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From: 2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a
The Son of the Shunammite Woman
[11] One day he came there, and he turned into the chamber ai rested there. [14]
And he said, “What then is to be done for her?” Gehazi answered, “Well, she has
no son, and her husband is old.” [15] He said, “Call her.” And when he had called
her, she stood in the doorway. [16a] And he said, “At this season, when the time
comes round, you shall embrace a son.”
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Commentary:
4:8-37. Elisha here is an itinerant prophet who has only one servant and whose
base is Mount Carmel: in this he Is like Elijah. This passage shows, firstly, God
blessing the childless woman with the gift of motherhood, thanks to the prophet’s
intervention (vv. 11-17); and, secondly, the prophet’s extraordinary power to raise
up her dead son (vv. 18-37).
From a literary point of view, it is a well-constructed account full of little details
which help to build up the dramatic tension. The feelings of the woman, who first
of all receives the of a son without having sought it, and then cannot resign her-
self to his death, provide the basic story-line. St John Chrysostom quotes this pas-
sage show that real love means being concerned even about the physical welfare
of others: “Elisha not only gave spiritual help to the woman who had shown him
hospitality; he also tried repay her in a material way” (”De Laudibus Sancti Pauli
Apostolici”, 3, 7).
The first part of the story shows the reward given someone who welcomes a pro-
phet because he is a prophet; it is reminiscent of the reward that Jesus promises
to those who acknowledge and welcome an apostle (cf. Mt 10:
13-14).
The main thing to be learned from this passage (as also from 1 Kings 17:6) is the
power of the prophet’s prayer and indeed anyone else’s prayer when done with
faith. But we also learn that when God gives a gift, no matter how surprisingly and
unexpectedly (such as the gift of a son to this woman), he also gives the grace to
conserve it and make it bear fruit. The Lord does not leave us to our own devices
when he gives us, for example, personal talents, or a vocation even if we may not
have sought one.
Elisha’s journey to the dead boy and the action he takes is compared by St Au-
gustine and other Fathers to the incarnation of Christ and to his work of redemp-
tion. “Elisha arrived and went up to the chamber, just as Christ would come and
go up to the scaffold of the cross. Elisha stretched himself upon the child, to raise
him up; Christ humbled himself in order to raise up the world that was laid prone
by sin. Elisha put his eyes on the child’s eyes, his hands on his hands. Notice, my
brothers, how that grown-up man shrank himself in order to fit the size of the dead
child. What Elisha prefigured (in the way he cured the child), Christ fulfilled in re-
gard to all mankind. Listen to what the Apostle says; ‘He humbled himself, beco-
ming obedient unto death.’ Because we were children, he made himself a child;
because we lay dead, the first thing the doctor did was to bend over, for no one
can raise his stricken brother unless he bends down to him. The child’s sneezing
seven times stands for the seven forms of grace of the Holy Spirit that are given
mankind, in order to raise it up, at Christ’s coming (Sermons attributed to St Au-
gustine, “Sermons”, 42, 8).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.