Oil, a Son, Famine and Bread

"Thy servant my husband is dead… and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen." "What hast thou in the house?" "Not any thing… save a pot of oil." She borrows empty vessels, "not a few," shuts the door and pours; the oil stops only when there are no more vessels. "Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest."

A "great woman" of Shunem builds "a little chamber… on the wall" for the man of God. Elisha asks what can be done for her. "I dwell among mine own people." Gehazi: "she hath no child, and her husband is old." "About this season… thou shalt embrace a son." The child grows; one day in the harvest field he cries, "My head, my head," and dies on his mother's knees at noon.

She lays him on the prophet's bed and rides to Carmel. "Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband? is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well." At Elisha's feet: "Did I desire a son of my lord? did I not say, Do not deceive me?" Gehazi's staff does nothing. Elisha prays, lies on the child, "and the flesh of the child waxed warm… and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes." At Gilgal in famine, wild gourds poison the stew: "there is death in the pot." Meal is added, "and there was no harm in the pot." A man brings twenty barley loaves: "They shall eat, and shall leave thereof."

Debt slavery

Creditors in the ancient Near East could take a debtor's children as bond-servants (compare Exodus 21:7; Nehemiah 5:5; Mesopotamian laws such as Hammurabi §117). The law limited such service, but the danger was real.

Shunem

Shunem is identified with Sulam, at the foot of the hill of Moreh in the Jezreel Valley, about 30 km from Mount Carmel. It appears in Shoshenq I's list and in the Amarna letters.

Elijah, Elisha and the Gospels

The raising of the Shunammite's son resembles Elijah and the widow (1 Kings 17). The feeding of a hundred with twenty loaves, with food left over, is echoed in the Gospel feedings (Mark 6:35–44). These are literary and theological parallels; they do not show that one story was copied from another.