UNROLL
Dusk in Shunem: a flat-roofed stone house on a hillside with a small room built on its roof, an outside stair climbing to it and one clay lamp glowing in its window, the wide valley fading blue below.

The Book of

2 Kings 4

A widow about to lose her sons, a woman who made a room for a prophet, a pot of death and twenty loaves: the LORD’s care, one home at a time.

44 verses≈ 10 min4 peopleBSB

Images are artistic interpretations.

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In this chapter

Where we are

  1. 1–8ElishaThe prophet's double portionChapter 4
  2. 9–12JehuThe house of Ahab falls
  3. 13–17Last kings of IsraelSamaria falls
  4. 18–20HezekiahTrust in the LORD
  5. 21–23JosiahThe Book found
  6. 24–25ExileJerusalem falls

The Widow’s Oil

The prophet’s widow

Now the wife of one 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 now his creditor is coming to take my two children as his slaves!”

Elisha

“How can I help you?” asked Elisha. “Tell me, what do you have in the house?”

The prophet’s widow

She answered, “Your servant has nothing in the house but a jar of oil.”

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Morning in a narrow village lane: neighbor women hand empty clay jars of every size out of their doorways to two boys loaded with jars, while their thin mother in a faded dark mantle carries more toward a small heap by her door.

“Go,” said Elisha, “borrow empty jars from all your neighbors. Do not gather just a few. Then go inside, shut the door behind you and your sons, and pour oil into all these jars, setting the full ones aside.”

Inside a small, dim room lit by one clay lamp, its door shut: rows of full clay jars glisten along the walls as the widow tilts her small jar over the last empty one, a thin last thread of golden oil at its lip, while her son holds out empty hands.

So she left him, and after she had shut the door behind her and her sons, they kept bringing jars to her, and she kept pouring. When all the jars were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another.” But he replied, “There are no more jars.” Then the oil stopped flowing.

She went and told the man of God, and he said, “Go, sell the oil, and pay your debt. Then you and your sons can live on the remainder.”

Reflect

What do you have in the house?

Elisha did not start with what the widow lacked but with what she had, “a jar of oil,” and with how many empty jars she would dare to gather: “Do not gather just a few.” What small thing has God already put in your hands? Where might He be asking you to bring more empty jars, more room for Him to fill?

The Shunammite Woman

Elisha

And he said to Gehazi his servant, “Call the Shunammite woman.”

And when he had called her, she stood before him,

Elisha

and Elisha said to Gehazi, “Now tell her, ‘Look, you have gone to all this trouble for us. What can we do for you?

Can we speak on your behalf to the king or the commander of the army?’” “I have a home among my own people,” she replied.

Elisha

So he asked, “Then what should be done for her?”

Gehazi

“Well, she has no son,” Gehazi replied, “and her husband is old.”

Elisha

“Call her,” said Elisha.

So Gehazi called her, and she stood in the doorway.

Elisha

And Elisha declared, “At this time next year, you will hold a son in your arms.”

The Shunammite woman

“No, my lord,” she said. “Do not lie to your maidservant, O man of God.”

just as Elisha had told her

2 Kings 4:17

Question

Quick question

The Shunammite woman and her husband built a small room on their roof for the prophet.

What did the Shunammite woman put in Elisha’s little room upstairs?

Elisha Raises the Shunammite’s Son

A hot harvest morning in the barley fields below Shunem: reapers cut and bind sheaves with curved sickles as a small boy runs between the sheaves toward his gray-bearded father, who straightens from his work and turns to him.

And the child grew, and one day he went out to his father, who was with the harvesters.

“My head! My head!” he complained to his father. So his father told a servant, “Carry him to his mother.”

After the servant had picked him up and carried him to his mother, the boy sat on her lap until noon, and then he died. And she went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God. Then she shut the door and went out.

The Shunammite woman

And the woman called her husband and said, “Please send me one of the servants and one of the donkeys, that I may go quickly to the man of God and return.”

The Shunammite’s husband

“Why would you go to him today?” he replied. “It is not a New Moon or a Sabbath.”

The Shunammite woman

“Everything is all right,” she said.

