Elisha Helps a Poor Widow

¹The widow of a member of a group of prophets went to Elisha and said, “Sir, my husband has died! As you know, he was a God-fearing man, but now a man he owed money to has come to take away my two sons as slaves in payment for my husband's debt.”

²“What shall I do for you?” he asked. “Tell me, what do you have at home?” “Nothing at all, except a small jar of olive oil,” she answered.

³“Go to your neighbors and borrow as many empty jars as you can,” Elisha told her.

⁴“Then you and your sons go into the house, close the door, and start pouring oil into the jars. Set each one aside as soon as it is full.”

⁵So the woman went into her house with her sons, closed the door, took the small jar of olive oil, and poured oil into the jars as her sons brought them to her.

⁶When they had filled all the jars, she asked if there were any more. “That was the last one,” one of her sons answered. And the olive oil stopped flowing.

⁷She went back to Elisha, the prophet, who said to her, “Sell the olive oil and pay all your debts, and there will be enough money left over for you and your sons to live on.”

Elisha and the Rich Woman from Shunem

⁸One day Elisha went to Shunem, where a rich woman lived. She invited him to a meal, and from then on every time he went to Shunem he would have his meals at her house.

⁹She said to her husband, “I am sure that this man who comes here so often is a holy man.

¹⁰Let's build a small room on the roof, put a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp in it, and he can stay there whenever he visits us.”

¹¹One day Elisha returned to Shunem and went up to his room to rest.

¹²He told his servant Gehazi to go and call the woman. When she came,

¹³he said to Gehazi, “Ask her what I can do for her in return for all the trouble she has had in providing for our needs. Maybe she would like me to go to the king or the army commander and put in a good word for her.” “I have all I need here among my own people,” she answered.

¹⁴Elisha asked Gehazi, “What can I do for her then?” He answered, “Well, she has no son, and her husband is an old man.”

¹⁵“Tell her to come here,” Elisha ordered. She came and stood in the doorway,

¹⁶and Elisha said to her, “By this time next year you will be holding a son in your arms.” “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Please, sir, don't lie to me. You are a man of God!”

¹⁷But, as Elisha had said, at about that time the following year she gave birth to a son.

¹⁸Some years later, at harvest time, the boy went out one morning to join his father, who was in the field with the harvest workers.

¹⁹Suddenly he cried out to his father, “My head hurts! My head hurts!” “Carry the boy to his mother,” the father said to a servant.

²⁰The servant carried the boy back to his mother, who held him in her lap until noon, at which time he died.

²¹She carried him up to Elisha's room, put him on the bed and left, closing the door behind her.

²²Then she called her husband and said to him, “Send a servant here with a donkey. I need to go to the prophet Elisha. I'll be back as soon as I can.”

²³“Why do you have to go today?” her husband asked. “It's neither a Sabbath nor a New Moon Festival.” “Never mind,” she answered.

²⁴Then she had the donkey saddled, and ordered the servant, “Make the donkey go as fast as it can, and don't slow down unless I tell you to.”

²⁵So she set out and went to Mount Carmel, where Elisha was. Elisha saw her coming while she was still some distance away, and he said to his servant Gehazi, “Look, there comes the woman from Shunem!

²⁶Hurry to her and find out if everything is all right with her, her husband, and her son.” She told Gehazi that everything was all right,

²⁷but when she came to Elisha, she bowed down before him and took hold of his feet. Gehazi was about to push her away, but Elisha said, “Leave her alone. Can't you see she's deeply distressed? And the Lord has not told me a thing about it.”

²⁸The woman said to him, “Sir, did I ask you for a son? Didn't I tell you not to get my hopes up?”

²⁹Elisha turned to Gehazi and said, “Hurry! Take my walking stick and go. Don't stop to greet anyone you meet, and if anyone greets you, don't take time to answer. Go straight to the house and hold my stick over the boy.”

³⁰The woman said to Elisha, “I swear by my loyalty to the living Lord and to you that I will not leave you!” So the two of them started back together.

³¹Gehazi went on ahead and held Elisha's stick over the child, but there was no sound or any other sign of life. So he went back to meet Elisha and said, “The boy didn't wake up.”

³²When Elisha arrived, he went alone into the room and saw the boy lying dead on the bed.

³³He closed the door and prayed to the Lord.

³⁴Then he lay down on the boy, placing his mouth, eyes, and hands on the boy's mouth, eyes, and hands. As he lay stretched out over the boy, the boy's body started to get warm.

³⁵Elisha got up, walked around the room, and then went back and again stretched himself over the boy. The boy sneezed seven times and then opened his eyes.

³⁶Elisha called Gehazi and told him to call the boy's mother. When she came in, he said to her, “Here's your son.”

³⁷She fell at Elisha's feet, with her face touching the ground; then she took her son and left.

Two More Miracles

³⁸Once, when there was a famine throughout the land, Elisha returned to Gilgal. While he was teaching a group of prophets, he told his servant to put a big pot on the fire and make some stew for them.

³⁹One of them went out in the fields to get some herbs. He found a wild vine and picked as many gourds as he could carry. He brought them back and sliced them up into the stew, not knowing what they were.

⁴⁰The stew was poured out for the men to eat, but as soon as they tasted it they exclaimed to Elisha, “It's poisoned!”—and wouldn't eat it.

