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2 Elisha: The Shunammite Woman

The Shunammite woman had it good. She was well to do and religious and contented. Intelligent, observant, and compassionate. 

So it was natural that she should show hospitality to Elisha the prophet. He often passed by the house, and it became her custom to invite him for dinner. The three of them, her husband, the Shunammite, and the prophet were eating one evening. Smoked salmon with new potatoes and white asparagus. Then strawberry rhubarb pie with whipped cream. And finally, as they were relaxing with chocolates and strong coffee, she said to her husband, “Do you think we could build a little room for Elisha, so he can stay here whenever he passes by?”

The next morning the servants started making blocks, and soon the room was ready. Furnished as a working guest room should be, with a table a chair, a bed, and a lamp. Elisha had a home away from home.

Like I said, the Shunammite woman had it good. But God seems to take special interest in those who show kindness to His representatives, and He makes it even better for them. Divine blessing for her life.

One day Elisha tells his servant Gehazi to call the woman. He asks what she wants as a reward--a tax cut maybe, because Elisha knows the king. “I live among my own people,” she answers. I love the phrase, because of the contentment behind it. She is inside her own culture, with her own kind of people, and she is satisfied. “I live among my own people” right here in Lake Wobegon.

But Elisha isn’t. satisfied. He wants to do something for her, so he sends Gehazi to inquire. Since Elisha is a man, it doesn’t occur to him that there are no children running around the farm. But Gehazi manages to figure out that the lady is barren and her husband is old. Having a child would provide someone to inherit the farm, plus some security for the Shunammite’s old age.

He sends Gehazi to call her again, and she discreetly stands in the door of his room while he tells her that in about a year she will hold a baby boy in her arms.

“Oh no,” she responds, “Don’t mislead your servant, O man of God.” Don’t get my hopes up. I’ve already processed the bitter fact that we won’t have babies. But the word is spoken, and soon she begins to swell with the child of that promise. It becomes the theme of the afternoon talk shows, and mention is made of it on the ten o’clock news.

He turns out to be a good kid too. He grows, and no doubt is often in contact with Elisha. Everybody all around knows his story. He learns to work, and goes to the fields with his father. Good kid.

One morning he develops an excruciating headache while working in the field. “My head, my head,” he says. Not to worry, thinks his father, and sends him home to Mamma with a servant. There she takes him on her lap, but the tender love and care isn’t sufficient. He dies at noon. Brightest day turns to gloomiest night.

It’s tough when the promise dies right there in your arms. Something you never asked for, but that still became your greatest joy and the focal point of your life. The prophet had brought such hope, such expectation for the future. But now you think he was just teasing you. Remember Shakespeare’s line? “As flies to wanton boys, so are we to the gods.” Built up to the sky; dashed down to the deep. 

If it had been an ordinary trial, a child who was born just like anyone else, it would be easier. But this one came at a prophetic word. This doesn’t make sense. 

The woman doesn’t initiate the burial process. She doesn’t tell anyone; in fact, she even covers it up a little. She carries the body up to the rooftop where the prophet’s room is, and lays him there on the prophet’s bed. The very place where the promise was spoken. She has to have an answer, and she is determined to get it. She lays the boy’s body before the Lord there in the prophet’s room.

She asks her husband for a servant and a donkey so she can go find Elisha. “But why are you going today? It is neither new moon nor Sabbath.” Those were the times when the prophet gave his teachings, and it evidently was their custom to travel to where he was and hear him. “It’s all right,” she answers, ignoring the fact that it wasn’t all right.

She hurries the servant on. “Don’t stop on my account.” 20 miles they travel, donkey back, to Mount Carmel.

As they get nearer, Elisha sees them and sends Gehazi to ask if all is well. “Are you all right? Is your husband all right? Is the child all right?” he asks her. “Everything is all right,” she answers again.

Why does she do that? Well, you probably have asked someone, “How are you?” and then wished you hadn’t asked. The Shunammite knew she could pour out the bitterness of her heart only to someone in a position to help. Neither her husband nor Gehazi could help. Only Elisha could, and it was to him that she went.

As soon as she got there she fell to the ground and grabbed his feet. Gehazi tried to push her away, thinking she had gone off the deep end, as sometime happens to people who have a warped understanding of those in ministry. But Elisha said to leave her alone. This wasn’t a crazy; it was a woman in bitter distress, and God hadn’t revealed the cause of her anguish to him.

