The Life
Elisha was the son of a wealthy farmer in the Jordan valley around 900 B.C. The Bible introduces him in the most ordinary possible setting. He was plowing a field with twelve yoke of oxen, walking behind the twelfth pair, when the prophet Elijah came up behind him and threw his sheepskin mantle over his shoulders without a word. Elisha understood. He left the oxen, ran after Elijah, asked permission to kiss his father and mother goodbye, slaughtered the yoke of oxen he had been plowing with, boiled their flesh with the wood of his plow, fed the people of his village a farewell feast, and then walked away from his old life forever to become the disciple of Elijah. He served his master faithfully for years. When Elijah was about to be taken up into heaven, the older prophet asked the younger what he wanted as his parting gift. Elisha said: a double portion of your spirit. He got it. He spent more than sixty-five years as a wonder-working prophet, serving under six kings of Israel, parting the Jordan with Elijah’s mantle just as Elijah had done, healing the bitter spring at Jericho with salt, multiplying oil for a widow, raising the Shunammite woman’s son from the dead, healing the Syrian general Naaman of leprosy, opening his servant’s eyes to see the angelic horses and chariots of fire, feeding a hundred men with twenty loaves, making an iron axe-head float on water. Even after his death his bones brought a dead man back to life when his corpse touched them by accident.
On Mount Horeb the Lord had told Elijah to anoint Elisha as his successor. Elijah came down from the mountain, traveled to the Jordan valley, and found the young farmer plowing with twelve yoke of oxen. Elisha was walking behind the twelfth pair. The number is significant; it indicates that his father Shaphat owned twelve teams of oxen and that the field was being plowed by an entire crew at once. Shaphat was clearly a wealthy man. Elisha was the heir. He had a comfortable life ahead of him as a prosperous farmer. Then Elijah walked up behind him and threw his rough sheepskin mantle over the young man’s shoulders without a word. The mantle was the prophet’s characteristic dress — the same kind of garment that Saint John the Baptist would later wear when he came in the spirit and power of Elijah. To have it thrown over you was to be claimed for the prophetic office. There was no spoken explanation. There was no negotiation. Elijah just kept walking. Elisha understood instantly. He left the oxen and ran after Elijah. He asked: “Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee.” Elijah answered: “Go back again: for what have I done to thee?” The phrasing was austere; Elijah was not going to negotiate. Elisha returned to the field, took the yoke of oxen he had been plowing with, slew them, and used the wooden plow itself as fuel to boil their flesh. The act was decisive. He destroyed his old livelihood. He could not return to farming if he had wanted to. He fed the meat to the people of his village as a farewell feast, then walked away from his old life forever to follow Elijah and minister to him.
On Elijah’s last day on earth, master and disciple walked together from Gilgal to Bethel to Jericho and finally to the Jordan. At each town Elijah tested Elisha, urging him to stay behind, but Elisha refused each time with the same words: “As the LORD liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.” At the Jordan, Elijah took his mantle, rolled it up, struck the river, and the waters parted; the two crossed on dry ground. On the far side, Elijah said: “Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee.” Elisha had only one request: “I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.” In Hebrew law the firstborn son inherited a double portion of his father’s estate (Deuteronomy 21:17), twice as much as any other son. Elisha was asking to be the firstborn heir of Elijah’s prophetic spirit. Elijah answered carefully: “Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so.” As they walked on talking, suddenly there appeared between them a chariot of fire and horses of fire. Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. Elisha saw it. He saw the whole thing. He cried out: “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!” Then he saw him no more. Elijah’s mantle fell from him as he ascended. Elisha picked it up. He went back to the bank of the Jordan, took the mantle, and struck the waters, just as Elijah had done. He said: “Where is the LORD God of Elijah?” The waters parted. He crossed on dry ground. The fifty sons of the prophets watching from the far bank said: “The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha.” He had received the double portion. He spent the next sixty-five years working twice as many recorded miracles as his master had worked.
