Elisha succeeded Elijah as a prophet in Israel. He was Shaphat’s son from Abel Meholah. When Elijah found him, he was plowing with twelve pairs of oxen and working with the last pair. Elijah put his mantle over him. Elisha asked to say farewell to his parents, then slaughtered a pair of oxen and cooked their meat using the equipment as fuel. After feeding the people, he followed Elijah and served him.
On the day Elijah was to be taken away, Elisha accompanied him from Gilgal through Bethel and Jericho to the Jordan. The prophets’ disciples asked whether he knew he would lose his master, and he said he did. Elijah struck the river with his mantle, and they crossed on dry ground. Elisha requested a double portion of his spirit. Elijah said it would be granted if Elisha saw him taken away, but not otherwise. A fiery chariot and horses separated them, and Elijah went up in a whirlwind. Elisha saw it, picked up the fallen mantle, and struck the river to cross again. The disciples said Elijah’s spirit rested on him.
The people of Jericho told Elisha their water was bad and the land barren. He requested salt in a new bowl, threw it into the spring, and announced God’s healing of the water. Kings records that the water was healed as he had said.
On the way to Bethel, youths came out and mocked his baldness. Elisha cursed them in the LORD’s name, and two female bears came from the woods and mauled forty-two of them. The account does not state whether they died. Elisha traveled by Mount Carmel and returned to Samaria.
King Jehoram of Israel joined Jehoshaphat of Judah and Edom’s king against Moab, but their army ran out of water. Elisha said he would speak to Israel’s king out of respect for Jehoshaphat and called for a musician. As the musician played, the LORD’s hand came on him. He told them to dig trenches in the valley. It would fill with water without visible wind or rain, and Moab would be defeated. Mistaking the red reflection in the morning water for blood, Moab’s troops approached to plunder and were defeated. Later, Moab’s king offered his firstborn as a burnt offering on the wall. Great wrath came against Israel, and the troops withdrew. The account does not identify whose wrath it was.
A disciple’s widow appealed to Elisha because a creditor was coming to take her two sons as slaves. Hearing that she had only a pot of oil, he told her to borrow many empty vessels, shut the door with her sons, and pour the oil. It stopped only after all the vessels were filled. He told her to sell it, pay the debt, and live with her sons on the rest.
A woman at Shunem offered Elisha food and a room. Learning that she had no son, he said she would embrace one the next year, and she did. After the boy grew, he complained of head pain and died. His mother went to Elisha. Gehazi went ahead with the prophet’s staff, but placing it on the boy did not wake him. Elisha came to the house, shut the door, prayed to God, and stretched himself over the child. The body warmed. When he lay over him again, the boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes. His mother took him away.
During a famine at Gilgal, stew was prepared for the prophets’ disciples. Someone added wild gourds without recognizing them, and the men eating it cried that it was deadly. Elisha added meal, and the stew became harmless. When a man brought twenty barley loaves, Elisha told his servant to give them to a hundred men. The servant questioned the quantity, but Elisha said the LORD had promised they would eat and have some left. They did.
Naaman, Syria’s army commander, was a mighty warrior with leprosy. A captive Israelite girl who served his wife said the prophet at Samaria could heal him. When Naaman arrived, Elisha sent a messenger telling him to wash seven times in the Jordan. Naaman was angry that Elisha had not come out himself and said Damascus had better rivers. Persuaded by his servants, he dipped himself seven times and became clean. He confessed that there was no God but in Israel and offered gifts, which Elisha refused.
Gehazi followed Naaman and falsely claimed Elisha had sent him to obtain silver and clothes for two visiting disciples. He received two talents of silver and two changes of clothing and hid them. Back with Elisha, he said he had gone nowhere. Elisha exposed the lie and said Naaman’s leprosy would cling to Gehazi and his descendants forever. Gehazi left with the disease.
The prophets’ disciples needed a larger dwelling and went to cut timber by the Jordan. A borrowed iron ax head fell into the water. Elisha asked where it had fallen, cut a stick, and threw it there. The iron floated, and he told the man to take it. He reached out and recovered it.
Elisha repeatedly warned Israel’s king of enemy positions, so Syria’s king surrounded Dothan to seize him. Elisha told his frightened servant that those with them outnumbered the enemy and prayed for his eyes to open. God opened them, and he saw fiery horses and chariots filling the mountain. At Elisha’s prayer, God blinded the Syrian troops. Elisha led them to Samaria and prayed for their sight to return. He told Israel’s king not to kill them but to feed them and send them home. The king did so.
Later, Benhadad of Syria besieged Samaria, causing severe famine. Israel’s king sent a man to kill Elisha. Elisha said God had promised that grain would be sold cheaply the following day. He told a skeptical officer that he would see it but not eat it. Four leprous men went to the Syrian camp and found the army gone. God had made the troops hear the noise of a great army, and they had fled. The people took the camp’s provisions, and prices fell as foretold. The officer overseeing the gate was trampled to death.
Second Kings 8 also recounts Elisha’s earlier warning to the Shunammite woman about a famine. She spent seven years with her household in Philistine territory, then returned and appealed to the king for her house and land. Gehazi was telling him about the boy’s restoration to life when she arrived. After hearing her, the king ordered an official to restore her property and the land’s produce from the years she had been away.
While Elisha was in Damascus, Benhadad sent Hazael to ask whether he would recover. Elisha told Hazael to report recovery to the king, but also said God had shown him that the king would die. He wept because he knew the cruel acts Hazael would commit against Israel and said Hazael would become Syria’s king. Hazael reported only the promise of recovery. The next day, he covered the king’s face with a wet cloth, killed him, and took the throne.
Elisha sent a prophetic disciple to Ramoth Gilead to anoint Jehu. The disciple told Jehu he would be king and must strike Ahab’s household. Jehu subsequently shot King Joram dead. At Jehu’s order, eunuchs threw Jezebel from a window. After receiving Jehu’s letter, the men responsible for Ahab’s seventy sons killed them.
When Elisha became fatally ill, King Joash of Israel visited and wept. Elisha had him open the eastern window and shoot an arrow, calling it an arrow of victory over Syria. Then he told him to strike the ground with the arrows, but the king stopped after three strokes. Elisha said angrily that five or six strokes would have meant Syria’s complete defeat. Now the king would win only three victories.
Elisha died and was buried. As the year began, Moabite raiding bands entered the land. Men burying someone saw the raiders and threw the body into Elisha’s tomb. When it touched his bones, the man revived and stood up.