A dusty track across a wide valley in hard afternoon light: the Shunammite rides a saddled donkey at a fast trot, leaning forward, as her servant runs beside it urging it on, the long wooded ridge of Mount Carmel ahead.

Then she saddled the donkey and told her servant, “Drive onward; do not slow the pace for me unless I tell you.” So she set out and went to the man of God at Mount Carmel.

0:16

Narrated by Bob Souer · BSB audio, public domain

Elisha

When the man of God saw her at a distance, he said to his servant Gehazi, “Look, there is the Shunammite woman.

Please run out now to meet her and ask, ‘Are you all right? Is your husband all right?

Is your child all right?’” And she answered, “Everything is all right.”

When she reached the man of God at the mountain, she clung to his feet.

Elisha

Gehazi came over to push her away, but the man of God said, “Leave her alone, for her soul is in deep distress, and the LORD has hidden it from me and has not told me.”

The Shunammite woman

Then she said, “Did I ask you for a son, my lord? Didn’t I say, ‘Do not deceive me?’”

So Elisha said to Gehazi, “Tie up your garment, take my staff in your hand, and go! If you meet anyone, do not greet him, and if anyone greets you, do not answer him. Then lay my staff on the boy’s face.”

The Shunammite woman

And the mother of the boy said, “As surely as the LORD lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.”

So he got up and followed her.

Gehazi went on ahead of them and laid the staff on the boy’s face, but there was no sound or response.

Gehazi

So he went back to meet Elisha and told him, “The boy has not awakened.”

When Elisha reached the house, there was the boy lying dead on his bed. So he went in, closed the door behind the two of them, and prayed to the LORD.

the boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes

The little upper room in warm afternoon light: the Shunammite kneels by the low bed and gathers up her son, a small boy sitting up awake and alive with his arms around her neck, while Elisha stands back by the table, tired, and Gehazi waits in the doorway.

Elisha summoned Gehazi and said, “Call the Shunammite woman.” So he called her and she came. Then Elisha said, “Pick up your son.”

She came in, fell at his feet, and bowed to the ground. Then she picked up her son and went out.

Elisha Purifies the Poisonous Stew

A bare courtyard at Gilgal in a famine year, the fields beyond brown: thin men in plain wool sit on mats in a circle at Elisha's feet as he teaches, while nearby an attendant sets a large round clay pot on three stones over a thornwood fire.

When Elisha returned to Gilgal, there was a famine in the land. As the sons of the prophets were sitting at his feet, he said to his attendant, “Put on the large pot and boil some stew for the sons of the prophets.”

One of them went out to the field to gather herbs, and he found a wild vine from which he gathered as many wild gourds as his garment could hold. Then he came back and cut them up into the pot of stew, though no one knew what they were.

The sons of the prophets

And they poured it out for the men to eat, but when they tasted the stew they cried out, “There is death in the pot, O man of God!”

And they could not eat it.

Elisha

Then Elisha said, “Get some flour.” He threw it into the pot and said, “Pour it out for the people to eat.”

And there was nothing harmful in the pot.

Feeding a Hundred Men

Morning at Gilgal: a farmer in a brown wool cloak, dust on his feet, kneels to open a coarse sack before Elisha, showing small round barley loaves stacked inside with a few heads of fresh grain on top, while thin, hungry men watch behind them.

Now a man from Baal-shalishah came to the man of God with a sack of twenty loaves of barley bread from the first ripe grain. “Give it to the people to eat,” said Elisha.

Elisha’s servant at Gilgal

But his servant asked, “How am I to set twenty loaves before a hundred men?”

Elisha

“Give it to the people to eat,” said Elisha, “for this is what the LORD says: ‘They will eat and have some left over.’”

So he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the LORD.

2 Kings 4:44

Pray

The God who provides

Pray for widows, single mothers and families in debt, that the LORD would defend them and provide. Pray for any who grieve a child, that they would find the God who gives life. Thank Him for daily bread, and for the One who feeds many from little, so that they “ate and had some left over.”

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2 Kings 4

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A verse to carry with you

So he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the LORD.

2 Kings 4:44

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