
The food was
multiplied to feed all |
|
Women |
Food |
||
We have already seen miracles
involving God’s judgment. We have seen
the rain stop for three years and we have seen fire come down from heaven. We have seen the
THE WIDOW’S OIL (2 KINGS
4:1-7)
1. The
Widow’s Plight.
Now a certain woman of the wives
of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is
dead, and you know that your servant feared the Lord; and the creditor has come
to take my two children to be his slaves.” (2 Kings 4:1).
This
woman had been married to one of “the sons of the prophets.” The prophets lived in troubled times. It had not been all that long ago that Ahab
and Jezebel had driven the prophets into hiding. That had passed, but now more trouble came
into the life of this woman. Her husband
died.
Women
had little in the way of rights in the ancient world. There was no social security and a woman
without a husband was completely dependent upon the good will of her extended
family. This woman apparently had no
family available. Her husband had died
and her children were not old enough to be able to support her. To make matters worse, she was in debt to a
creditor. Because she was unable to pay
her debts, her two children would be forfeit.
Her life had been reduced to her two children and a jar of oil. And she was about to lose her children.
2. Elisha’s
Solution.
2 Elisha said to her, “What
shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?” And she said, “Your maidservant has nothing
in the house except a jar of oil.”
3 Then he said, “Go, borrow
vessels at large for yourself from all your neighbors, even empty vessels; do
not get a few.
4 “And you shall go in and
shut the door behind you and your sons, and pour out into all these vessels,
and you shall set aside what is full.”
5 So she went from him and
shut the door behind her and her sons; they were bringing the vessels to her
and she poured.
6 When the vessels were
full, she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel.” And he said to her, “There is not one vessel
more.” And the oil stopped.
7 Then she came and told
the man of God. And he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debt, and you and
your sons can live on the rest.” (2 Kings 4:2-7).
I
love the fact that Elisha was available to this woman’s needs. He who spoke before the kings of nations was
not above ministering to the needs of an unknown woman.
There
are no unknown people in God’s economy.
He shows no partiality to the rich or the famous. His celebrities are those who are often
unknown by the world. We are warned in
the Scriptures against the sin of partiality (James 2:1-9).
Elisha
tells the women to go out and to collect and borrow all of the vessels she can
lay her hands on. She was to fill her
house with jars and bowls and washtubs and barrels - anything that would serve
as a receptacle for liquid. Then she was
to take her jar of oil and begin pouring it into each of these containers.
Can
you imagine it? Their house is full of
containers. They are all over the floor
and on the table and even on the bed.
The woman takes the jar of oil and goes to the first container and tips
the jar and out comes oil. That is no
surprise. There is supposed to be oil in
the jar. She fills the container with
oil. But looking in the jar, she sees
that there is more oil. So she goes to
the second container and fills it with oil.
And when she looks into the jar and there is still oil in the jar. She continues to the third and fourth and
fifth containers as she moves around the house, but there is no end to the oil
in the jar. This is similar to the
miracle which Elijah had performed with the Phoenician widow from Zarephath (1 Kings 17:8-16).
|
1 Kings 17:8-16 |
2 Kings 4:1-7 |
|
Phoenician widow from a
pagan land |
Israelite widow of one of
the sons of the prophets |
|
Had only a small portion of
oil and flour |
Had only a jar of oil |
|
Was preparing to eat a last
meal and then die of starvation |
Was preparing to have to
sell her sons into slavery |
|
Poverty in the midst of
famine |
Poverty in the face of debt |
Instead
of running out of oil, the woman ran out of containers. She was then able to take this oil and sell
it for enough money to pay off her debt and support her family.
THE SHUNEMMITE’S SON (2
KINGS 4:8-37)
The next narrative is given
to us by way of contrast and comparison.
It also tells us the story of a woman and how the Lord used Elisha to
supply her needs, but those needs were very different from the first woman.
|
2 Kings 4:1-7 |
2 Kings 4:8-37 |
|
Widow of a
Prophet |
Wife of an
older man |
|
A woman of
poverty |
A woman of
prominence |
|
Her husband had
died and now she was in debt |
She was given a
son, but he later died |
|
She was given
the means to repay her debt and support her family |
Her son who had
died was raised from the dead |
We are meant to see these two
stories in parallel to one another. They
both show to us the provision of the Lord to His people.
1. Hospitality
at Shunem.
