Jehoram of Israel [II]

Several of Elisha's vignettes surround a wealthy woman of the town of Shunem, which was located on the eastern end of the Valley of Jezreel on the southwest slope of the Hill of Moreh. The town is listed in Egyptian itineraries, and archaeologists have discovered its Iron Age remains. The biblical narrative recounts three episodes of Elisha and the Shunemmite woman (who is never given a name). The first two episodes take place prior to a seven-year drought, and the third takes place after the drought. We’ll examine the first two here and return shortly to the third. 

'modern' Shunem (known as Sulam today)

The first episode recounts Elisha’s growing relationship with the Shunemmite woman. Elisha made it a habit to visit the town of Shunem, and a wealthy woman there asked him to come to her home for a meal. A friendship was kindled, and from that point on Elisha made a point to stop by her house for a meal whenever he passed through. The woman told her husband that they should build a sleeping chamber and study for the prophet on the roof of their home and furnish it with a bed, table, chair, and lamp that would probably be accessed by an outside stairwell; that way, whenever he came by, he’d have a place to rest and work in private. Elisha was moved by her kindness, and he told her that he and his servant Gehazi –Elisha’s prophetic apprentice – appreciated her kindness and wanted to pay her back. They could put in a good word for her before the king or before the commander of Israel’s armies, perhaps? She said no, for her family provided all her needs. Elisha and Gehazi consulted as to how they could repay her, and Gehazi pointed out that the woman didn’t have a son and her husband was an old man. Elisha instructed Gehazi to bring the woman back; when they were face-to-face, Elisha told her that this time next year, she’d be holding a son in her arms. She was incredulous; we can assume that she and her husband, now getting ‘up in years,’ had tried unsuccessfully for children through the duration of their marriage; children were a couple’s lifeblood back then, and they served a variety of purposes that are foreign to the western world today – but sure enough it happened just as Elisha had said.

The second episode takes place many years after the birth of the woman’s son, and it echoes Elijah’s relationship with the Phoenician widow with whom he sought sanctuary. Just as Elijah fostered a relationship with the Phoenician widow, so Elisha fostered a relationship with the Shunemmite woman; just as Elijah had lived with the Phoenician woman, so Elisha ‘lived with’ (even if only in passing) the Shunemmite woman; and just as Elijah raised the Phoenician woman’s dead son to life, so Elisha raised the Shunemmite woman’s dead son to life. This episode showcases the continuum of prophetic power and commission between Elijah and Elisha. This is how it went down: the child went out to help his father harvest their fields, and suddenly he cried out, ‘My head hurts! My head hurts!’ His father ordered the servants to carry him back to his mother. The servants obeyed, and the Shunemmite woman held her son in his lap until he died around noon. Theories regarding his quick death attribute the sickness to sunstroke, brain aneurism, cerebral hemorrhage, cerebral malaria, and even meningitis (though no one can know for sure). The boy’s mother carried him up to Elisha’s rooftop room and laid him on the prophet’s bed; she sent a message, instructing her husband to send a servant and a donkey so she could hurry to Elisha, who had apparently just left. Perhaps she believed that Elisha, as Elijah’s heir, could duplicate the old prophet’s well-known miracle for the Phoenician widow’s son. Her husband, apparently clueless regarding the boy’s death, wondered why she was in such a hurry to fetch Elisha; ‘It’s not the new moon or the Sabbath!’ he exclaimed. Israelites marked the first day of the month with its ‘new moon’ phase as a festival day; on these days, all work was to cease and sacrifices were made. These festivals – like the Sabbath – were convenient opportunities for people to seek an oracle from a prophet. The woman’s husband, then, is asking why she’s fussing about getting Elisha now when she could just wait for a more appropriate and convenient time. The woman shushes her husband and goes on her way, making the twenty-mile trek northwest to Mount Carmel and coming into sight of the prophet on the mountain’s slope.

