1 The wife of one of the sons of the prophets appealed to Elisha: "Your servant my husband is dead, and you know how your servant feared the LORD. Now his creditor has come to take my two boys as his slaves."
2 Elisha asked her, "What can I do for you? Tell me, what have you got in the house?" "Your servant has nothing in the house," she said, "except a flask of oil."
3 He said, "Go out and ask all your neighbors for containers, empty containers, and do not get just a few.
4 Then go in and close the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all these containers, and as each one fills, set it aside."
5 She left him and closed the door behind her and her sons. They kept handing her the containers while she kept pouring.
6 When the containers were all full, she told her son, "Hand me another container." "There are no more containers," he told her. Then the oil stopped flowing.
7 She went and told the man of God, and he said, "Go and sell the oil and pay off your debt. You and your sons can live on what is left."
8 One day Elisha passed through Shunem, where a woman of standing lived, and she urged him to have a meal. After that, whenever he passed that way, he would stop there for a meal.
9 She said to her husband, "I am sure that this man who keeps passing our way is a holy man of God.
10 Let us build a small walled room on the roof and furnish it for him with a bed, a table, a chair and a lamp. Then whenever he comes to us, he can stay there."
11 One day he came there, went up to the upper room and lay down there.
12 He told his servant Gehazi, "Call this Shunammite woman." He called her, and she stood in front of him.
13 Elisha told him, "Say to her, 'You have gone to all this trouble for us. What can I do for you? Can I speak on your behalf to the king or to the army commander?'" She answered, "I am living among my own people."
14 "What can be done for her, then?" he asked. Gehazi said, "Well, she has no son, and her husband is old."
15 "Call her," he said. He called her, and she stood at the door.
16 He said, "At this time next year you will be holding a son in your arms." "No, my lord," she said. "Man of God, do not deceive your servant."
17 But the woman conceived, and at that same time the next year she gave birth to a son, as Elisha had told her.
18 The child grew, and one day he went out to his father, who was with the reapers.
19 "My head! My head!" he said to his father. His father told a servant, "Carry him to his mother."
20 He picked him up and brought him to his mother. The boy sat on her lap until noon, and then he died.
21 She went up, laid him on the bed of the man of God, closed the door on him and went out.
22 She called to her husband, "Send me one of the servants and one of the donkeys, so I can hurry to the man of God and come back."
23 "Why go to him today?" he asked. "It is not a new moon or a Sabbath." "All is well," she said.
24 She saddled the donkey and told her servant, "Lead on, and go fast. Do not hold back for me unless I tell you."
25 So she went and came to the man of God at Mount Carmel. When the man of God saw her in the distance, he told his servant Gehazi, "Look, it is that Shunammite woman.
26 Run to meet her and ask her, 'Are you well? Is your husband well? Is the boy well?'" "All is well," she said.
27 But when she reached the man of God on the mountain, she clung to his feet. Gehazi came over to push her away, but the man of God said, "Leave her alone! She is in bitter anguish, and the LORD has hidden it from me and has not told me."
28 She said, "Did I ask my lord for a son? Did I not say, 'Do not deceive me'?"
29 Elisha told Gehazi, "Tuck your cloak into your belt, take my staff in your hand and go. If you meet anyone, do not greet him, and if anyone greets you, do not answer. Lay my staff on the boy's face."
30 But the boy's mother said, "As surely as the LORD lives and as you live, I will not leave you." So he got up and went along behind her.
31 Gehazi went on ahead of them and laid the staff on the boy's face, but there was no sound and no response. He went back to meet Elisha and told him, "The boy has not woken up."
32 When Elisha reached the house, there lay the boy dead on his bed.
33 He went in, closed the door on the two of them and prayed to the LORD.
34 Then he got onto the bed and lay on the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. As he stretched out over him, the boy's body grew warm.
35 Elisha got up and walked back and forth in the house once, then got onto the bed and stretched out over him again. The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.
36 He called Gehazi and said, "Call the Shunammite." He called her, and when she came to him he said, "Take your son."
37 She came in, fell at his feet and bowed low to the ground. Then she took her son and went out.
38 Elisha went back to Gilgal. There was a famine in the land, and while the sons of the prophets were sitting in front of him, he told his servant, "Put the big pot on and cook some stew for the sons of the prophets."
39 One of them went out to the fields to gather herbs and came upon a wild vine. He picked a lapful of wild gourds from it, came back and cut them up into the pot of stew, not knowing what they were.
40 They served it to the men to eat, but as they started eating the stew, they cried out, "Man of God, there is death in the pot!" And they could not eat it.
41 "Get some flour," he said. He threw it into the pot and said, "Serve it to the people so they can eat." And there was nothing harmful in the pot.
42 A man came from Baal-shalishah bringing the man of God some bread from the firstfruits: twenty barley loaves and some fresh grain in his sack. Elisha said, "Give it to the people to eat."
43 "How can I set this in front of a hundred men?" his servant asked. He said, "Give it to the people to eat, for this is what the LORD says: 'They will eat and have some left.'"
44 So he set it in front of them, and they ate and had some left, as the LORD had said.