2 Kingschapter 4
44 verses · Jeremiah, by tradition · 6th century BC · History
Key verse
Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead; and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord: and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.
It stands in Borrow vessels not a few: oil until the last jar, verses 1 to 7.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Four miracles of ordinary life, small beside Carmel and greater in their tenderness. A prophet's widow whose creditor is coming for her two children has nothing but a pot of oil, and borrowed vessels fill until there is not one more. A woman of Shunem builds a walled chamber for the man of God and is promised a son; when the boy cries 'My head, my head' in the harvest field and dies on her knees, she rides for Elisha and will not let him go, and the child sneezes seven times. Death in the pot of wild gourds is cured with meal; twenty barley loaves feed a hundred men: 'They shall eat, and shall leave thereof.'
Context
History · Jeremiah · 2 Kings overview
The world of this chapter
- Who
- Ordinary Israelites in debt, childless, hungry, or grieving
- Where
- A prophet's widow's house, the town of Shunem in Jezreel, and Gilgal in famine
- When
- The ministry of Elisha in Israel. c. 850 BC, on Thiele's chronology
Historical context
The chapter is Elisha's, and no king appears in it. Debt slavery is the situation in the first story, and it was legal. A creditor could take a debtor's children into service to work off what was owed, and Israel's law limited the term and required release while the practice stayed real and ruinous. A widow with two sons about to be taken had no other asset and no male relative acting for her.
The remedy uses ordinary household equipment: borrowed jars from the neighbours, the door shut, and one small flask of olive oil. Oil was money, since it was the region's main cash crop and was exported by the jar, so the miracle pays the debt and leaves an income.
The Shunammite's guest room is described in detail because it shows how a travelling prophet lived, a small walled chamber built on the flat roof furnished with a bed, a table, a stool and a lamp. Her husband asks why she is going out, since it is neither new moon nor Sabbath, which tells a reader that those were the days people normally travelled to hear a prophet, a working calendar of religious life in the north.
The boy's collapse in the field with a cry about his head, at harvest in the Jezreel plain, reads as heat stroke. The last two scenes are famine stories: a poisonous wild gourd gathered by someone who did not know the plants and thrown into a communal stew pot, and a man from Baal-shalishah bringing twenty barley loaves of the firstfruits, an offering that by law went to the priests and is redirected here to a hungry prophetic community in a country whose official priesthood served calves.
Significance
These are small miracles for small people, and that is the point. A widow, a childless woman, a poisoned pot, and a hundred hungry men.
For first hearers under kings who spent their attention on wars and shrines, this said their God was working at the level of a household jar of oil and a boy with sunstroke.
Where the chapter sits
2 Kings 4 falls in Elijah's ascension; Elisha's ministry (chapters 1–13). Elijah taken up by whirlwind; double portion; widow's oil; the Shunammite's son raised; Naaman healed; siege of Samaria broken; Elisha dies and his bones raise a man.
Elisha and the Shunammite. The barren wife given a son; the son dies and is raised; ‘is it well with the child? It is well.’
After it: Northern kingdom's fall, chapters 14–17.
The whole shape of 2 Kings→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Borrow vessels not a few: oil until the last jar
the creditor is come to take: A widow of the prophetic guild that runs back to Samuel's company at Ramah (1 Sam 19:20) cries for her two sons about to be taken as bondmen under the debt-servitude law of Lev 25:39. Elisha's remedy begins the way his master's did at Zarephath, asking the poorest woman in the room what she still has rather than what she lacks (1 Ki 17:12). The borrowing itself is the woman's own labor: empty vessels, not a few, set the size of the miracle before any oil is poured.