8 Now there came a day when
Elisha passed over to Shunem, where there was a
prominent woman, and she persuaded him to eat food. And so it was, as often as
he passed by, he turned in there to eat food.
9 She said to her husband,
“Behold now, I perceive that this is a holy man of God passing by us
continually.
10 “Please, let us make a
little walled upper chamber and let us set a bed for him there, and a table and
a chair and a lampstand; and it shall be, when he comes to us, that he can turn
in there.” (2 Kings 4:9-10).
Shunem
was a small village lying on the road between Mount Carmel in the northwestern
part of
In
this town there lived a woman. She is
described as a “prominent woman” — literally, a “great woman.” We are not told in what way she was great. It is likely that she was a woman of some
wealth. She was enough substance that
she and her husband were able to add a guest room and to keep it solely for the
use of the occasional visit of the prophet.
There
is nothing wrong with having money.
Wealth can be a great blessing from God.
Those who have wealth are called to use it for the Lord. That is what this woman did. She sought to meet the needs of the visiting
prophet.
2. A Son
for the Shunammite.
11 One day he came there and
turned in to the upper chamber and rested.
12 Then he said to Gehazi his servant, “Call this Shunammite.” And when he had called her, she stood before
him.
13 He said to him, “Say now to
her, ‘Behold, you have been careful for us with all this care; what can I do
for you? Would you be spoken for to the king or to the captain of the
army?’” And she answered, “I live among
my own people.”
14 So he said, “What then is
to be done for her?” And Gehazi answered, “Truly she has no son and her husband is
old.”
15 He said, “Call her.” When he had called her, she stood in the
doorway.
16 Then he said, “At this season
next year you will embrace a son.” And
she said, “No, my Lord, O man of God, do not lie to
your maidservant.”
17 The woman conceived and
bore a son at that season the next year, as Elisha had said to her. (2 Kings
4:11-17).
During
one visit, Elisha sent for his hostess and asked if there were something that
might be done on her behalf. He suggests
that he might be able to put in a good word for her in the palace of the king,
but she declines. She is content to live
among her own people.
It
is Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, who points out that
this woman has no sons and her husband is old. It is conceivable that her husband might die
and then she would have no one to take care of her. In that day, a woman without a son was impoverished,
no matter how much money she might have.
And so, Elisha promises that she will have a son on the following year.
Her
reaction is interesting. It shows that
she was sensitive to this subject. Too
many times she had gotten up her hopes, only to be disappointed. She has resigned herself to being childless
and has lost all hope of seeing thing change.
We
live in an age where children are often seen as an unwanted commodity. But this is not a Biblical outlook. The Psalms describe children as both a gift
and a reward.
Behold,
children are a gift of the Lord;
The
fruit of the womb is a reward. (Psalm 127:3).
This
woman was rewarded for her kindness shown to the prophet of God. Her reward was a son. As her husband was already advanced in years,
this son would be there to take care of her in her old age.
3. The
Death of the Son.
18 When the child was grown,
the day came that he went out to his father to the reapers.
19 He said to his father, “My
head, my head.”
And he said to his servant, “Carry him to his mother.”
20 When he had taken him and
brought him to his mother, he sat on her lap until noon, and then died. (2
Kings 4:18-20).
We
are not told how old the child was, but he was evidently now old enough to go
out and to work in the fields during the time of the harvest. It was on such a day that he complained of a
severe headache of such a magnitude that he had to be carried home. He was brought to his mother, but died on
that same day.
The
picture here is of great disappointment.
The mother who had not dared to hope for a son now sees the death of her
son. Certainly there can be few greater
disappointments than to experience the death of a son.
4. The
Mother’s Plea for Help.
21 She went up and laid him on
the bed of the man of God, and shut the door behind him and went out.
22 Then she called to her
husband and said, “Please send me one of the servants and one of the donkeys, that I may run to the man of God and return.”
23 He said, “Why will you go
to him today? It is neither new moon nor Sabbath.” And she said, “It will be well.”
24 Then she saddled a donkey
and said to her servant, “Drive and go forward; do not slow down the pace for
me unless I tell you.”
25 So she went and came to the
man of God to
27 When she came to the man of
God to the hill, she caught hold of his feet. And Gehazi
came near to push her away; but the man of God said, “Let her alone, for her
soul is troubled within her; and the Lord has hidden it from me and has not
told me.”
28 Then she said, “Did I ask
for a son from my Lord? Did I not say,
‘Do not deceive me’?” (2 Kings 4:21-28).