When Elisha saw the woman hurrying towards him, he sensed something was amiss and sent Gehazi to ask if there was a problem with her, her husband, or her child. She brushed off Gehazi’s inquiries; she was interested in dealing with the prophet himself. Gehazi led her to Elisha, and she fell to the ground and grabbed hold of his ankles (a cultural sign of self-abasement and entreaty). Gehazi went to shove her off, but Elisha commanded him to leave her alone. ‘She’s deeply troubled,’ he told his apprentice, ‘but God has not told me why.’ The woman looked up at Elisha from her spot on the ground and asked him, ‘Did I ask you for a son? And didn’t I say ‘Don’t deceive me and get my hopes up?’ Elisha saw through her veiled language and ordered Gehazi to take his staff and return to Shunem; he was to talk to no one – nothing could get in the way of the urgency of the mission! – and place the staff on the boy’s head, perhaps to signify the prophet’s intention to identify with the boy and claim God’s power. Gehazi did as instructed, but the staff had no effect; there was no sign of life, as Elisha’s staff had no magical power. Elisha may have been echoing Akkadian incantation texts where a staff is used as an instrument by which exorcisms against asakku demons (which bring disease and fever) are effected; one would place the staff on the boy’s face since he’d reported that it was his head that hurt. Some have speculated that Elisha didn’t expect the staff to have any magical properties; rather, he may have instructed Gehazi to lay the staff against the boy’s face as a sign to the woman that all would be well. 

Elisha and the Shunemmite woman began a leisurely track back to Shunem, and en route meet Gehazi returning from town. He told the prophet that the boy was truly dead. When Elisha and the woman arrived, the child lie dead on Elisha’s upstairs bed. Elisha went in alone and shut the door and prayed to Yahweh. He lay on the child’s body, placing his mouth on the child’s mouth, eyes on the child’s eyes, and hands on the child’s hands. This ‘action prayer’ echoed Elijah’s raising of the Phoenician woman’s son, and it echoed ancient superstition in which one prepared the body for re-inhabitation of the soul or spirit by restoring its warmth. The boy’s body began to grow warm, and Elisha stood up and paced the room, analyzing the situation and praying as he did so. He stretched himself back out over the child, and the boy ‘sneezed’ seven times and opened his eyes. The Hebrew word translated ‘sneezed’ occurs only here, and its meaning is uncertain; it could also mean ‘convulsed’ or ‘moaned’; if ‘sneezed’ is the accurate translation, it could show the recovery of the boy’s suspended respiration. Elisha summoned Gehazi and told him to fetch the child’s mother. When she barreled into the room, she took her breathing son and cradled him. She fell at Elisha’s feet and bowed before him, overwhelmed with gratitude. 

Some time later God determined to bring a famine upon the land which would last for seven years. The Shunemmite woman and her household migrated to the fertile Philistine plain which, though not totally exempt from the effects of the famine, didn’t suffer from such natural calamities as much as Samaria and Judah did. Though Samaria typically experienced more rainfall than Philistia in the southern coastal plain, the alluvial flood plain of the coast was less dependent on the rainfall and would thus be a good place to weather a famine. For seven years the woman and her family lived in the foreign land. During this time her husband died, and when she and her son returned to Israel, they would face a quagmire for which she’d have to address King Jehoram to resolve. But, alas, we are getting ahead of ourselves.

God declared that a seven-year famine would oppress Israel. The decreed famine was twice as long as the drought that struck during Elijah’s time, a play on the ‘double portion’ that Elisha inherited from his predecessor. The Bible recounts three episodes that take place during this famine: poisoned stew at Gilgal, a miraculous feeding at Gilgal, and a lost axe head in the Jordan River. At the conclusion of the famine, we encounter the third and last Shunemmite Woman episode.