2 Kings 4:1
“She was a prophet's widow; to whom therefore should she apply, but to him that was a father to the sons of the prophets, and concerned himself in the welfare of their families? It seems, the prophets had wives as well as the priests, though prophecy went not by entail, as the priesthood did. Marriage is honourable in all, and not inconsistent with the most sacred professions.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 more voices on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
2 Kings 4:1
“The creditor is come ... - The Law of Moses, like the Athenian and the Roman law, recognized servitude for debt, and allowed that pledging of the debtor’s person, which, in a rude state of society, is regarded as the safest and the most natural security (see the marginal reference). In the present case it would seem that, so long as the debtor lived, the creditor had not enforced his right over his sons, but now on his death he claimed their services, to which he was by law entitled.”
2 Kings 4:1
“Prophets - Who, though they were wholly devoted to sacred employment, were not excluded from marriage, any more than the priests and Levites. Fear the Lord - His poverty therefore was not procured by his idleness, or prodigality; but by his piety, because he would not comply with the king's way of worship, and therefore lost all worldly advantages.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Kings 4:2
“Save a pot of oil - Oil was used as aliment, for anointing the body after bathing, and to anoint the dead. Some think that this pot of oil was what this widow had kept for her burial: see Mat 26:12.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 4:3
“Then he said, go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours,.... For he perceived that she had none: even empty vessels; which they might more readily lend her: borrow not a few; but as many as she could get; the prophet, under a divine impulse, was directed to say this to her, foreseeing, by a spirit of prophecy, that a large quantity of oil would be given her.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:3
“She must shut the door, to prevent interruptions from the creditors, and others while it was in the doing, that they might not seem proudly to boast of this miraculous supply, and that they might have opportunity for prayer and praise to God upon this extraordinary occasion. Observe, (1.) The oil was to be multiplied in the pouring, as the other widow's meal in the spending.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
pour out into all those vessels: The command to shut the door before the miracle returns twice more in the chapter, over the Shunammite's dead son at v21 and again over Elisha's own praying at v33: each of the four wonders in this chapter happens unseen, credited to no technique the reader can copy. The oil multiplies only as long as empty vessels stand ready to receive it, and stops the instant the supply of vessels runs out, not because the source failed but because the appointed containers did. Wesley reads the detail as deliberate, the miracle bounded by human readiness rather than by divine reluctance.
2 Kings 4:5
“So she went from him,.... And did as he advised her, borrowed many empty vessels of her neighbours, having faith in what the prophet had said to her: and shut the door upon her, and upon her sons; and then went to work as she was directed, with her sons: who brought the vessels to her; the empty ones she had borrowed: and she poured out; the oil out of her pot into them.”
2 Kings 4:6
“And the oil stayed - While there was a vessel to fill, there was oil sufficient; and it only ceased to flow when there was no vessel to receive it. This is a good emblem of the grace of God. While there is an empty, longing heart, there is a continual overflowing fountain of salvation. If we find in any place or at any time that the oil ceases to flow, it is because there are no empty vessels there, no souls hungering and thirsting for righteousness.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
sell the oil, and pay: The title man of God, already carried by Elijah and by other prophets earlier in these books, is applied here to Elisha for the first time in the text, marking the whole cycle that follows as prophetic testimony rather than folk wonder. Elisha's instruction keeps the woman's dignity intact: sell the oil herself, pay the debt herself, and live on what remains, no gift handed over and no debt forgiven by prophetic fiat. The provision exceeds the need, and the excess becomes the family's ordinary bread.
2 Kings 4:7
“Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt - He does not inveigh against the cruelty of this creditor, because the law and custom of the country gave him the authority on which he acted; and rather than permit a poor honest widow to have her children sold, or that even a Philistine should suffer loss who had given credit to a genuine Israelite, he would work a miracle to pay a debt which, in the course of providence, it was out of her power to discharge.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:7
“We are never straiten'd in God, and in his power and bounty, and the riches of his grace. All our straitness is in ourselves. It is our faith that fails, not his promise.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
A little chamber on the wall, and the promise of a son
passed to Shunem, where was: The Hebrew term rendered great woman marks wealth and social standing rather than fame, so this hospitality comes from a woman with means to build rather than merely to feed. Her own initiative, not a request from Elisha, provides a permanent room: a bed, a table, a stool, and a candlestick, furnishings for study and rest rather than display. A woman housing a wandering man of God has already run once through this ministry at Zarephath (1 Ki 17:9-19), and it runs again here with the disciple standing in his master's place.