Instead
of having the body of her son prepared for burial, the mother has it laid on
the bed which had been set aside for Elisha’s visits. She makes hast to travel to
·
She asks and
receives permission from her husband for this trip. There is an attitude of submission in which
she conducts herself, even though her husband is not on the same spiritual
plane as she.
·
His attitude
shows in his question: “Why will you
go to him today? It is neither new moon nor Sabbath” (4:23). He reminds me of the man who says, “Why are
you going to church today? It isn’t
Easter or Christmas.”
·
She makes all
haste in coming to see Elisha. She
orders her servant not to slow down the pace as they make their way to
·
She comes and
throws herself to the feet of Elisha.
When his servant goes to intervene, Elisha halts him, for he recognizes
that her soul is troubled within her.
·
She brings all of
her hurt to the Lord. In the midst of
her hurt, she says, “I didn’t come to you asking that the Lord would give a child to me.
But now that God has given him, why has He now taken him away? Better to have been childless in the first
place than to now suffer this loss.”
Have
you ever tried to console someone who has lost a loved one? Don’t you EVER say, “Be happy for the time
that you did have.” Take a lesson from
Elisha. When people are hurting, you
hurt with them. Don’t try to deny the
legitimacy of their pain.
This
mother is hurting. She speaks out of her
paid as she says, “I did not want a son in the first place because I did not
want to be hurt like this.” Tennyson’s
poem that read, “Tis better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all,” was not written in the immediate experience
of deep personal loss.
We
can come to the Lord in the midst of deep personal loss and we will not receive
glib answers. Instead we will find
ourselves in the presence of the One who Himself
experienced the deepest of personal losses.
The Father experienced to death of His only begotten Son upon the cross
and, because of that, we can come boldly before the throne of grace to find
help in time of need.
4. Instructions
for Gehazi.
29 Then he said to Gehazi, “Gird up your loins and take my staff in your hand,
and go your way; if you meet any man, do not salute him, and if anyone salutes
you, do not answer him; and lay my staff on the lad’s face.”
30 The mother of the lad said,
“As the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” And he arose and followed her.
31 Then Gehazi
passed on before them and laid the staff on the lad's face, but there was no
sound or response. So he returned to meet him and told him, “The lad has not
awakened.” (2 Kings 4:29-31).
Elisha
initially sends his servant Gehazi with his staff to
see check on the condition of the boy.
It is affirmed that the child is indeed dead. We are not told the purpose of laying the
staff on the boy’s face. Perhaps is was expected that God would use this act alone to
accomplish the resurrection. However the
woman was not willing to accept anything less than the presence of the prophet
himself.
She
says in the strongest terms, “As the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I
will not leave you.” The striking
thing about these words is that they are an echo of the words that Elisha
earlier said to Elijah on three different occasions (2 Kings 2:2, 4, 6).
5. Resurrection!
32 When Elisha came into the
house, behold the lad was dead and laid on his bed.
33 So he entered and shut the
door behind them both and prayed to the Lord.
34 And he went up and lay on the child, and put his mouth on his mouth and his
eyes on his eyes and his hands on his hands, and he stretched himself on him;
and the flesh of the child became warm.
35 Then he returned and walked
in the house once back and forth, and went up and stretched himself on him; and
the lad sneezed seven times and the lad opened his eyes.
36 He called Gehazi and said, “Call this Shunammite.” So he called her. And when she came in to him, he said, “Take
up your son.”
37 Then she went in and fell
at his feet and bowed herself to the ground, and she took up her son and went
out. (2 Kings 4:32-37).
Elisha
arrives and enters into the bed chamber in which the corpse of the boy
lay. He prays to the Lord and then he
stretches out his own body upon that of the boy — mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes,
hands to hands. Why is he doing
this? It is to identify himself with the
boy.
Jesus
did that. He stretched Himself out on a
cross to identify Himself with our sins.
And when we trust in Him as our Lord and Savior, we do the same
thing. We are identified with Jesus
Christ. We receive a new identity that
is rooted in who and what He is. Because
He is righteous, we have been declared to be righteous — justified through
faith. Because He is the Son of God, we
have also been given the title of sons of God.
Because He has eternal life, we have also been given eternal life. Because He rose from the dead, we have also
arisen to a new life in Him.
Elisha’s
actions brought him into close bodily contact with a dead body. From a religious perspective, he was
rendering himself ceremonially unclean.