⁴¹Elisha asked for some meal, threw it into the pot, and said, “Pour out some more stew for them.” And then there was nothing wrong with it.

⁴²Another time, a man came from Baal Shalishah, bringing Elisha twenty loaves of bread made from the first barley harvested that year, and some freshly-cut heads of grain. Elisha told his servant to feed the group of prophets with this,

⁴³but he answered, “Do you think this is enough for a hundred men?” Elisha replied, “Give it to them to eat, because the Lord says that they will eat and still have some left over.”

⁴⁴So the servant set the food before them, and as the Lord had said, they all ate, and there was still some left over.

King Ahaz of Judah

¹Ahaz became king at the age of twenty, and he ruled in Jerusalem for sixteen years. He did not follow the good example of his ancestor King David; instead, he did what was not pleasing to the Lord

²and followed the example of the kings of Israel. He had metal images of Baal made,

³burned incense in Hinnom Valley, and even sacrificed his own sons as burnt offerings to idols, imitating the disgusting practice of the people whom the Lord had driven out of the land as the Israelites advanced.

⁴At the pagan places of worship, on the hills, and under every shady tree Ahaz offered sacrifices and burned incense.

War with Syria and Israel

^5-6Because King Ahaz sinned, the Lord his God let the king of Syria defeat him and take a large number of Judeans back to Damascus as prisoners. The Lord also let the king of Israel, Pekah son of Remaliah, defeat Ahaz and kill 120,000 of the bravest Judean soldiers in one day. The Lord, the God of their ancestors, permitted this to happen, because the people of Judah had abandoned him.

⁷An Israelite soldier named Zichri killed King Ahaz' son Maaseiah, the palace administrator Azrikam, and Elkanah, who was second in command to the king.

⁸Even though the Judeans were their own relatives, the Israelite army captured 200,000 women and children as prisoners and took them back to Samaria, along with large amounts of loot.

The Prophet Oded

⁹A man named Oded, a prophet of the Lord, lived in the city of Samaria. He met the returning Israelite army with its Judean prisoners as it was about to enter the city, and he said, “The Lord God of your ancestors was angry with Judah and let you defeat them, but now he has heard of the vicious way you slaughtered them.

¹⁰And now you intend to make the men and women of Jerusalem and Judah your slaves. Don't you know that you also have committed sins against the Lord your God?

¹¹Listen to me! These prisoners are your brothers and sisters. Let them go, or the Lord will punish you in his anger.”

¹²Four of the leading men of the Northern Kingdom, Azariah son of Jehohanan, Berechiah son of Meshillemoth, Jehizkiah son of Shallum, and Amasa son of Hadlai also opposed the actions of the army.

¹³They said, “Don't bring those prisoners here! We have already sinned against the Lord and made him angry enough to punish us. Now you want to do something that will increase our guilt.”

¹⁴So then the army handed the prisoners and the loot over to the people and their leaders,

¹⁵and the four men were appointed to provide the prisoners with clothing from the captured loot. They gave them clothes and sandals to wear, gave them enough to eat and drink, and put olive oil on their wounds. Those who were too weak to walk were put on donkeys, and all the prisoners were taken back to Judean territory at Jericho, the city of palm trees. Then the Israelites returned home to Samaria.

Ahaz Asks Assyria for Help

^16-17The Edomites began to raid Judah again and captured many prisoners, so King Ahaz asked Tiglath Pileser, the emperor of Assyria, to send help.

¹⁸At this same time the Philistines were raiding the towns in the western foothills and in southern Judah. They captured the cities of Beth Shemesh, Aijalon, and Gederoth, and the cities of Soco, Timnah, and Gimzo with their villages, and settled there permanently.

¹⁹Because King Ahaz of Judah had violated the rights of his people and had defied the Lord, the Lord brought troubles on Judah.

²⁰The Assyrian emperor, instead of helping Ahaz, opposed him and caused him trouble.

²¹So Ahaz took the gold from the Temple, the palace, and the homes of the leaders of the people, and gave it to the emperor, but even this did not help.

The Sins of Ahaz

²²When his troubles were at their worst, that man Ahaz sinned against the Lord more than ever.

²³He offered sacrifices to the gods of the Syrians, who had defeated him. He said, “The Syrian gods helped the kings of Syria, so if I sacrifice to them, they may help me too.” This brought disaster on him and on his nation.

²⁴In addition, he took all the Temple equipment and broke it in pieces. He closed the Temple and set up altars in every part of Jerusalem.

²⁵In every city and town in Judah he built pagan places of worship, where incense was to be burned to foreign gods. In this way he brought on himself the anger of the Lord, the God of his ancestors.

²⁶All the other events of his reign, from beginning to end, are recorded in The History of the Kings of Judah and Israel.

²⁷King Ahaz died and was buried in Jerusalem, but not in the royal tombs. His son Hezekiah succeeded him as king.

In Praise of God's Goodness

¹If the Lord does not build the house, the work of the builders is useless; if the Lord does not protect the city, it does no good for the sentries to stand guard.

²It is useless to work so hard for a living, getting up early and going to bed late. For the Lord provides for those he loves, while they are asleep.

³Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a real blessing.

⁴The sons a man has when he is young are like arrows in a soldier's hand.

⁵Happy is the man who has many such arrows. He will never be defeated when he meets his enemies in the place of judgment.