2 Kings 4:8
“And it fell on a day,.... Or so it was at a certain time: that Elisha passed to Shunem; a city in the tribe of Issachar; of which see Jos 19:18, where was a great woman; of great wealth and riches, of great benevolence and hospitality, and of great grace and piety; that feared sin, as the Targum paraphrases it; a woman of great credit and reputation on all accounts.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:8
“Elisha passed to Shunem - This city was in the tribe of Issachar, to the south of the brook Kishon, and at the foot of Mount Tabor. Where was a great woman - In Pirkey Rab. Eliezer, this woman is said to have been the sister of Abishag, the Shunammite, well known in the history of David. Instead of great woman, the Chaldee has, a woman fearing sin; the Arabic, a woman eminent for piety before God. This made her truly great.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 4:9
“This is a holy man of God - That is, a prophet, as the Chaldee interprets it. Which passeth by us continually - It probably lay in his way to some school of the prophets that he usually attended.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:9
“That the stranger she would invite was a holy man of God, who therefore would do good to their family, and God would recompense the kindness done to him; perhaps she had heard how well paid the widow of Sarepta was for entertaining Elijah.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 4:10
“Let us make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall,.... Either of the city, to which their house might join, or of their garden, a little distance from the house; though the Jewish writers commonly understand it of a little edifice built up of walls of stone or bricks, and not one with reeds, or stud and mud: let us set for him there a bed; that he may stay all night when he pleases: and a table; not only to eat his food, but to write on, and lay his books on he reads.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:10
“Let us make a little chamber - See the note upon Jdg 3:20 (note). As the woman was convinced that Elisha was a prophet, she knew that he must have need of more privacy than the general state of her house could afford; and therefore she proposes what she knew would be a great acquisition to him, as he could live in this little chamber in as much privacy as if he were in his own house. The bed, the table, the stool, and the candlestick, were really every thing he could need, by way of accommodation, in such circumstances.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
turned into the chamber, and: Elisha's gratitude moves through his servant Gehazi rather than directly, the household protocol of a guest testing what recompense might be welcome. The offer to speak for her to the king or the army's captain shows Elisha's standing reaches into the royal court itself, yet the woman answers that she dwells content among her own people, asking nothing that access to power could buy. Her steadiness here is the same steadiness the chapter will ask of her twice more, once at her son's death and once at his return to life.
2 Kings 4:11
“And it fell on a day that he came thither,.... As he had been wont to do: and he turned into the chamber; built for him, and to which he was directed: and lay there; all night, and which no doubt was frequently repeated by him, he accepting of the kindness of his host.”
2 Kings 4:12
“Gehazi his servant - This is the first time we hear of this very indifferent character.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 4:13
“Thou hast been careful for us - For the prophet and his servant, who must have been lodged as well as his master. I dwell among mine own people - The woman declines Elisha’s offer. She has no wrong to complain of, no quarrel with any neighbor, in respect of which she might need the help of one in power. She “dwells among her own people” - her friends, and dependents, with whom she lives peaceably.”
she hath no child, and: Gehazi supplies the detail Elisha has not noticed himself, that the woman is childless and her husband aged, and the shape of what follows repeats the annunciation given to Abraham and Sarah at Gen 18:10-14, a barren household promised a son at an appointed season. The prophetic word functions here as it did there, not a guess at what the couple wants but a sovereign announcement of what will be given.