an apple of Sodom

Elisha spent a lot of time at Gilgal, a center of prophetic activity along with Bethel and Jericho. The prophets at the Gilgal Chapter of the prophetic guild spoke against the evils of the day, not least the continued worship of the Baal-Melqart cult and the Golden Calf abominations. When Elisha gathered with the ‘sons of the prophets’, he took the place of honor at the head of the table. One day at Gilgal he told Gehazi to prepare a pot of stew. One of the young prophetic students who helped gather food had chosen some wild gourds, shredded them, and put them in the stew without realizing they were poisonous. After a few of the prophets had a few bites, they could tell the stew was poisoned. It’s likely that the bad gourds were colocynths, known today as ‘apples of Sodom.’ They were produced by a vine and had powerful laxative properties; they can be fatal if eaten in large doses. Though most scholars believe that the prophetic students recognized the poisoned fruit by taste or a nauseas sensation, it’s likely – if the culprit was, indeed, colocynths – that they recognized the poison when they were suddenly hit with explosive diarrhea. Elisha instructed the students to bring him some flour; he put the flour in the pot and declared it was fine. The flour symbolized purification, and in some ancient Near Eastern texts, flour or ground meal was believed to possess magical power able to remove evil magic. Elisha reproduced a procedure that would’ve been familiar to the ‘world of magic’ but did it differently (when it comes to biblical ‘reproductions’ of ancient magic, one must pay attention not to the similarities but the dissimilarities; in this case, Elisha forewent the incantations and ritualistic preparation of the flour).

Another episode with food took place at Gilgal. A man from Baal-shalishah (traditionally located at Bethsarisa on the plain of Sharon about fifteen miles northwest of Joppa) brought Elisha a sack of fresh grain and twenty loaves of barley bread made from the first grain of his harvest. Each loaf of bread was equal to what one person would eat as a meal. The offering is similar to the first of the crops normally presented to God and to the priests (Leviticus 23.20; Deuteronomy 18.4-5); because of Israel’s religious corruption and Jeroboam’s outlawing of Levitical priests, this man of God couldn’t offer the ‘first-fruits’ as Mosaic Law commanded; by offering them to Elisha and the prophets, he was acknowledging them as ‘stand-ins’ for the Levitical priests in the wake of Jeroboam’s reformations. The fact that the man of God made such an offering during the famine displays his piety and trust in Yahweh. Elisha ordered his apprentice to distribute the food to the prophetic students, but Gehazi was incredulous: ‘Do you seriously expect a hundred people to survive off this?’ Elisha repeated his command, insisting, ‘This is what Yahweh says: everyone will eat, and there will even be some left over!’ Gehazi stifled his protests and did as commanded, and everyone was fed – and there were even leftovers. This miraculous feeding anticipated the miracles of Jesus as recorded in Matthew 14.15-21 and 15.32-38.

The third episode during the famine took place at the Jordan River. A group of prophets game to Elisha at Gilgal and told him that their meeting place was too small. They wanted to go down to the Jordan River to collect wood to build a new meeting place. The forest areas of the Jordan Valley near Jericho and Gilgal were rich in timber; particularly useful were acacia, tamarisk, and willow. Elisha told them to go ahead, and they invited him along. When they reached the river, they began felling trees. As one of the prophets was cutting down a tree, his axe head fell into the river. He panicked, as it was a borrowed axe and he was responsible for it. The Hebrew indicates that the axe was made of iron, making it extremely valuable (there wasn’t a whole lot of iron to go around in those days). The prophet, knowing he was liable to replace it and couldn’t afford a new one on his ‘meager’ prophetic salary, petitioned Elisha for help. Elisha asked where it fell, and the prophet showed him. Elisha cut a stick off a tree and threw it into the water at that spot; then the axe head floated to the surface so that the man could simply reach out and grab it. This episode showcases Elisha’s concern for even the simplest matters of his prophetic students.

After seven years, the famine ended. At this time the Shunemmite woman returned to Shunem in Israel only to find that her land had been reverted to crown property. This was according to law: because her property had been abandoned so long, its title automatically transferred to the state. The woman would have to petition for its return, but because her husband had died, she was reliant upon her son – her husband’s sole heir – for the restoration of property. She made a trek to the Israelite capital of Samaria to petition King Jehoram for a return of her land. The king granted her request, but of interest is the fact that Jehoram was meeting with Gehazi. It would seem that Jehoram had sent for Gehazi to satisfy his curiosity in regards to the miraculous deeds of Elisha. Jehoram and Elisha had never been on friendly terms, so Jehoram was more keen to consult with Elisha’s apprentice than to summon the prophet himself. Given what we have seen so far of Gehazi’s character – and what will be revealed in the ‘Aramean Episodes’ towards the end of Jehoram’s reign – it’s likely that Gehazi was more than happy to answer any of the king’s questions – for a price.