Three Kings and Water in the Wilderness
When Jehoram son of Ahab became king over Israel, Mesha king of Moab rebelled against the tribute he had been paying — one hundred thousand lambs and the wool of one hundred thousand rams — following the death of Ahab. Jehoram assembled the king of Judah (Jehoshaphat) and the king of Edom for a southern campaign through the wilderness of Edom. After seven days of march through that desert terrain, there was no water for the army or for the animals. Jehoram's reaction was despair and blame: "Alas! The LORD has called these three kings together to give them into the hand of Moab." Jehoshaphat asked whether there was a prophet of the LORD through whom they might inquire. A servant mentioned Elisha son of Shaphat, who poured water on the hands of Elijah — the identification of a prophet by his service to his predecessor rather than by his own accomplishments.
Elisha's reception of Jehoram was cold. He addressed the king of Israel directly: "What have I to do with you? Go to the prophets of your father and to the prophets of your mother." Jehoram pressed: it was the LORD who had brought these three kings together into Moab's hand. Elisha granted the point: "As the LORD of hosts lives, before whom I stand, were it not that I have regard for Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would neither look at you nor see you." He was willing to inquire on account of Jehoshaphat's covenant faithfulness, not for Jehoram's sake.
He asked for a musician. As the musician played, the hand of the LORD came upon Elisha. He spoke: "Thus says the LORD, 'Make this valley full of trenches.'" The valley would fill with water — no wind, no rain — and they and their livestock would drink. But the LORD would also give Moab into their hand. The next morning, water came from the direction of Edom and the land was filled. When the Moabites came out to fight and saw the water red in the morning light, they assumed the three kings had fought each other in the night and the camp was full of blood. They rushed in to plunder and were met by Israel, who rose and struck them. The final scene of the campaign was grim: Mesha king of Moab, seeing the battle was lost, sacrificed his own firstborn son on the wall — and there came great wrath against Israel, so that they withdrew and returned to their own land. The episode ends in moral and military ambiguity, the child sacrifice standing as a shadow over the victory.
The Widow's Oil and the Shunammite's Son
The following chapters present Elisha as a prophet whose ministry reached into the private lives of ordinary people — a contrast with Elijah's public, confrontational profile. A woman, the wife of one of the sons of the prophets, came to Elisha: her husband had died, and a creditor had come to take her two children as slaves. In ancient Israel, debt-slavery was legal — a creditor whose debts went unpaid could claim the children of the deceased debtor. The widow had nothing in the house but a jar of oil. Elisha told her to borrow empty vessels from her neighbors — as many as she could find — and to go inside with her sons, shut the door, and pour into all the vessels. She poured, and the oil kept flowing until there was no vessel left. Elisha told her to sell the oil, pay the debt, and live on the remainder. The miracle was private, quiet, and complete.
Elisha passed through Shunem and a wealthy woman there perceived that he was a holy man of God and persuaded him to eat there regularly. She proposed to her husband that they set up a small room on the roof — a bed, a table, a lamp, a chair — for the prophet whenever he came. Elisha rested there and asked his servant Gehazi what could be done for her. Gehazi pointed out that she had no son and her husband was old. Elisha called her and told her: "At this season, about this time next year, you shall embrace a son." She said: "No, my lord, O man of God; do not lie to your servant." She became pregnant and bore a son at the time Elisha had told her.
When the child was older, he went out to his father among the reapers and complained of head pain. He was carried to his mother, and he sat on her knees until noon, and then he died. She carried him up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, shut the door, and went. She traveled to Elisha at Mount Carmel. When Elisha saw her from a distance he told Gehazi to run and ask her whether she and her husband and child were all right. She said it was well. But when she came to the man of God at the mountain, she caught hold of his feet in a gesture of urgent petition. Gehazi moved to push her away, but Elisha stopped him: "Leave her alone, for she is in bitter distress."
Gehazi was sent ahead with Elisha's staff to lay on the child's face, while Elisha followed behind. Gehazi laid the staff on the face of the child and nothing happened. When Elisha arrived and went in and shut the door — the two of them alone, the prophet and the dead child — he prayed to the LORD. Then he lay on the child, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. The child's flesh grew warm. Elisha walked back and forth in the house, then lay on him again. The child sneezed seven times and opened his eyes. Elisha called Gehazi: "Call this Shunammite." She came and took up her son and went out.
What strikes us about the widow's oil miracle and the Shunammite's son is the scale of what Elisha's ministry covered. The oil miracle met an economic crisis — debt, slavery, the loss of children. The Shunammite's son was pure grief, a mother with a dead child in her arms. Elisha moved through both. The prophetic ministry in 2 Kings is not only about kings and nations; it is also about ordinary households on the edge of catastrophe. God's care reaches into those rooms too.