2 Kings 4:14
“What then is to be done for her? - It seems that the woman retired as soon as she had delivered the answer mentioned in the preceding verse.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 4:15
“And he said, call her,.... Perhaps finding an impulse on his own mind, from the Spirit of God, that this was the thing to be done for her: and when he had called her, she stood in the door; of his chamber: See Gill on 2Ki 4:12.”
do not lie unto thine handmaid: Her guarded protest, do not lie unto thine handmaid, is not unbelief in what God can do but fear of a false hope raised and dashed, the same wound Abraham's household knew when Sarah laughed at the same news (Gen 18:12-15). The narrator answers her plea in the next verse with the same measuring phrase Elisha used, the time of life, so the fulfillment is reported in the prophet's own words, exact repetition standing as the text's proof that the word came true.
2 Kings 4:16
“Thou shalt embrace a son - This promise, and the circumstances of the parties, are not very dissimilar to that relative to the birth of Isaac, and those of Abraham and Sarah. Do not lie - That is, Let thy words become true; or, as the rabbins understand it, Do not mock me by giving me a son that shall soon be removed by death; but let me have one that shall survive me.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 4:17
“And the woman conceived, and bare a son at the season that Elisha said unto her,.... Quickly after this she conceived, and became pregnant, and by that time the year came round, she was brought to bed of a son: according to the time of life: when she had gone her full time to have a son born alive, and live.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:17
“25 So she went and came unto the man of God to mount Carmel. And it came to pass, when the man of God saw her afar off, that he said to Gehazi his servant, Behold, yonder is that Shunammite: 26 Run now, I pray thee, to meet her, and say unto her, Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband? is it well with the child?”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
My head, my head: the Shunammite rides to Carmel
went out to his father: The boy is old enough to walk out to the reapers but not to survive what strikes him there; his cry, my head, my head, and the swift collapse by noon read to the commentators as sunstroke in the harvest heat, though the text itself names no cause. A servant carries him to his mother rather than to his father, and the chapter gives her the body without a word of explanation, a silence it will not break until Elisha himself asks.
2 Kings 4:18
“And when the child was grown,.... Perhaps was six or seven years of age, or more: it fell on a day that he went out to his father to the reapers; it was harvest time, and the men were reaping the corn in the fields; and his father, though a wealthy man, was with them to direct them, and see they did their business well, as Boaz formerly; and the child went out from the house to the field, to see his father and the reapers, for his recreation and diversion.”
2 Kings 4:19
“My head, my head!--The cries of the boy, the part affected, and the season of the year, make it probable that he had been overtaken by a stroke of the sun. Pain, stupor, and inflammatory fever are the symptoms of the disease, which is often fatal.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
laid him on the bed: She lays the body on the very bed built for the man of God at v10 and shuts the door a third time in this chapter, the same gesture that guarded the oil miracle at v4. She tells her husband neither the death nor her destination, only that it shall be well, the word shalom, which is neither denial nor deception but a settled conviction that the God who gave this son has not finished with him.
2 Kings 4:21
“Laid him on the bed of the man of God - She had no doubt heard that Elijah had raised the widow’s son of Zarephath to life; and she believed that he who had obtained this gift from God for her, could obtain his restoration to life.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:21
“Bed of the man of God - Being apt to believe, he that so soon took away what he had given, would restore what he had taken away. By this faith women received their dead raised to life. In this faith she makes no preparation for the burial of her child, but for his resurrection.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Kings 4:22
“And she called unto her husband,.... In the field, who might be within call, or by a messenger she sent to him: and said, send me, I pray thee, one of the young men, and one of the asses, that I may run to the man of God, and come again; intimating that she should not be long gone, but should return again presently; saying not a word of the death of the child, or of the occasion of her going.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:22
“Send me, I pray thee, one of the young men and one of the asses - All the “young men” and all the “asses” were in the harvest field, the young men cutting and binding the sheaves, and placing them upon carts or wains, the donkeys drawing these vehicles fully laden, to the threshing-floor. Compare Amo 2:13.”