“Did I ask you for a son, my Lord? Didn’t I say, ’don’t raise my hopes?’” I was perfectly content before you spoke my child into existence. But then something new and wonderful happened. My life gained new purpose and meaning and hope because of the promise you gave me. Now that vision is dead. Dead. What kind of promise is that? I laid him in your bed. Come. Wake him up, if you don’t want to sleep with a cadaver the rest of your life.

There are times when the death and dying process doesn’t apply. Don’t you dare say, “There, there” to this woman. Grief counseling won’t cut it. Because the essence of faith is at stake. We cry out, “Why, God? Do something.” We need to recover our faith in God and in the promise He has given us. We need a new shot of the prophetic in our arm. We need to experience what the Psalmist wrote, “He restoreth my soul.” Not in a generalized submitting way, but in a visible, tangible miracle.

Well, she came to the right place. She came to the prophet of God. She is coming to cash in on that strawberry-rhubarb pie some more.

“Gehazi,” Elisha says, “Run back to Sunem with this my staff, and lay it across the boy’s face. Don’t stop to greet anybody, and don’t stop if anybody greets you.” This is a matter of life and death, and the customary politeness will interfere with your mission. Gehazi immediately starts off running a 3/4 marathon back to Sunem.

But the mother doesn’t follow Gehazi. She won’t let go of the prophet’s feet. Up to now, many of Elisha’s interactions with her came through Gehazi. But this issue is at the nub of everything. You can’t delegate this one; you must come yourself and confront the issue. There is no escape. And echoing Elisha’s own earlier words to Elijah, she says, “As the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave you.” So the two of them hurry off after Gehazi. There comes a time when second-hand, mediated blessings aren’t good enough. A sermon on the subject won’t satisfy us. We must press through to God himself, and not be put off by formalities.

Meanwhile, Gehazi runs ahead. By the time he gets there the boy has been dead at least 8 hours. He lays Elisha’s staff on his face, and nothing happens. Why not? Is it that the Shunammite didn’t believe? Would it have worked if she had gone along with it? We know that sweat cloths (called handkerchiefs in the King James Version) from Paul’s body had the power to heal, so it seem reasonable that the prophet’s staff should work. It’s kind of like a doctor calling a prescription to the druggist. He sent his word and healed them. But this time the medicine doesn’t work. Gehazi runs back to meet Elisha on the road. “The boy is still dead. He didn’t stir at all.”

Have you tried rituals to get your faith back? Something goes wrong, and you think, “if only I do this, I’ll be happy again, like when I was young and naive.” I’m going to be more religious now, and then I’ll have great faith. I’ll try harder. So you lay the religious staff on that memory of times gone by, but nothing happens. There used to be life, but now there’s no life.

When Elisha comes, he sees right away that the formalities won’t work. He must get into the bed-casket with that body. And you thought politics made strange bedfellows! Try ministry sometime! He must become fully identified with the boy so he can impart his own life to him. It’s like a competition between the prophet’s life and the boy’s death, a life-death struggle. There they are, the prophet’s eyes against the boy’s eyes. His mouth up to the boy’s mouth, tasting the stench of stale air from his lungs. His hands up against the boy’s hands. As he lies there, the question comes: who will prevail? The prophet’s faith or the boy’s death? Warmth begins to return to the boy’s body; hope begins to awaken. But it is tiring, exhausting, disgusting even. Elisha gets up and paces up and down in the room, like a tiger in a cage, but praying. Then he does it again, Eye to eye, hand to hand, mouth to mouth. 

Suddenly, “Achoo.” “Achoo” again. And again and again. Seven times the boys sneezes, cleaning out his lungs of all the dead air.

Elisha calls the woman and gives her back the restored promise, alive and well. “Take your son.”

There’s Gospel in this story, isn’t there? John’s gospel says of Jesus that the Word was made flesh and lived among us, sharing our situation and becoming completely identified with us in our fallen, human condition. Paul said that when we were still dead in our trespasses and sins, Christ died for us. Peter says on the day of Pentecost that it was impossible that Jesus should be held by death. When Jesus entered the realm of death, it was like when Jonah entered the whale. The whale just got sick of having this live thing in him, and ended up vomiting him out. So it was when Jesus entered death; true, he really did die, but God raised him from the dead, and the realm of death had to regurgitate him.

