The Prophet Who Kept Helping People

Elijah had stood in front of kings and called fire out of the sky. Elisha, who had asked for a double share of his spirit, spent most of his life doing something else: helping ordinary people, mostly poor ones, mostly in their own kitchens. A widow came running to him one day in a terrible state. Her husband had died owing money, and in those days a man who was owed money could take your children away and make them work for him until the debt was paid — and the man was on his way. She said, “My husband is dead, and you know he served the Lord. And now the man he owed money to is coming to take my two boys away as slaves.” And Elisha said, “What can I do for you? Tell me — what have you got in the house?” And she said, “Nothing at all. Nothing but one little jar of oil.” And he said, “Then go out and borrow jars from every neighbor you have — empty ones — and do not borrow just a few. Then go inside with your sons and shut the door, and start pouring.” So she did. She shut the door, and her boys kept carrying jars over to her, and she kept pouring out of that one little jar, and it kept coming. Jar after jar after jar. Until one of her sons said, ‘There is not another one,’ and only then did the oil stop. And Elisha said: go and sell the oil, and pay what you owe — and you and your sons live on the rest.

Up at Shunem there was a well-off woman who used to feed Elisha whenever he came through, and after a while she said to her husband, “I am sure this man who keeps passing our house is a holy man of God. Let us build a little room for him on the roof, and put a bed in it, and a table and a chair and a lamp, so that he has somewhere of his own when he comes.” And so they did. And one day Elisha, lying on that bed, asked his servant Gehazi what could be done for her in return — should he speak to the king for her, or to the general of the army? And she said no: I live among my own people; I am all right. And Gehazi said quietly, ‘She has no son, and her husband is an old man.’ So Elisha called her, and she came and stood in the doorway, and he said, “This time next year you will be holding a son in your arms.” And she said, “No, my lord. Do not tell your servant lies.” And the next year, at that season, she was holding a son.

The boy grew. And one morning, out in the field with his father and the reapers, he suddenly said, ‘My head — my head!’ And a servant carried him home, and he sat on his mother’s lap all morning, and at midday he died. And she carried him up the stairs and laid him on the prophet’s bed and shut the door. And she saddled a donkey and rode twenty miles to find Elisha, and would not tell anybody along the way what had happened. And when she got to him she took hold of his feet and would not let go. So Elisha came back with her, and went into the little room, and shut the door with just the two of them inside — himself and the dead child — and prayed. And he stretched himself out over the boy, his mouth on the boy’s mouth and his eyes on his eyes and his hands on his hands, until the child’s body began to grow warm. And he got up and walked up and down the room, and then bent over him again, seven times. And the boy sneezed, and opened his eyes. And Elisha called his servant and said, ‘Call the Shunammite.’ And when she came in, he said, “Pick up your son.” And she fell down at his feet and bowed to the ground; and then she picked up her boy and carried him out.

And then there was Naaman. Naaman was the general of the army of Aram — the enemy country. He was a great man, brave and honored, and he had a disease of the skin called leprosy that nobody could cure. And in his house there was a young Israelite girl who waited on his wife: Aramean raiders had carried her off from her home and her family, and she was a slave now. And she said to her mistress, “If only my master would go to the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” The men who took her away from her mother had gone home to that house — and she wanted her master to be well. So Naaman went, with a letter from his king and a fortune in silver and gold and clothes, and pulled up his horses and chariots outside a small house in Israel. And Elisha did not even come out. He sent a servant to the door with a message: “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan, and your skin will come back to you, and you will be clean.” And Naaman was furious. He said, “I thought he would at least come out to me — stand there and call on the name of his God and wave his hand over the place and cure me! Are the rivers of Damascus not better than every stream in Israel? Could I not wash in those and be clean?” And he turned his chariot round and went off in a rage. And it was his own servants — the men who worked for him — who were brave enough to catch up with him and say, “Father, if the prophet had told you to do something hard, you would have done it. All he said was, wash and be clean.” And that was true, and Naaman knew it. So the great general got down off his chariot and went into the muddy little Jordan and dipped himself under, seven times — and his skin came back like the skin of a small child, and he was clean. And he drove all the way back and stood in front of Elisha and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.” And he tried to give him the silver and the gold, and Elisha would not take a thing.

The king of Aram was at war with Israel, and every time he set an ambush, the king of Israel somehow knew about it and stayed away. He was sure there was a traitor in his own tent — until somebody told him: it is not a traitor, it is Elisha the prophet; he tells the king of Israel the words you say in your own bedroom. So the king sent an army — horses and chariots and a heavy force — to surround the little town of Dothan by night and take one man. And Elisha’s young servant got up early, and went outside, and saw the whole hillside full of soldiers. And he came running back in and said, “Oh, my master — what are we going to do?” And Elisha said, “Do not be afraid. There are more with us than there are with them.” And he prayed: “Lord, open the young man’s eyes, and let him see.” And the Lord opened the young man’s eyes — and he looked again at that hill, and it was full of horses and chariots of fire, all around Elisha. And when the soldiers came down at him, Elisha prayed again and they were struck blind, and he walked into the middle of them and said, ‘This is not the town and this is not the road; follow me, and I will bring you to the man you are looking for’ — and he led that whole blind army straight into Samaria, the enemy capital, and shut the gates behind them, and prayed, and their eyes were opened. And there they were: an enemy army, unarmed and helpless, in the middle of the city, with the king of Israel standing in front of them absolutely delighted. And the king said, “Shall I kill them, my father? Shall I kill them?” And Elisha said, “You will not kill them. You do not kill men you took prisoner with your own sword and your own bow — and you did not take these. Put bread and water in front of them. Let them eat and drink, and then send them home to their master.” So the king laid on a great dinner for the army that had come to capture him, and fed them, and sent them home. And the raiders of Aram stopped coming into the land of Israel.