After more than sixty-five years of prophetic service, Elisha grew old and died at Samaria. He was buried in a tomb. The shape of his story might have ended there. But it did not. The Bible records one more miracle, perhaps the strangest of his entire ministry, which happened a year after his death. “And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet” (2 Kings 13:21). The man’s body had simply been thrown into the prophet’s tomb because raiders were approaching and there was no time for a proper burial. As soon as the corpse touched Elisha’s bones, the dead man came back to life. Sirach 48:14 says of him: “In his life he worked miracles, and at death his works were marvellous.” That single verse from the Old Testament has been one of the scriptural texts for the Orthodox veneration of relics. The bodies of the saints, even after their souls have departed, retain a real connection to the divine grace that operated through them in life. The bones of Elisha did not become a mere artifact when his soul departed. They remained an instrument of divine power. The whole Orthodox tradition of building churches around relics, of carrying relics in processions, of venerating them with the same reverence that the icons receive, takes its foundation from this single verse. The grace that operated through Elisha while he lived continued to operate through his bones after he died.
Two of Elisha’s most beautiful miracles concern ordinary people in ordinary distress. The first involves a poor widow whose husband had been one of the sons of the prophets. After his death she had been left in debt; the creditor was about to take her two sons as slaves to pay what she owed. She came to Elisha for help. He asked her: “What hast thou in the house?” She answered: “Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil.” Elisha told her: go, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels, and not just a few. Bring them home, shut the door, and pour the oil from your single small jar into all of them. She did. She poured oil from her single small jar into vessel after vessel, and the oil never ran out. When the last vessel was full, she said to her son: bring me another vessel. He answered: there is not another vessel. Then the oil stopped flowing. She sold the oil, paid her debt, and lived on what was left, she and her two sons. The second miracle involves the Shunammite woman, a wealthy and devout woman in the town of Shunem who had insisted on building Elisha a small upstairs room where he could stay whenever he passed through. She had no children. Elisha promised her she would have a son in a year, and she did. The boy grew up. One day he was in the field with his father, suddenly cried out about his head, was carried home, and died on his mother’s lap at noon. The mother laid him on the prophet’s bed, saddled a donkey, and rode straight to Mount Carmel where Elisha was. She fell at his feet and told him what had happened. Elisha came back with her, went into the room where the boy lay, shut the door, prayed, lay down on the boy with his mouth on the boy’s mouth and his eyes on the boy’s eyes and his hands on the boy’s hands. The flesh of the child grew warm. The prophet got up, walked back and forth, then stretched himself on the boy again. The child sneezed seven times and opened his eyes. Elisha called the mother. He said: take up your son. She came in, fell at his feet, took up her son, and went out.
In Luke 4 the Lord Jesus Christ returns to Nazareth, where He had been raised. He stands up to read in the synagogue. He reads from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind.” He sits down. He says: today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears. The crowd is impressed at first, but then begins to ask: is this not Joseph’s son? They want to see Him do miracles in His hometown. They want to see what He can do for them. The Lord responds with words that are still shocking two thousand years later. He says: no prophet is accepted in his own country. Then He cites two Old Testament examples — Elijah and Elisha. “Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; but unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow.” That is the widow of Zarephath in Phoenicia, a Gentile. “And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.” Naaman was the Syrian general whom Elisha had healed of leprosy by sending him to wash seven times in the Jordan. Naaman was also a Gentile. The point of the Lord’s sermon is direct and uncomfortable. The grace of God in the days of Elijah and Elisha had reached out beyond the borders of Israel, to a Phoenician widow and a Syrian general. The grace of God in the Lord’s own ministry would do the same: it would reach out beyond Israel to all the nations of the earth. The crowd in the synagogue tried to throw the Lord off a cliff for saying this. But He spoke the truth. The healing of Naaman the Syrian by Elisha was the Old Testament prefiguration of the universal mission of the Gospel.
When the king of Syria sent an army to capture Elisha at the city of Dothan, the prophet’s servant got up early one morning and saw the entire city surrounded by Syrian forces with horses and chariots. The servant cried out: “Alas, my master, how shall we do?” Elisha answered: “Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.” The servant looked around at the visible reality — a small city, two unarmed men, an entire army outside — and could not understand. Then Elisha prayed: “LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see.” The Lord opened the young man’s eyes. He looked again. The mountain around the city was full of horses and chariots of fire — a vast invisible angelic army surrounding the small Syrian force, protecting the prophet from harm. The episode is one of the most theologically dense moments of the entire Old Testament. It articulates the fundamental Orthodox conviction that the visible world is not the whole of reality. The angels are real. The communion of saints is real. The unseen protection that surrounds the faithful is real. We do not see it most of the time. The eyes of the body do not perceive it. But it is there. When we are afraid, when our visible circumstances seem overwhelming, when we feel surrounded by enemies and abandoned by friends, the deeper reality is that we are surrounded by horses and chariots of fire. The angels of God outnumber the visible threats. The saints are interceding for us in the heavenly liturgy. The Lord Himself stands with us. The eyes of the soul, opened by prayer, see what the eyes of the body cannot see.
