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The Bible2 Kings 4

The Bible

2 Kings 4

1
English · Berean Standard Bible

Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, “Your servant, my husband, is dead, and you know that your servant feared the LORD. And now his creditor is coming to take my two children as his slaves!”

2
English · Berean Standard Bible

“How can I help you?” asked Elisha. “Tell me, what do you have in the house?” She answered, “Your servant has nothing in the house but a jar of oil.”

3
English · Berean Standard Bible

“Go,” said Elisha, “borrow empty jars from all your neighbors. Do not gather just a few.

4
English · Berean Standard Bible

Then go inside, shut the door behind you and your sons, and pour oil into all these jars, setting the full ones aside.”

5
English · Berean Standard Bible

So she left him, and after she had shut the door behind her and her sons, they kept bringing jars to her, and she kept pouring.

6
English · Berean Standard Bible

When all the jars were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another.” But he replied, “There are no more jars.” Then the oil stopped flowing.

7
English · Berean Standard Bible

She went and told the man of God, and he said, “Go, sell the oil, and pay your debt. Then you and your sons can live on the remainder.”

8
English · Berean Standard Bible

One day Elisha went to Shunem, and a prominent woman who lived there persuaded him to have a meal. So whenever he would pass by, he would stop there to eat.

9
English · Berean Standard Bible

Then the woman said to her husband, “Behold, now I know that the one who often comes our way is a holy man of God.

10
English · Berean Standard Bible

Please let us make a small room upstairs and put in it a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp for him. Then when he comes to us, he can stay there.”

11
English · Berean Standard Bible

One day Elisha came to visit and went to his upper room to lie down.

12
English · Berean Standard Bible

And he said to Gehazi his servant, “Call the Shunammite woman.” And when he had called her, she stood before him,

13
English · Berean Standard Bible

and Elisha said to Gehazi, “Now tell her, ‘Look, you have gone to all this trouble for us. What can we do for you? Can we speak on your behalf to the king or the commander of the army?’” “I have a home among my own people,” she replied.

14
English · Berean Standard Bible

So he asked, “Then what should be done for her?” “Well, she has no son,” Gehazi replied, “and her husband is old.”

15
English · Berean Standard Bible

“Call her,” said Elisha. So Gehazi called her, and she stood in the doorway.

16
English · Berean Standard Bible

And Elisha declared, “At this time next year, you will hold a son in your arms.” “No, my lord,” she said. “Do not lie to your maidservant, O man of God.”

17
English · Berean Standard Bible

But the woman did conceive, and at that time the next year she gave birth to a son, just as Elisha had told her.

18
English · Berean Standard Bible

And the child grew, and one day he went out to his father, who was with the harvesters.

19
English · Berean Standard Bible

“My head! My head!” he complained to his father. So his father told a servant, “Carry him to his mother.”

20
English · Berean Standard Bible

After the servant had picked him up and carried him to his mother, the boy sat on her lap until noon, and then he died.

21
English · Berean Standard Bible

And she went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God. Then she shut the door and went out.

22
English · Berean Standard Bible

And the woman called her husband and said, “Please send me one of the servants and one of the donkeys, that I may go quickly to the man of God and return.”

23
English · Berean Standard Bible

“Why would you go to him today?” he replied. “It is not a New Moon or a Sabbath.” “Everything is all right,” she said.

24
English · Berean Standard Bible

Then she saddled the donkey and told her servant, “Drive onward; do not slow the pace for me unless I tell you.”

25
English · Berean Standard Bible

So she set out and went to the man of God at Mount Carmel. When the man of God saw her at a distance, he said to his servant Gehazi, “Look, there is the Shunammite woman.

26
English · Berean Standard Bible

Please run out now to meet her and ask, ‘Are you all right? Is your husband all right? Is your child all right?’” And she answered, “Everything is all right.”

27
English · Berean Standard Bible

When she reached the man of God at the mountain, she clung to his feet. Gehazi came over to push her away, but the man of God said, “Leave her alone, for her soul is in deep distress, and the LORD has hidden it from me and has not told me.”

28
English · Berean Standard Bible

Then she said, “Did I ask you for a son, my lord? Didn’t I say, ‘Do not deceive me?’”

29
English · Berean Standard Bible

So Elisha said to Gehazi, “Tie up your garment, take my staff in your hand, and go! If you meet anyone, do not greet him, and if anyone greets you, do not answer him. Then lay my staff on the boy’s face.”

30
English · Berean Standard Bible

And the mother of the boy said, “As surely as the LORD lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So he got up and followed her.

31
English · Berean Standard Bible

Gehazi went on ahead of them and laid the staff on the boy’s face, but there was no sound or response. So he went back to meet Elisha and told him, “The boy has not awakened.”

32
English · Berean Standard Bible

When Elisha reached the house, there was the boy lying dead on his bed.

33
English · Berean Standard Bible

So he went in, closed the door behind the two of them, and prayed to the LORD.

34
English · Berean Standard Bible

Then Elisha got on the bed and lay on the boy, mouth to mouth, eye to eye, and hand to hand. As he stretched himself out over him, the boy’s body became warm.

35
English · Berean Standard Bible

Elisha turned away and paced back and forth across the room. Then he got on the bed and stretched himself out over the boy again, and the boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.

36
English · Berean Standard Bible

Elisha summoned Gehazi and said, “Call the Shunammite woman.” So he called her and she came. Then Elisha said, “Pick up your son.”

37
English · Berean Standard Bible

She came in, fell at his feet, and bowed to the ground. Then she picked up her son and went out.

38
English · Berean Standard Bible

When Elisha returned to Gilgal, there was a famine in the land. As the sons of the prophets were sitting at his feet, he said to his attendant, “Put on the large pot and boil some stew for the sons of the prophets.”

39
English · Berean Standard Bible

One of them went out to the field to gather herbs, and he found a wild vine from which he gathered as many wild gourds as his garment could hold. Then he came back and cut them up into the pot of stew, though no one knew what they were.

40
English · Berean Standard Bible

And they poured it out for the men to eat, but when they tasted the stew they cried out, “There is death in the pot, O man of God!” And they could not eat it.

41
English · Berean Standard Bible

Then Elisha said, “Get some flour.” He threw it into the pot and said, “Pour it out for the people to eat.” And there was nothing harmful in the pot.

42
English · Berean Standard Bible

Now a man from Baal-shalishah came to the man of God with a sack of twenty loaves of barley bread from the first ripe grain. “Give it to the people to eat,” said Elisha.

43
English · Berean Standard Bible

But his servant asked, “How am I to set twenty loaves before a hundred men?” “Give it to the people to eat,” said Elisha, “for this is what the LORD says: ‘They will eat and have some left over.’”

44
English · Berean Standard Bible

So he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the LORD.

1
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Hebrew text: Westminster Leningrad Codex (public domain). Original work of the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible available at https://github.com/openscriptures/morphhb (CC BY 4.0). · Source ↗

Hebrew text: Westminster Leningrad Codex (public domain), from the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible. Original work of the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible available at https://github.com/openscriptures/morphhb (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Changes: lemma and morphology markup removed; morpheme separators removed; qere readings shown in [brackets] after the ketiv, which is shown in (parentheses); petucha/setuma marks omitted; verses renumbered to English versification (Psalm titles moved to headings).

The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible, BSB. Dedicated to the public domain. · Source ↗

The Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version), standard text of 1769; electronic text courtesy of eBible.org and the CrossWire Bible Society. Public domain outside the United Kingdom. In the UK, rights in the Authorized Version are vested in the Crown under Letters Patent, administered by Cambridge University Press. · Source ↗

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