'So she went, and came unto the man of God to mount Carmel. And it came
to pass, when the man of God saw her afar off, that he said to Gehazi
his servant, Behold, yonder is that Shunammite: 26. Run now, I pray
thee, to meet her, and say unto her, Is it well with thee? is it well
with thy husband! is it well with the child? And she answered, It is
well. 27. And when she came to the man of God to the hill, she caught
him by the feet: but Gehazi came near to thrust her away. And the man
of God said, Let her alone; for her soul is vexed within her: and the
Lord hath hid it from me, and hath not told me. 28. Then she said, Did
I desire a son of my lord! did I not say, Do not deceive met 29. Then
he said to Gehazi, Gird up thy loins, and take my staff in thine hand,
and go thy way: if thou meet any man, salute him not; and if any salute
thee, answer him not again: and lay my staff upon the face of the
child. 30. And the mother of the child said, As the Lord liveth, and as
thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. And he arose, and followed her.
31. And Gehazi passed on before them, and laid the staff upon the face
of the child; but there was neither voice, nor hearing. Wherefore he
went again to meet him, and told him, saying, The child is not awaked.
32. And when Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was
dead, and laid upon his bed. 33. He went in therefore, and shut the
door upon them twain, and prayed unto the Lord. 34. And he went up, and
lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon
his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: and stretched himself upon the
child: and the flesh of the child waxed warm. 35. Then he returned, and
walked in the house to and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon
him: and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.
36. And he called Gehazi, and said, Call this Shunammite. So he called
her. And when she was come in unto him, he said, Take up thy son. 37.
Then she went in, and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the
ground, and took up her son, and went out.'--2 KINGS iv. 25-37.
The story of Elisha is almost entirely a record of his miracles, and
the story of his miracles is almost entirely a record of deeds of
beneficence. Exception has been taken to it on the ground of the
strange accumulation of supernatural works, which have been said to
make it like some mediaeval saint's legend. But why should it not be
true that, after Elijah had proclaimed the truth, his successor's
function was to enforce it chiefly by his acts, and to seek to draw
Israel back to God by 'the cords of love' and the gentle compulsion of
mercies? The careful consideration of the work of the two prophets
makes the peculiarities of Elisha's perfectly intelligible. This story
of the great lady at Shunem, her joy over her only child and his
piteous death 'on her knees,' is one of the tenderest and sweetest
pages in the history. Late won and early lost, the poor boy lies pale
and dead on Elisha's bed at Shunem, while the mother hurries across the
plain of Jezreel to Carmel,--a distance of some fifteen or sixteen
miles,--where Elisha was then living, probably near the place of
Elijah's sacrifice. This passage begins with her approach.
I. Note first the meeting (verses 25-28). Somewhere on the slopes of
Carmel, commanding a view of the plain stretching away in the blue
distance eastward, sat the prophet. His eye was keen, though probably
he was now old, and he recognised the lady at a distance, as she rode
swiftly towards the mountain. He appears to have suspected that this
unusual visit meant some calamity, and his gentle heart went out
towards his hostess and friend. Gehazi could not get back sooner than
she could come, but sympathy could not sit passive and watch her
approach. So the instinctively despatched message beautifully witnesses
the prophet's keen affection, and, as it were, the eager leap of his
sympathy. So swift and ready to flash into act is the fellow-feeling of
the Highest with the sorrows of us all; so should be the compassion of
each with another. The higher in gifts or office in the kingdom a man
is, the more is he bound to carry his sympathy in an outstretched hand.
It is worth very little when it comes slowly. It is priceless when it
runs to meet the mourner before she speaks.
The detailed question put into Gehazi's mouth describes the circle
within which this woman's heart moved,--her husband, her child,
herself. If these were well, nothing could be very ill; if ill, nothing
could be well. But the message, which came so warm from Elisha's lips,
had been cooled on the road, and sounded formal from Gehazi. It is hard
for selfish indifference to carry tender words without freezing them.