Naaman and the Jordan
Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man with his master and in high favor — because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. He was also a mighty man of valor. But he was a leper. The juxtaposition is everything: the great man, the mighty soldier, the favor — and then the single word that undid all of it in ancient society. Leprosy rendered a person ritually unclean and socially isolated.
A little girl had been taken captive from Israel and served Naaman's wife. She told her mistress that if only her lord were with the prophet in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy. The information passed up the chain: Naaman told his master, the king of Aram wrote a letter to the king of Israel, and Naaman went with ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten changes of clothing.
The king of Israel read the letter and tore his clothes: "Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy?" Elisha heard that the king had torn his clothes and sent word: let him come to me, that he may know there is a prophet in Israel. Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha's house. Elisha did not come out. He sent a messenger with the word: go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.
Naaman was furious. He had expected a spectacle — the prophet coming out, standing before him, calling on the name of the LORD his God, waving his hand over the place, and curing the leprosy. Instead he had gotten a secondhand message telling him to wade into the Jordan. He had come with enormous wealth and enormous pride. "Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?" He turned and went away in a rage. His servants came and spoke to him carefully: "My father, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says to you, 'Wash, and be clean'?" Naaman went down to the Jordan and dipped seven times. His flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
He returned to Elisha and stood before him and said: "Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel; so accept now a present from your servant." Elisha refused. Naaman asked for two mule-loads of Israel's soil — he would sacrifice to no other god on that earth. He asked one further thing: when his master went into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he bowed himself in the house of Rimmon, would the LORD pardon him? Elisha answered: "Go in peace."
Gehazi ran after Naaman and lied to him, claiming that Elisha had sent him for a talent of silver and two changes of clothing for two young prophets who had just arrived. Naaman gave him two talents. Gehazi hid the gifts and came back in. Elisha asked where he had come from. Gehazi denied: "Your servant went nowhere." Elisha told him what he had seen in spirit: did not his heart go when the man turned from his chariot to meet you? The leprosy of Naaman would cling to Gehazi and to his descendants forever. Gehazi went out from his presence a leper, like snow.
We find it significant that the smallest voice in the Naaman story is the one that set everything in motion. A captive girl — unnamed, socially nothing, taken by force — told her mistress about the prophet in Samaria. That testimony traveled from servant to mistress to general to king and across a border. The chain that led to a Syrian general confessing that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel began with a captured child speaking a single sentence. We keep returning to how God uses the people no one is watching.
And Naaman's question about bowing in the house of Rimmon was not a request for permission to worship another god. He was a servant accompanying a master into a state ceremony. He was asking whether grace covered the complicated realities of life in a foreign court. Elisha said: go in peace. That's not nothing.
Axe Head and the Army of God
Elisha's ministry extended to the small communities of prophetic disciples. When they outgrew their space and went to the Jordan to cut timber for a new dwelling, one man's borrowed axe head flew from the handle and sank in the water. He cried: "Alas, my master! It was borrowed." Elisha cut a stick and threw it in and the iron floated. The miracle was specific and quiet — the recovery of an object that could not be replaced by the one who had borrowed it. Elisha's care extended to the practical vulnerabilities of ordinary people in the prophetic community.
The Aramean king learned that information about his secret battle plans kept reaching the king of Israel. He summoned his servants and accused someone of being a traitor. His servant told him: Elisha the prophet in Israel tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom. The king sent horses and chariots and a great army by night to surround Dothan, where Elisha was. When Elisha's servant rose early in the morning and went out, he saw the army surrounding the city and was afraid: "Alas, my master! What shall we do?" Elisha said: "Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them." Then Elisha prayed: "O LORD, please open his eyes that he may see." The servant's eyes were opened, and he saw the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
"Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them." — 2 Kings 6:16 (ESV)
When the Arameans came down to him, Elisha prayed that they would be struck with blindness. He led them to Samaria and then prayed their eyes open again. They found themselves inside the Israelite capital. The king of Israel asked whether he should strike them down; Elisha told him no — feed them and send them back. He prepared a great feast. They ate and drank and went back to their master, and the Aramean raids into Israel stopped for a time.
We keep coming back to that verse: those who are with us are more than those who are with them. It's the central confession of the Elisha narratives. The visible reality of an overwhelming enemy army was not the full reality. The invisible army surrounding the prophet was larger. Elisha's servant couldn't see it until he prayed. The prayer wasn't for rescue — it was for sight. Sometimes what we need isn't deliverance from the threat but eyes to see what's already surrounding us.
Last updated: March 3, 2026.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.