Drive, and go forward; slack: Carmel lies some fifteen to twenty miles from Shunem by the commentators' reckoning, a hard ride the woman drives without slackening. Gehazi's threefold question, is it well, is it well, is it well, receives one answer, it is well, the same word she gave her husband, now spoken over a dead child with the same settled confidence rather than as evasion. Elisha sees her while she is yet afar off, seeing her before he can yet see what has happened.
2 Kings 4:24
“Drive, and go forward - It is customary in the East for a servant to walk along side or drive the ass his master rides. Sometimes he walks behind, and goads on the beast; and when it is to turn, he directs its head with the long pole of the goad. It is probably to this custom that the wise man alludes when he says, “I have seen servants on horses, and princes walking as servants on the earth,” on the ground.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 4:25
“So she went and came unto the man of God at Mount Carmel,.... Where Elijah used to be, and where, perhaps, was a school of the prophets; this, according to Bunting (x), was sixteen miles from Shunem: and it came to pass, when the man of God saw her afar off; as he might from the eminence of the mountain: that he said to Gehazi his servant, behold, yonder is that Shunammite; that has so often and so hospitably entertained us at her house. (x) Travels, &c. p. 207.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:25
“The answer was general It is well. Gehazi was not the man that she came to complain to, and therefore she put him off with this; she said little, and little said is soon amended ( Ps. xxxix. 1, 2 ), but what she did say was very patient: "It is well with me, with my husband, with the child"--all well, and yet the child dead in the house.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 4:26
“It is well - How strong was her faith in God and submission to his authority! Though the heaviest family affliction that could befall her and her husband had now taken place; yet, believing that it was a dispensation of Providence which was in itself neither unwise nor unkind, she said, It is well with me, with my husband, and with my child. We may farther remark that, in her days, the doctrine of reprobate infants had not disgraced the pure religion of the God of endless compassion.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
caught him by the feet: Elisha states his own limit plainly, the Lord hath hid it from me, and hath not told me, a prophet's knowledge bounded by what is revealed rather than total, the same boundary Micaiah's court scene will dramatize later at 1 Ki 22. The woman's answer in the next verse throws Elisha's own promise back at him almost word for word, did I not say, Do not deceive me, holding the man of God to the word he gave rather than accepting comfort in place of it.
2 Kings 4:27
“Withal, she intimated, what she durst not presume to express in words, that she desired him to go along with her. Let her alone - Disturb her not, for this gesture is a sign of some extraordinary grief. Hid it - Whereby he signifies, that what he knew or did, was not by any virtue inherent in himself, but from God, who revealed to him only what and when he pleased.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:27
“She caught him by the feet - To lay hold of the knees or feet has always been thought in the East to add force to supplication, and is practiced even at the present day. Compare Mat 18:29; Joh 11:32.”
2 Kings 4:28
“Did I desire a son of my lord? - I expressed no such wish to thee; I was contented and happy; and when thou didst promise me a son, did I not say, Do not deceive me? Do not mock me with a child which shall grow up to be attractive and engaging, but of whom I shall soon be deprived by death.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:28
“She said - This child was not given to me upon my immoderate desire, for which I might have justly been thus chastised, but was freely promised by thee in God's name, and from his special favour.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Gird up thy loins, and: The staff sent ahead by a servant's hand tests whether a prophet's power can travel by a borrowed object rather than his own presence, the same question the floating axe head and Elisha's bones will answer later in his ministry. The command to salute no man by the way and answer no salute matches the errand's urgency to the letter Jesus gives the seventy in Luke 10:4, a mission too pressing for the road's courtesies. The staff, it turns out, is not the answer; the man himself will be.