The bearer of sympathy must be sympathetic. As Gehazi spoiled Elisha's
message, so we Christians too often do our Master's, and cool it down
to our own temperature. The fact that Gehazi had done so is suggested
by the curt answer, 'Peace!' It is often quoted as the language of
resignation, but it seems much rather to be evasion of the question,
and that because her sorrow shrank from unveiling itself to the
questioner. Nothing makes grief dumb so surely as prying and yet
indifferent intrusion. A tenderer hand than Gehazi's is needed to
unlock the sad secret of that burdened breast.
It was perhaps partly pique at her silencing him, and partly mere
unfeeling attention to 'propriety,' which made the servant wish to
check the convulsive grasp of the feet, which the master allowed.
Underlings are more careful of what they suppose to be their superior's
dignity than he is. Much is permitted to love and sorrow, by a prophet,
which would be repressed by smaller men. 'Her soul is bitter within
her' pardons much, and only unfeeling critics will be punctilious in
dealing with even the extravagances of grief. But Elisha had another
reason than pity. He wished to know her pain, and therefore he let her
cling to his feet; for only there would she find her tongue. Does there
not shine through the figure of the gentle prophet the image of the
gentler Christ, who will not have the poorest and foulest spurned from
His feet, though it be 'a woman who was a sinner,' and lets us come as
close to Him as we will, even to hide our faces on His breast, that we
may pour out all our sorrows and sins to Him?
The limitations of the prophet's knowledge he frankly owns. How much
better would it have been for the Church if its teachers had been more
willing to copy his modesty, and said about a great many things, 'The
Lord hath hid it from me'!
The mother's answer is indeed the cry of a 'bitter' heart. Its abrupt
questions and its reticence as to the child's death are pathetically
true to nature, and sound yet across all these centuries as if the
bitter cry were for a grief of to-day. 'Did I desire a son?' She
upbraids Elisha and Elisha's God for having forced on her an unasked
blessing. 'Did I not say, Do not deceive me?' She did (verse 16); and
she upbraids Elisha again for a worse deceit than she had meant then,
by mocking her with a gift which was wrenched from her hands so
suddenly and soon. How many a sad heart is to-day tempted to raise this
cry of anguish! And how patient is Elisha with wild words, and how he
discerns, beneath the apparent rough reproach, the misery which it
implies and the petition which it veils! Elisha's Lord is no less
tender in His judgment of our hasty, whirlwind words, when our hearts
are sore; and if only we speak them to Him and cling to His feet, He
translates them into the petitions which they mean, and is swift to
answer the meaning and pass by the sound of our bitter cry.
II. We note the ineffectual experiment of the staff (verses 29-31). The
supposition that Gehazi was sent in such haste with the hope that the
touch of the staff might bring back life, is dismissed as 'impossible'
by most commentators, who have therefore some difficulty in saying what
he was sent for. Some of the Rabbis answered, 'To prevent
putrefaction,' which would set in soon on that harvest day. Others say
that the intention was to 'prevent more life escaping from him.' But
'dead' is not usually supposed to be an adjective admitting of
comparison. Others find the reason in the wish to deliver Israel from
the superstitious veneration of such things as the staff, by showing
that it was powerless. But verse 31 plainly implies that the result of
Gehazi's attempt was not what had been expected. Why need there be any
hesitation in taking the natural meaning, and supposing that Elisha
sent his servant quickly, 'if peradventure' the touch of his staff
might suffice, and followed in person, because he did not know whether
it would. There is nothing unworthy of a prophet who had just confessed
his ignorance in the supposition. His unobtrusive spirit delighted to
hide its power behind material vehicles, as is seen in most of his
miracles; and, if he remembered how he himself, in his early days, had
parted the waters with his master's cloak, he might think it possible
that his servant should work a miracle with his staff.
The Shunemite quotes his own words on that far-off day; and perhaps she
was reminded of them by perceiving the analogy of the two incidents.
