The Divided Kingdom

When the king of Moab saw that the battle was too fierce for him, he took with him seven hundred swordsmen to break through to the king of Edom, but they could not prevail.

So he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him, and offered him as a burnt offering on the city wall. And there was great fury against the Israelites, so they withdrew and returned to their own land.

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!”

“How can I help you?” asked Elisha. “Tell me, what do you have in the house?” She answered, “Your servant has nothing in the house but a jar of oil.”

“Go,” said Elisha, “borrow jars, even empty ones, 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.”

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.”

One day Elisha went to Shunem, and a prominent woman who lived there persuaded him to have a meal. So whenever he would pass by, he would stop there to eat.

Then the woman said to her husband, “Behold, now I know that the one who often comes our way is a holy man of God.

Please let us make a small room upstairs and put in it a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp for him. Then when he comes to us, he can stay there.”

One day Elisha came to visit and went to his upper room to lie down.

And he said to Gehazi his servant, “Call the Shunammite woman.” And when he had called her, she stood before him,

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.

So he asked, “Then what should be done for her?” “Well, she has no son,” Gehazi replied, “and her husband is old.”

“Call her,” said Elisha. So Gehazi called her, and she stood in the doorway.

And Elisha declared, “At this time next year, you will hold a son in your arms.” “No, my lord,” she said. “Do not lie to your maidservant, O man of God.”

But the woman did conceive, and at that time the next year she gave birth to a son, just as Elisha had told her.

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.

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.”

“Why would you go to him today?” he replied. “It is not a New Moon or a Sabbath.” “Everything is all right,” she said.