2 Kings 4:29
“Salute him not - Compare the marginal reference. Salutation is the forerunner of conversation and one bent on speed would avoid every temptation to loiter. Lay my staff upon the face of the child - Perhaps to assuage the grief of the mother, by letting her feel that something was being done for her child.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:29
“The act of Gehazi was allowed to fail, in order to free the Shunammite, and the people of Israel at large, of the superstitious notion of supposing a miraculous virtue resided in any person, or in any rod, and to prove that it was only through earnest prayer and faith in the power of God and for His glory that this and every miracle was to be performed.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
As the Lord liveth, and: The woman's oath, as the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee, is the identical formula Elisha himself swore three times to Elijah before the whirlwind (2 Ki 2:2, 2:4, 2:6), and now the man who spoke it as disciple hears it spoken to him as master. Gehazi's staff accomplishes nothing, neither voice, nor hearing, and he returns to report a silence the object itself could not break. The chapter has already shown that its miracles happen at shut doors and by prayer, never by proxy.
2 Kings 4:30
“I will not leave thee - The prophet it seems had no design to accompany her; he intended to wait for Gehazi’s return; but as the woman was well assured the child was dead, she was determined not to return till she brought the prophet with her.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 4:31
“In the raising of dead souls to spiritual life ministers can do no more by their own power than Gehazi here could; they lay the word, like the prophet's staff, before their faces, but there is neither voice nor hearing, till Christ, by his Spirit, comes himself. The letter alone kills; it is the Spirit that gives life.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
3 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 4:31
“There was neither voice nor hearing - Compare 1Ki 18:29. The child is not awakened - See 2Ki 4:20. The euphemism by which death is spoken of as a sleep was already familiar to the Jews (see 1Ki 1:21 note).”
2 Kings 4:31
“In the mystery of prophetical revelation, Christ is symbolized by sign, as with Eliseus and Giezi who laid the staff on the child, who did not rise, and then Eliseus himself lay upon him. According to Gregory, this points to the Law and to Christ.”
Bonaventure· written before 1257· Collations on the Hexaemeron, Collation 14patristic
2 Kings 4:31
“Neither voice - Neither speech, nor sense, nor any sign of life, in the child. This disappointment might proceed from hence, that Elisha having changed his mind, and yielded to her importunity to go with her, did alter his course, and not join his fervent prayers with Gehazi's action.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
the child was dead, and: Elisha shuts the door a fourth time in this chapter and prays before he acts, then stretches himself on the child, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands, the same posture and the same verb Elijah used raising the widow's son at Zarephath, 1 Ki 17:21, one shape repeated from master to disciple. The warmth returns first, and only after Elisha walks the house and stretches over the boy a second time does life fully return, healing coming in two stages rather than one instant word. Seven sneezes end it, life reasserting itself through breath.
2 Kings 4:32
“And when Elisha was come into the house,.... Of the Shunamite, and into the chamber built for him: behold, the child was dead, and laid upon the bed; upon his bed, and where he found it really dead.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:32
“Behold, the child was dead - The prophet then saw that the body and spirit of the child were separated.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 4:33
“Even the dead child is spoken of as a person, one of the twain, for it was still in being and not lost. He shut out all company, that he might not seem to glory in the power God had given him, or to use it for ostentation and to be seen of men.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:33
“Prayed - Prayer was the only remedy in such a case as this (compare the marginal reference and Jas 5:16), though it did not exclude the use of other means 2Ki 4:34.”