This single verse from the Old Testament has shaped the entire Orthodox veneration of the relics of the saints for two thousand years. A man’s body had been thrown into Elisha’s tomb by accident, because raiders were approaching and the burial party had no time. As soon as the corpse touched the prophet’s bones, the dead man came back to life. The episode is brief, almost casual in its biblical placement — it appears as a kind of footnote to the chronicle of the kings of Israel. But its theological significance is enormous. It establishes the reality that the bodies of the saints, even after their souls have departed, retain a real connection to the divine grace that operated through them in life. The bones of Elisha did not become a mere artifact when his soul departed. They remained an instrument of divine power. The Orthodox tradition has held this truth from the very beginning. Every Orthodox altar contains relics of the saints. Every antimension on which the Eucharist is celebrated contains a fragment of relics. Every Orthodox church is built around the holy bodies that lie within it. The grace that operated through the saints in life continues to operate through their bodies after their death. The Apostle Paul’s handkerchiefs and aprons in Ephesus produced the same kind of supernatural healings (Acts 19:11-12). The Lord Himself worked some of His miracles through ordinary contact with His clothing (the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of His garment and was healed, Matthew 9:20-22). The whole Orthodox theology of the body, of the relics, of the unity between the present sanctification and the future resurrection, takes its scriptural shape from the bones of Elisha.
After Elisha died at Samaria, his tomb became a place of pilgrimage. The miracle of the corpse revived through contact with his bones (which happened a year after his death) had immediately demonstrated to all of Israel that the divine power that had operated through him in life continued to operate through his body after his death. For the next eight centuries his relics were venerated at Samaria. When the emperor Julian the Apostate (361-363 A.D.) attempted to restore paganism throughout the Roman Empire and uproot the Christian veneration of relics, he ordered that the relics of Elisha, of the Prophet Obadiah, and of Saint John the Baptist be burned. Christian believers preserved the relics by hiding them and by transferring portions of them to other locations. Part of the relics of Elisha were eventually transferred to Alexandria, where they continued to be venerated by the Egyptian Orthodox tradition. Saint John of Damascus in the eighth century composed a canon in honor of the Prophet Elisha that continues to be sung in the Orthodox liturgical tradition; the canon articulates the theological understanding of Elisha’s ministry as the fulfillment of his master Elijah’s prophetic vocation, as the wonder-working prophet whose miracles prefigured those of the Lord Jesus Christ, and as the continuing intercessor for the Orthodox Church across the centuries. At Constantinople a church was built in his honor. Across the entire Orthodox world his commemoration on June 14 has been celebrated for nearly three thousand years. The double portion of grace that he received from Elijah continues to flow through his ongoing intercession for the Church.
Elisha matters to every Orthodox Christian for many reasons. He is the supreme example of authentic discipleship to a spiritual father. He left his comfortable life as the heir of a wealthy farmer because Elijah threw a sheepskin mantle over his shoulders. He served his master faithfully through the years of preparation. He refused to be parted from him on the day of his ascension. He asked for the inheritance of a firstborn son: a double portion of his master’s spirit. He received it. He spent the next sixty-five years working twice as many recorded miracles as Elijah ever worked. He is also the supreme example of pastoral compassion in the Old Testament. The miracles of his ministry are mostly small and tender: a poor widow whose oil never ran out, a childless woman blessed with a son, a boy raised from the dead, a foreign general healed of leprosy. He is the friend of every Christian who has ever inherited a calling from a teacher and tried faithfully to continue what was begun. He is the friend of every Christian who has ever felt called to ordinary pastoral work rather than to dramatic public ministry. He is the friend of every Christian who has ever venerated the relics of a saint and recognized that the divine grace continues to operate through the bodies of those who have been sanctified. The bones of Elisha that revived the dead man are the foundation of every Orthodox altar that contains the relics of the saints. His prayers continue to surround the Church that has venerated him for three thousand years.