He not only touched a dead body, he got death all over him. He was mouth to mouth and eye to eye and hand
to hand with death. Jesus did the same
thing for us. He absorbed all of my
guilt and all of my death, taking it upon Himself.
THE POISONED STEW (2 KINGS
4:38-41)
38 When Elisha returned to Gilgal, there was a famine in the land. As the sons of the
prophets were sitting before him, he said to his servant, “Put on the large pot
and boil stew for the sons of the prophets.”
39 Then one went out into the
field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine and gathered from it his lap full
of wild gourds, and came and sliced them into the pot of stew, for they did not
know what they were.
40 So they poured it out for
the men to eat. And as they were eating of the stew, they cried out and said,
“O man of God, there is death in the pot.”
And they were unable to eat.
41 But he said, “Now bring
meal.” He threw it into the pot and
said, “Pour it out for the people that they may eat.” Then there was no harm in the pot. (2 Kings
4:38-41).
We saw in 2 Kings 2 that
there was a school of the prophets located in Gilgal,
the place where Joshua and the Israelites had first encamped upon crossing the
This was a time of
famine. It had been a poor season and
food was scarce. The fact that there was
a famine in the land bespoke the spiritual condition of the people in the
land. God had promised that if they
would obey Him and follow Him, they would enjoy the prosperity of a land
flowing with milk and honey. But He had
made a corresponding promise that if they departed from His Word, they would
suffer the effects of a famine in their land.
“But it shall come about, if you
will not obey the Lord your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His
statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses shall come upon
you and overtake you.” (Deuteronomy 28:15).
The Lord goes on to specify
the curses which shall come upon His people for disobedience. They culminate in this graphic depiction of
ruin:
“The Lord will make the rain of
your land powder and dust; from heaven it shall come down on you until you are
destroyed.” (Deuteronomy 28:24).
Here is the point. The people of the land had sinned and were
suffering through a famine. The faithful
remnant of the school of the prophets was suffering the same famine.
There is a principle
here. When a nation suffers under a
curse, the effects of that curse often overflow to affect others, even those
who are not under that curse. This was
seen in the
There is also a corollary to
this. It is that when God blesses His
people, those blessings sometimes overflow to benefit those who are not God’s
people. Thus Potiphar
and the Pharaoh of Egypt were benefited by the presence of Joseph, even though
they were pagan unbelievers.
In this case, the school of
the prophets was feeling the effects of the famine. The cafeteria food was definitely feeling the
effects of the hard times. One of the
students went out into the fields and gathered some wild gourds which served as
ingredients for a stew. But when they
tasted the result, it was pure poison.
When they cried out to
Elisha, he commanded meal to be brought.
He threw it into the pot and ordered it to be served to the
students. When this was done, it was
found that the effects of the poison had been neutralized.
What is the point of the
miracle? I would suggest that the poison
in the pot was analogous to the poison of the false religious systems in
Jesus said that He IS the
Bread of Life. It is no mistake that He
was born in
THE MIRACLE OF THE
MULTIPLIED FOOD (2 KINGS 4:38-41)
42 Now
a man came from Baal‑shalishah, and brought the
man of God bread of the first fruits, twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of
grain in his sack. And he said, “Give them to the people that they may eat.”
43 His attendant said, “What,
will I set this before a hundred men?” But
he said, “Give them to the people that they may eat, for thus says the Lord,
‘They shall eat and have some left over.’”
44 So he set it before them,
and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the Lord. (2
Kings 4:42-44).
This miracle also deals with
food. Instead of poison, it was good
bread which was brought to Elisha, the man of God. We are not told the name of the man who
brought this bread. We are told only
that he came from a place known as Baal-shalishah. This is regarded as significant.
Baal was the name of the
Canaanite deity. But it is also the
Hebrew word for “lord” or “master.” It
is used today in modern Hebrew for “husband.” It was even used upon occasion to refer to
God.
“Behold, days are coming,”
declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in
the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My
covenant which they broke, although I was a HUSBAND to them,” declares the
Lord. (Jeremiah 31:31-32).
Shalishah is Hebrew for “a third.” This Hebrew word can also be used to describe
that which is multiplied. Hence, the
idea would be “Lord of multiplication.”
The reason this is regarded as significant was because the Lord was
going to use the gift brought by this man and multiply it.
The miracle that took place
here is echoed in the miracles of the coming prophet from
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