2 Kings 4:34
“He first put his mouth to the child's mouth, as if, in God's name, he would breathe into him the breath of life; then his eyes to the child's eyes, to open them again to the light of life; then his hands to the child's hands, to put strength into them. He then returned, and walked in the house, as one full of care and concern, and wholly intent upon what he was about.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 4:34
“Lay upon the child - Endeavored to convey a portion of his own natural warmth to the body of the child; and probably endeavored, by blowing into the child’s mouth, to inflate the lungs, and restore respiration. He uses every natural means in his power to restore life, while praying to the Author of it to exert a miraculous influence. Natural means are in our power; those that are supernatural belong to God. We should always do our own work, and beg of God to do his.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 4:34
“Grew warm - Not by any external heat, which could not be transmitted to the child's body by such slight touches of the prophet's body; but from a principle of life, which was already infused into the child, and by degrees enlivened all the parts of his body.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Kings 4:35
“He walked - He changeth his postures for his own necessary refreshment, and walked to and fro, exercising his mind in prayer to God. And went - Repeating his former actions, to teach us not to be discouraged in our prayers, if we be not speedily answered. Opened his eyes - So the work begun in the former verse is here perfected.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:35
“The child sneezed seven times - That is, it sneezed abundantly. When the nervous influence began to act on the muscular system, before the circulation could be in every part restored, particular muscles, if not the whole body, would be thrown into strong contractions and shiverings, and sternutation or sneezing would be a natural consequence; particularly as obstructions must have taken place in the head and its vessels, because of the disorder of which the child died. Most people, as well as philosophers and physicians, have remarked how beneficial sneezings are to the removal of obstructions in the head.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Take up thy son: closes the same command in reverse that opened the ordeal, the boy who was carried in dead at v20 is now told to be carried out alive by his own mother. Her bow to the ground before she lifts him answers her earlier grasp at Elisha's feet on the hill, gratitude standing where a plea for mercy stood before. The scene frames itself: she went out at v21 leaving a body behind a shut door, and she goes out here carrying a living son through an open one.
2 Kings 4:36
“And he called Gehazi, and said, call this Shunammite,.... To come up to the chamber to him: so he called her: and when she was come in unto him, he said, take up thy son; from off the bed, alive, safe, and sound.”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 4:36
“Take up thy son - Compare Elijah’s action (marginal reference “t”) and our Blessed Lord’s Luk 7:15.”
2 Kings 4:36
“A famine of bread there was, but not of hearing the word of God, for Elisha had the sons of the prophets sitting before him, to hear his wisdom, who were taught, that they might teach others. Two instances we have here of the care he took about their meat. Christ twice fed those to whom he preached.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 4:37
“Then she went in, and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the ground,.... In reverence of him, and with the most profound gratitude and thankfulness for the mercy received: and took up her son, and went out; of the chamber into her house, with great joy and gladness.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:37
“She went in and fell at his feet - Few can enter into the feelings of this noble woman. What suspense must she have felt during the time that the prophet was employed in the slow process referred to above! for slow in its own nature it must have been, and exceedingly exhausting to the prophet himself.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Death in the pot, cured with a handful of meal
there was a dearth in: Gilgal already carries Israel's memory from Joshua's crossing (Josh 4:19-20) and Samuel's judging circuit (1 Sam 7:16), and now it hosts a company of prophets caught in famine, dependent on a single pot of pottage. The gatherer's mistake is honest ignorance rather than negligence, the text says plainly, for they knew them not, wild gourds mistaken for a safe herb and shredded whole into the common meal.
2 Kings 4:38
“Came again to Gilgal - He had been there before with his master, a short time prior to his translation. Set on the great pot and seethe pottage for the sons of the prophets - It was in a time of dearth, and all might now stand in need of refreshment; and it appears that the prophet was led to put forth the power he had from God to make a plentiful provision for those who were present.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:38
“This refers to their being domiciled under the same roof (compare 2Ki 6:1). Set on the great pot--As it is most likely that the Jewish would resemble the Egyptian "great pot," it is seen by the monumental paintings to have been a large goblet, with two long legs, which stood over the fire on the floor.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2 Kings 4:39
“The meal which Elisha poured into the pot was a symbolic sign that the noxious quality of the herbs was removed. lap full--The hyke, or large cloak, is thrown loosely over the left shoulder and fastened under the right arm, so as to form a lap or apron.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:39
“A wild vine - Not a real wild vine, the fruit of which, if not very palatable, is harmless; but some climbing plant with tendrils. The plant was probably either the Ecbalium elaterium, or “squirting cucumber,” the fruit of which, egg-shaped, and of a very bitter taste, bursts at the slightest touch, when it is ripe, and squirts out sap and seed grains; or the Colocynthis, which belongs to the family of cucumbers, has a vine-shaped leaf, and bears a fruit as large as an orange, very bitter, from which is prepared the drug sold as colocynth.”
