Study Desk

At once King Joram left Samaria and gathered all his troops.

Now get me a musician." As the musician played his harp, the power of the Lord came on Elisha,

When the king of Moab realized that he was losing the battle, he took seven hundred swordsmen with him and tried to force his way through the enemy lines and escape to the king of Syria, but he failed.

So he took his oldest son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him on the city wall as a sacrifice to the god of Moab. The Israelites were terrified and so they drew back from the city and returned to their own country.

One day Elisha went to Shunem, where a rich woman lived. She invited him to a meal, and from then on every time he went to Shunem he would have his meals at her house.

One day Elisha returned to Shunem and went up to his room to rest.

He told his servant Gehazi to go and call the woman. When she came,

Some years later, at harvest time, the boy went out one morning to join his father, who was in the field with the harvest workers.

Suddenly he cried out to his father, "My head hurts! My head hurts!" "Carry the boy to his mother," the father said to a servant.

The servant carried the boy back to his mother, who held him in her lap until noon, at which time he died.

So she set out and went to Mount Carmel, where Elisha was. Elisha saw her coming while she was still some distance away, and he said to his servant Gehazi, "Look, there comes the woman from Shunem!

but when she came to Elisha, she bowed down before him and took hold of his feet. Gehazi was about to push her away, but Elisha said, "Leave her alone. Can't you see she's deeply distressed? And the Lord has not told me a thing about it."

Then he lay down on the boy, placing his mouth, eyes, and hands on the boy's mouth, eyes, and hands. As he lay stretched out over the boy, the boy's body started to get warm.

Elisha got up, walked around the room, and then went back and again stretched himself over the boy. The boy sneezed seven times and then opened his eyes.

Once, when there was a famine throughout the land, Elisha returned to Gilgal. While he was teaching a group of prophets, he told his servant to put a big pot on the fire and make some stew for them.

Another time, a man came from Baal Shalishah, bringing Elisha twenty loaves of bread made from the first barley harvested that year, and some freshly-cut heads of grain. Elisha told his servant to feed the group of prophets with this,

One day she said to her mistress, "I wish that my master could go to the prophet who lives in Samaria! He would cure him of his disease."

The letter that he took read: "This letter will introduce my officer Naaman. I want you to cure him of his disease."

When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes in dismay and exclaimed, "How can the king of Syria expect me to cure this man? Does he think that I am God, with the power of life and death? It's plain that he is trying to start a quarrel with me!"

So Naaman went with his horses and chariot and stopped at the entrance to Elisha's house.