We don’t get spiritual life because someone performed a proper ritual over us with a staff or a cross or some incense. Jesus himself came into our condition. Ritual is all right; it has its place. John the Baptist said, “I indeed baptize you with water.” But there is a greater baptism that John’s rituals cannot perform. “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” When we have done everything we can, there still remains a powerful, spiritual work that God alone can do.

The dark times come. Faith is challenged. The vision dies. So often it is directly connected to the lives of our own children. But we still have a God in heaven who has gone through the same trial. He, He alone, has the power to resurrect.

When Elisha went into that room-tomb, it became a womb for new birth. So with Jesus. When he entered into and came out from death, the Bible says that there were many others seen in Jerusalem who rose up with him. He was the firstbegotten from the dead, but we shall follow. Christ’s power contaminated the seemingly terminal power of death with the power of the resurrection. Death as we know it is not a period at the end of the sentence of life; only a semi-colon. The process continues, determined by our life of faith.

Remember after Elisha died himself? It was from sickness, incidentally, in spite of his great powers to work miracles. They buried him in a cave. Sometime later, a soldier was killed in battle, and they were in a hurry, so they just threw the body into a convenient cave, which happened to be this one where Elisha was buried. When the body touched the bones of Elisha, it came to life. The power that came into Elisha’s bones at this time with the boy stayed with him even after he died himself, and his old dead bones still had the power to resurrect. His spiritual experience wasn’t just for the present situation; it also had future implications. Pressing through with the boy did something to his bones. Not only was the boy changed; Elisha was changed.

God is found by those who seek Him. The commandment says you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Neither the Shunammite woman nor Elisha was content to roll over and play dead in the face of the bitter circumstance. The woman grieved, but she didn’t give in. She laid the problem right there on the prophet’s bed, and took off to find help. The prophet didn’t do a funeral; he wasn’t interested in sleeping with the corpse of a failed religion the rest of his life. Either the promise is true, or else it isn’t. He didn’t seek middle ground in order to protect his reputation.

I hope it doesn’t sound like weasel words if I say that we know we aren’t supposed to raise every dead body we come in contact with. We do know that Jesus did that; every recorded encounter with a dead person led to resurrection. But it is also probable that Joseph, the husband of the virgin Mary, died. Jesus didn’t use his powers to resurrect him. We know that we have sickness all around us; yet we don’t have the power to heal them all. But we do have the ability to lay these things before the Lord in a way that expresses faith rather than doubt. We have the right, indeed the responsibility, to find God’s direction before we take major actions. Because the essence of faith is hearing what God says, and then obeying that word.

She didn’t say, “The boy is dead; God has failed me.” She gave the child back to God, and made a remarkable confession of faith with her lips. “Everything is all right.” Her version of, “All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose.”

It says of Abraham that “against all hope, he in hope believed.” “Without weakening in faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead.” I love the phrase, “Without weakening in faith, he faced the fact.” Biblical faith is never afraid to face the fact, but it faces the fact knowing that God is the key factor in the fact. There is no faith so firmly grounded in reality as the Biblical faith that trusts in the God who created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. Without weakening in faith, Abraham faced the fact. He also received the promise of a child, though he had to wait many more years than the Shunammite woman. He also had to face the trial of his faith with regard to Isaac. He also received the child back after his faith had been tried.


Well, like you, the Shunammite woman had it good. She would have made a good leader for the women’s group. Everything was fine, but still God chose to touch her life with special grace. Trouble is that lives touched by special grace are also touched by more searing trials. Faith is challenged, purified, strengthened. And it’s curious that after you have passed through the trial, you see God’s grace in a deeper and richer way. It’s no longer a logical construct, but it’s a relationship with the creator of the universe.

It’s a wonderful story about a woman of faith. I hope it helps you cut through the formal structures that so often pretend to define what faith is all about, and that you come face to face with your creator, learning to love him with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Seek him with everything you have.

God of resurrection:
Today we come not with ritual, but with faith that you will breath the breath of life into the thing that we thought was so dead. Breathe new life into our spirits, we pray. Amen.


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