there is death in the pot: becomes the chapter's most quoted line, and the remedy Elisha applies, common meal cast into the poisoned pottage, recalls Moses at Marah casting a tree into bitter water to make it sweet, Ex 15:25, an ordinary object made the instrument of a word rather than a natural antidote. No harm in the pot answers the cry with the plainest possible negation, not a partial cure but a complete one, stated in the pot's own terms.
2 Kings 4:40
There is death in the pot - As if they had said, “We have here a deadly mixture; if we eat of it, we shall all die.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:40
“The table often becomes a snare, and that which should be for our welfare proves a trap, which is a good reason why we should not feed ourselves without fear; when we are receiving the supports and comforts of life we must keep up an expectation of death and a fear of sin.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 4:41
“Then bring meal - The natural properties of meal would but slightly diminish either the bitterness or the unwholesomeness of a drink containing colocynth. It is evident, therefore, that the conversion of the food from a pernicious and unsavory mess into palatable and wholesome nourishment was by miracle.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:41
“It is probable that there was meal in it before, but that was put in by a common hand, only to thicken the pottage; this was the same thing, but cast in by Elisha's hand, and with intent to heal the pottage, by which it appears that the change was not owing to the meal (that was the sign only, not the means), but to the divine power.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Twenty loaves for a hundred men, and some left overvv. 42-44
bread of the firstfruits, twenty: The bread is firstfruits, grain due by law to the priesthood (Lev 23:17, Num 18:12-13), rerouted here to feed a hungry company through the man of God, twenty barley loaves against a hundred men. Elisha's word, thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof, is fulfilled to the letter at v44, and the commentators, Farrar among them, have long set this scene beside Jesus feeding the five thousand and the four thousand as a likeness worth drawing, a reading the Gospels themselves never state but the shape invites: scant bread, a doubting servant, and food left over.
2 Kings 4:42
“Bread of the first-fruits - This was an offering to the prophet, as the first-fruits themselves were an offering to God. Corn in the husk - Probably parched corn or corn to be parched, a very frequent food in the East; full ears, before they are ripe, parched on the fire.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:42
“It is said to be of the first-fruits, which was God's due out of their increase; and when the priests and Levites were all at Jerusalem, out of their reach, the religious people among them, with good reason, looked upon the prophets as God's receivers, and brought their first-fruits to them, which helped to maintain their schools.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 4:43
“This miracle was a faint foreshadowing of our Lord’s far more marvelous feeding of thousands with even scantier materials. The resemblance is not only in the broad fact, but in various minute particulars, such as the distribution through the hands of others; the material, bread; the surprised question of the servant; and the evidence of superfluity in the fragments that were left (see the marginal references). As Elijah was a type of the Baptist, so Elisha was in many respects a type of our Blessed Lord.”
2 Kings 4:44
“So he set it before them,.... The twenty barley loaves, and the full ears of corn: and they did eat, and left thereof, according to the word of the Lord; as the disciples did at the miracle of the loaves and fishes; though that must be allowed to be a greater miracle than this, Mat 14:17.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 4:44
"Sing to the Lord." Why? What has he done? Why is there a new song due him? "For he has done wondrous deeds." He performed miracles among the Jews: he cured paralytics; he cleansed lepers; he raised the dead to life. But other prophets had done that too. He changed a few loaves into many and fed a countless multitude. But Elisha did that. What new thing, then, did he do to merit a new song? Would you know what he did that was new?
Jerome· written before 420· HOMILIES ON THE PSALMS 25 (PS 97[98])patristic
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Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Alfred Edersheim, Bible History: Old Testament; F. W. Farrar, The Second Book of Kings (Expositor's Bible); John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil, The Books of the Kings and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.