The wife of a man from the groups of prophets said to Elisha, “Your servant, my husband, is dead. You know he honored the LORD. But now the man he owes money to is coming to take my two boys as his slaves!”
Elisha answered, “How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?”
The woman said, “I don’t have anything there except a pot of oil.”
Then Elisha said, “Go and get empty jars from all your neighbors. Don’t ask for just a few. Then go into your house and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and set the full ones aside.”
So she left Elisha and shut the door behind her and her sons. As they brought the jars to her, she poured out the oil. When the jars were all full, she said to her son, “Bring me another jar.”
But he said, “There are no more jars.” Then the oil stopped flowing.
She went and told Elisha. And the prophet said to her, “Go, sell the oil and pay what you owe. You and your sons can live on what is left.”
One day Elisha went to Shunem, where an important woman lived. She begged Elisha to stay and eat. So every time Elisha passed by, he stopped there to eat. The woman said to her husband, “I know that this is a holy man of God who passes by our house all the time. Let’s make a small room on the roof and put a bed in the room for him. We can put a table, a chair, and a lampstand there. Then when he comes by, he can stay there.”
One day Elisha came to the woman’s house. After he went to his room and rested, he said to his servant Gehazi, “Call the Shunammite woman.”
When the servant had called her, she stood in front of him. Elisha had told his servant, “Now say to her, ‘You have gone to all this trouble for us. What can I do for you? Do you want me to speak to the king or the commander of the army for you?’ ”
She answered, “I live among my own people.”
Elisha said to Gehazi, “But what can we do for her?”
He answered, “She has no son, and her husband is old.”
Then Elisha said to Gehazi, “Call her.” When he called her, she stood in the doorway. Then Elisha said, “About this time next year, you will hold a son in your arms.”
The woman said, “No, master, man of God, don’t lie to me, your servant!”
But the woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son at that time the next year, just as Elisha had told her.
The boy grew up and one day went out to his father, who was with the grain harvesters. The boy said to his father, “My head! My head!”
The father said to his servant, “Take him to his mother!” The servant took him to his mother, and he lay on his mother’s lap until noon. Then he died. So she took him up and laid him on Elisha’s bed. Then she shut the door and left.
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