The Summary
(Sorry, I realized that the Taamim recording for this chapter was corrupt – has to be redone!)
Melakim Bet Chapter 4
Elisha is approached by the widow of one of the disciples of the prophets. She has been left destitute and is being pressured by creditors to sell her two sons into slavery in order to settle her debt. She has nothing but a single vessel of oil in the house. Elisha instructs the woman to borrow empty vessels from her neighbors, close the door behind her and to start pouring the oil to fill them. Miraculously, the oil flows uninterruptedly until all of the containers are filled. Elisha tells her to sell the surplus oil to earn the money necessary to pay off her debts and then to live off of what remains.
Whenever Elisha visits Shunem, he is invited to dine with a prestigious woman and her husband. After a while, the woman convinces her husband to set up a modestly furnished attic apartment for the prophet to reside in when he is in town. Elisha wishes to repay the woman for her kindness and asks his attendant, Gehazi, to inquire what she would like to receive in exchange for all that she has done. The woman declares that she is content and needs nothing; Gehazi, however, points out to Elisha that her husband is elderly yet she has no son. Elisha promises the woman that by next year she will bear a child; she has difficulty believing the prediction, but it indeed comes true and she gives birth to a son.
One day, the boy is working with his father in the field when he collapses. His mother lays his lifeless body on the bed in Elisha’s apartment and sets off to Mount Carmel to find the prophet. Seeing her from afar, Elisha sends Gehazi ahead to meet her; however, she insists on interacting with Elisha directly, falling at his feet. Gehazi attempts to intervene but Elisha tells him to let her be.
The woman confronts Elisha for having promised her a child that she never asked for, only to allow him to die. Elisha sends Gehazi ahead with his staff and commands him to revive the child, but the woman will not leave unless Elisha accompanies them as well. Gehazi arrives first and cannot resuscitate the boy. Elisha enters the room, closes the door, prays to Hashem, and, after laying atop the child several times, he sneezes seven times and awakens. Elisha hands the child to his relieved mother and departs.
There is a famine in the land and Elisha’s disciples are suffering from the food shortage as well. He tells them to prepare a stew and they disperse to gather the various ingredients. Once they have begun to taste the food, it becomes clear that one of the items that had been added to the mixture was poisonous. Elisha requests that the disciples bring him flour, which he casts into the pot, nullifying its dangerous effects.
A man comes to visit Elisha with a care package of bread, fruits, and grain, and Elisha instructs the disciples to serve it to the famished community. They protest that there are insufficient provisions to feed to such a multitude. The prophet responds that Hashem has declared that the people will eat and even leave over extra when they have finished, which is precisely what happens.
The parallels between the stories of Elisha in this chapter and the accounts of the miracles of Eliyahu are unmistakable. Both prophets provide an “unending” supply of food to a widow and both find lodging with a family and revive the deceased child of that family. These similarities underscore Elisha’s emergence as the successor of Eliyahu and the perpetuator of his legacy.
However, the differences in the description of the activities of the two prophets are also very instructive. Eliyahu’s miraculous provision of unlimited oil and flour was prompted by HIS need for sustenance; in fact, he instructed the widow to prepare a cake for him before she did so for herself or her son, since it was in his merit that she was being granted divine assistance. In other words, Eliyahu’s support of the widow was a function of justice, not mercy.
By contrast, Elisha gains nothing personally from the widow whom he assists, nor does he know whether her claim is justified; he acts purely out of compassion and kindness. Moreover, not only does he provide her with sufficient funds to settle her debts, which could have been seen as justified by the merit of her husband, who was a prophet; far beyond this, Elisha ensures that she has a surplus that will benefit her and her children for the foreseeable future.
Similarly, when Eliyahu revives the dead child of his hostess, he complains that Hashem has harmed the person with whom he has found lodging – in other words, the tragedy affected him, disrupted his life, and therefore he sought for it to be reversed. The fact that, in the aftermath of her son’s death, the widow perceived Eliyahu as a liability rather than an asset was a denigration of his stature as a man of God and had to be addressed.
By contrast, Elisha only stays with the woman in Shunem occasionally, he is not dependent upon her; his initial miracle of bringing her the child as well as his intervention to save the child were both motivated by kindness alone. Elisha sought out the woman to promise her a child – she never asked for anything and never expected anything – and he responds sensitively and warmly when she arrives to complain about the boy’s sudden death.
