Elisha’s miracles
2 Kings 4:8 – Chapter 5
Today’s reading is a collections of signs and wonders performed by Elisha.
One of them, the feeding of a hundred people, brings to mind the feeding miracles of Jesus. While the details are different, the making of plenty from scarcity is a common characteristic, even to having some left over.
An interesting point of Elisha’s miracles, too, is the people who are blessed by them. Sunday’s sermon will look at the healing of Naaman, an official of a foreign government.
Also notable are the two miracles for the woman in the small village of Shunem.
The wealthy woman has noticed that Elisha often passes through the village. She and her husband build a rooftop room for him so that he has a place to stay when he passes through. The roof would have been accessible by way of outside stairs, so it gives him freedom to come and go at will.
Even though the woman requests nothing in return, Elisha tells her she will be blessed with the birth of a son. She is a bit hesitant for fear of disappointment.
Some years later, the son, now a boy, dies. The woman goes to Elisha and asks him to heal the son, reproaching him for bringing the disappointment of the loss.
Elisha raises the boy back to life.
This story anticipates Jesus’s miracle of returning a child to life, with the interesting inversion of the Elisha story being told in terms of a woman’s son and the Jairus story in terms of a man’s daughter.
It is also interesting that in a patriarchal culture the story is told as the story of Elijah’s interaction with a woman. Her husband is mentioned in the story, and appears to be involved as a secondary character—it is the woman who initiates all of the actions of the account.