Suggest an Edit — Prophet Elisha

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Biography

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Elisha (Hebrew Elisha, commonly understood as God is salvation or My God is salvation) was a prophet of the northern Kingdom of Israel in the ninth century BCE. The principal narrative sources are 1 Kings 19 and 2 Kings 2–13 in the Hebrew Bible. He is identified as the son of Shaphat and as coming from Abel-meholah, a settlement in the Jordan Valley. According to 1 Kings 19, the prophet Elijah, after the theophany at Horeb, was commanded to anoint Elisha as prophet in his place. Elijah found Elisha plowing with twelve yoke of oxen and cast his mantle upon him. Elisha slaughtered the oxen, used the wooden yokes as fuel to cook the meat as a farewell meal for the people, took leave of his parents, and thereafter attended Elijah.

The transfer of prophetic authority is described in 2 Kings 2. Elijah and Elisha crossed the Jordan after Elijah struck the water with his mantle; a chariot and horses of fire then separated them, and Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind. Elisha took up the fallen mantle, struck the Jordan so that it parted, and was acknowledged by the company of prophets as Elijah’s successor. He is said to have asked for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit, the share of a firstborn heir. The biblical account then attributes to him a series of signs during the Omride and Jehu periods: purifying the spring at Jericho with salt; a curse at Bethel after which two bears attacked youths who had mocked him; multiplying a poor widow’s oil so she could redeem her children from debt slavery; promising a son to a Shunammite woman who had given him lodging and later restoring that child to life; rendering a poisoned stew harmless and multiplying barley loaves to feed a hundred men; healing Naaman, commander of the army of Aram, of leprosy by sending him to wash in the Jordan, while Elisha’s servant Gehazi was struck with leprosy for greed; causing a borrowed axe head to float; and praying that an Aramean force surrounding Dothan be struck with blindness, then leading them into Samaria and having them fed and released.

Elisha’s ministry was bound up with the politics of Israel and Aram. He sent one of the sons of the prophets to anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king of Israel, an act that led to Jehu’s revolt, the deaths of Jehoram and Jezebel, and the suppression of Baal worship associated with the house of Ahab. He met Hazael, who would become king of Aram, and wept at the harm Hazael would inflict on Israel. In his last illness he received King Jehoash (Joash) of Israel, commanded him to shoot an arrow eastward as the Lord’s arrow of victory over Aram, and to strike the ground with arrows; the king struck only three times, and Elisha declared that Israel would defeat Aram only three times. Elisha died and was buried during Jehoash’s reign. 2 Kings 13:20–21 relates that in the following year, when Moabite raiders appeared, a man being buried was hastily thrown into Elisha’s grave and revived when his body touched the prophet’s bones.

No precise year of birth or death is preserved. His activity spans the reigns of Jehoram, Jehu, Jehoahaz, and Jehoash of Israel, which places him in the ninth century BCE. The Bible does not name a wife or children and does not locate his tomb more closely than the land of Israel; later traditional identifications of a burial site are not confirmed by the primary sources. In Jewish tradition he is counted among the prophets. Christian churches commemorate him as a saint, notably on 14 June in the Roman Martyrology and in the Byzantine calendar. Islamic tradition also numbers him among the prophets (Al-Yasa). He held no ecclesiastical office comparable to pope or patriarch of a later see. Veneration rests on the biblical narrative and on liturgical custom rather than on a medieval process of canonization or beatification.

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