The compassionate aspect of Elisha’s behavior is underscored by the postscripts to his miracles; he always follows up his wondrous deeds with a command to the beneficiary, like “lift up your child”, “go, sell the oil, pay your debt, and you and your sons live off of the rest”, “pour for the people that they may eat”, or “give to the people that they may eat”. In other words, Elisha empowers the recipients of his miraculous actions, equipping them with the tools they need to live a prosperous or happy life. He has no personal vested interest in the outcome of these interventions.
Unlike Eliyahu who embodied the Divine quality of justice – Midat Hadin – Elisha is a living example of the Divine quality of mercy, Midat HaRahamim, giving freely and generously to all. Both prophets were devoted to the cause of heightening awareness of Hashem in the world, one through a strict insistence on law, judgment and punishment and the other through the passionate distribution of an abundance of blessing and bounty.
Fascinatingly, during the period of Elisha, there were famines and wars; the Divine wrath is apparent, and yet Elisha never addressed this or sought to change it, he simply looked for ways to remind people of the infinite kindness of the Creator that can be experienced even in the worst of times.
There is much to comment upon in this remarkable chapter. For the sake of brevity, we must pass over much of its rich content and symbolism for now. However, I would be remiss if I did not address the fascinating parallel between Elisha’s interactions with the widow and the interactions between the three visiting angels and Avraham and Sarah in Parashat Vayera.
In both circumstances, following an act of hakhnassat orhim, welcoming of a guest, a barren woman and her elderly husband are promised a child. In both cases, the woman expresses her doubts about the possibility of the promise being fulfilled (we all recall Sarah laughing), and in both texts the term “at this time” (lamoed hazeh), an unusual phrase, is employed, indicating that the similarities being drawn between the two cases are deliberate.
Finally, in both stories, the “miracle child” almost dies while alone with his father – Yitzchaq at the Aqedah and the Shunnamite woman’s son in the field – until he is saved by an intervention from an angelic messenger – the prophetic vision revealed to Avraham to stop the process of sacrificing his son and the appearance of the prophet Elisha who resuscitates the Shunammite’s son. What is the deeper connection between these narratives that inspired the literary parallels we have identified?
I would like to tentatively suggest that the text here is emphasizing the power of kindness, and specifically of welcoming guests into one’s home. Extending yourself for the sake of other people demonstrates that you understand and appreciate their intrinsic value as human beings and wish to support and assist them. The Shunammite woman, like Elisha himself, was able to look beyond the four walls of her home and see the greatness of the prophet as well as his need for sustenance. Through welcoming him into her abode she revealed her interest in contributing to his mission of spreading knowledge of Hashem and manifesting Hashem’s compassion in the world.
This selflessness made the Shunammite woman similar to our ancestors Avraham and Sarah who opened their tents to all passersby in order to share the spiritual and material blessings they received with others, fellow human beings they recognized were also worthy of consideration and compassion. Once Avraham and Sarah had reached the pinnacle of their development, as expressed in their welcoming of the three angels, they were deemed worthy of the miracle of being blessed with a son who would carry on their legacy. Their child wouldn’t be a source of selfish pride for them but would be a gift of God to whom they would pass on their religious principles and ethical values.
When Avraham began enjoying little Yitzchaq too much, however – the Midrash says this reached its height when Avraham celebrated weaning the boy without sufficient acknowledgment of Hashem – our Forefather was given the task of the Aqedah. Confronted with the Divine command to sacrifice his son, Avraham had to refocus on his true mission in the world and remember why he had been given Yitschaq to begin with – for the sake of serving Hashem and not for his own sake.
Similarly, it stands to reason that the Shunammite woman had begun to take her son for granted as he toiled with his father in the field. The boy had to be taken away temporarily so that his mother would reflect upon the reason why she had been blessed with him in the first place – because of her dedication to Hashem, her admiration of the prophet and the expectation that she would raise her son with proper Torah values, not merely so he could help contribute to the family business!
Interestingly, the Zohar states that this mysterious “miracle child” was none other than the Prophet Havaquq, whose name derives from the statement of Elisha “you will be embracing [hoveqet] a child”; according to the Zohar, the second letter “quf” is a reference to the embrace of the child by Elisha when he resuscitated him. This suggests that the Shunammite woman learned the lesson of her son’s temporary “death” and quickly placed him back on the path to spiritual success.