2 Kings 4
Open in the reader1Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried out to My-God-Is-Salvation, “Your servant, my husband, is dead, and you know that your servant feared He-Who-Is. And now his creditor is coming to take my two children as his slaves!”
2“How can I help you?” asked My-God-Is-Salvation. “Tell me, what do you have in the house?” She answered, “Your servant has nothing in the house but a jar of oil.”
3“Go,” said My-God-Is-Salvation, “borrow empty jars from all your neighbors. Do not gather just a few.
4Then go inside, shut the door behind you and your sons, and pour oil into all these jars, setting the full ones aside.”
5So 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.
6When 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.
7She 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.”
8One day My-God-Is-Salvation 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.
9Then the woman said to her husband, “Behold, now I know that the one who often comes our way is a devoted man of God.
10Please 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.”
11One day My-God-Is-Salvation came to visit and went to his upper room to lie down.
12And he said to Valley-of-Vision his servant, “Call the Quiet-Place-One woman.” And when he had called her, she stood before him,
13and My-God-Is-Salvation said to Valley-of-Vision, “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.
14So he asked, “Then what should be done for her?” “Well, she has no son,” Valley-of-Vision replied, “and her husband is old.”
15“Call her,” said My-God-Is-Salvation. So Valley-of-Vision called her, and she stood in the doorway.
16And My-God-Is-Salvation 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.”
17But the woman did conceive, and at that time the next year she gave birth to a son, just as My-God-Is-Salvation had told her.
18And the child grew, and one day he went out to his father, who was with the harvesters.
19“My head! My head!” he complained to his father. So his father told a servant, “Carry him to his mother.”
20After the servant had picked him up and carried him to his mother, the boy sat on her lap until noon, and then he died.
21And she went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God. Then she shut the door and went out.
22And 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“Why would you go to him today?” he replied. “It is not a New Moon or a Rest.” “Everything is all right,” she said.
24Then she saddled the donkey and told her servant, “Drive onward; do not slow the pace for me unless I tell you.”
25So she set out and went to the man of God at Mount Fruitful-Field. When the man of God saw her at a distance, he said to his servant Valley-of-Vision, “Look, there is the Quiet-Place-One woman.
26Please 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.”
27When she reached the man of God at the mountain, she clung to his feet. Valley-of-Vision came over to push her away, but the man of God said, “Leave her alone, for her soul is in deep distress, and He-Who-Is has hidden it from me and has not told me.”
28Then she said, “Did I ask you for a son, my lord? Didn’t I say, ‘Do not deceive me?’”
29So My-God-Is-Salvation said to Valley-of-Vision, “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.”
30And the mother of the boy said, “As surely as He-Who-Is lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So he got up and followed her.
31Valley-of-Vision 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 My-God-Is-Salvation and told him, “The boy has not awakened.”
32When My-God-Is-Salvation reached the house, there was the boy lying dead on his bed.
33So he went in, closed the door behind the two of them, and prayed to He-Who-Is.
34Then My-God-Is-Salvation 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.
35My-God-Is-Salvation 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.
36My-God-Is-Salvation summoned Valley-of-Vision and said, “Call the Quiet-Place-One woman.” So he called her and she came. Then My-God-Is-Salvation said, “Pick up your son.”
37She came in, fell at his feet, and bowed to the ground. Then she picked up her son and went out.
38When My-God-Is-Salvation returned to The-Rolling, 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.”
39One 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.
40And 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.
41Then My-God-Is-Salvation 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.
42Now a man from Master-of-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 My-God-Is-Salvation.
43But his servant asked, “How am I to set twenty loaves before a hundred men?” “Give it to the people to eat,” said My-God-Is-Salvation, “for this is what He-Who-Is says: ‘They will eat and have some left over.’”
44So he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of He-Who-Is.