But her clinging to Elisha shows her doubt of the success of the
attempt; and she was right. Why did the staff fail? Perhaps because of
its bearer. Gehazi always appears unfavourably, and Elisha's staff
loses its power in such hands. The mightiest instruments are weak when
selfishness and coldness wield them. An unworthy minister can make the
Gospel itself impotent. It is an awful thing to carry 'the rod of Thy
strength' and to hinder its exerting its energy. But possibly the
non-success of the attempt was meant to teach Elisha and us that
miracles of life-giving are not to be wrought so easily, but need the
effort of the prophet himself. We cannot delegate the work of God, and
no sending of others will do instead of going ourselves. Such things
are not achieved without much personal toil, pains, and self-sacrifice.
III. So we come to the last step, the communication of life (verses
32-37). It was noon when the child died. The mother's journey would
take three or four hours, and the return at least as much. It would
then be dark when the two reached her desolate home. She had laid the
boy on Elisha's bed, as if even that brought her some comfort. It is
difficult to say whether 'them twain' (verse 33) means him and the
mother, or him and the child; but the expression of the next verse,
'went up,' suggests that the prayer with shut door was in the lower
part of the house, and that the mother's cry was joined to the
prophet's petitions. Such prayer is the true preparation for such a
miracle. Beautiful consideration, born of sympathy, led him to shut out
curious onlookers, and then to go up alone to the little chamber where
that pale, tiny corpse lay. No eye but a mother's could have seen what
followed without profanation; and a mother's heart would have been torn
by hopes and fears if she had seen.
The actual miracle is remarkable for two peculiarities--the effort
required and the slowness of the process. Of course, there is a
profound and beautiful use to be made of the prophet's action in laying
himself upon the dead child, mouth to mouth, and hand to hand, if we
regard it as symbolic of that closeness of approach to our nature, dead
in sins, which the Lord of life makes in His incarnation and in His
continual drawing near. It is His own life which Jesus imparts, and it
is imparted because He comes near and touches us. It is the warmth of
His own heart which passes into those who live by derivation of life
from Him. And Elisha may well stand as symbol of Jesus in this miracle.
But besides that use of the narrative, which is no mere fanciful
playing with it, we should also note the difference between the prophet
and Christ in their miracles. Jesus raises the dead by His bare word.
His expressed will is all-sufficient. Elisha prays, and then puts forth
somewhat prolonged efforts, from which at first there is no effect, and
which drain him of force, so that he is obliged to pause and leave the
chamber, and gather himself together for a renewal of them. The ease of
the one sets the difficulty of the other in a strong light. And the
life which came back with a rush, in full stream, at Christ's bidding,
comes only by degrees at Elisha's prayer and work. The one worker is
the Lord of life, who speaks and it is done; the other is but the
channel of power, and the appearance of effort and gradualness in
result is owing to the narrowness of the channel, not to the inadequacy
of the power.
In all Elisha's gentleness and lowliness there is yet a certain dignity
as God's prophet; and it was not fitting that he should come from the
scene of such a miracle with the glow of it upon him, to seek for the
mother. So he summons her by Gehazi, and then, with beautiful delicacy,
leaves her to go alone into the chamber. None are to see the transports
of her joy, not even the author of it. How beautiful, too, are the
quiet words, 'Take up thy son'! She has no words; but, for all answer,
comes close to him (there is no 'in' in verse 37), and once again, but
with what different feelings, clasps his feet. Not even Gehazi, or any
other stickler for propriety, has the heart to thrust her back this
time. The story draws a curtain over that meeting in the prophet's
chamber. Sad hearts who have vainly longed for such a moment, can fancy
the rapture. But the day will come, not here, but in the upper chamber,
when parted ones shall clasp each other again; and many a mourner shall
hear Jesus say from the throne what He once said from the Cross,
'Woman, behold thy son; son, behold thy mother.'