Elisha—predatory prophet?

The events leading up to the scene

Elisha is a wandering prophet who occasionally travels by Shunem, a village in the northern kingdom of Israel. One day a wealthy woman of Shunem decides to give Elisha food and to provide for him a separate upper chamber with ‘a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp’ at his disposal (2 Kgs 4.8–10).

We never learn the woman’s name; she is referred to only as ‘the Shunammite woman’. Elisha, moreover, never talks to her directly; he communicates with her via his servant lad Gehazi.

One day Elisha instructs Gehazi to ask the Shunammite woman the following: ‘Since you have taken all this trouble for us, what may be done for you? Would you have a word spoken on your behalf to the king or to the commander of the army?’ She declines, saying, ‘I live among my own people’. When Elisha asks what else he can do for her, Gehazi answers without conferring with the woman: ‘Well, she has no son, and her husband is old.’ Elisha then announces that the woman will bear a son, whereupon she responds: ‘No, my lord, O man of God; do not deceive your servant’. We are then told, however, that the Shunammite woman ‘conceived and bore a son at that season, in due time, as Elisha had declared to her’ (2 Kgs 4.12–17).

After a few years have passed, this boy becomes ill:

When the boy was older, he went out one day to his father among the harvesters. He complained to his father, ‘Oh, my head, my head!’ The father said to his servant, ‘Carry him to his mother.’ He carried him and brought him to his mother; the boy sat on her lap until noon, and he died. She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, closed the door on him, and left (4.18–21).

It is not clear what has befallen the boy. A common proposal in the commentary literature is sunstroke (Cogan and Tadmor, 1988: 57; Wiseman, 1993: 217; Lamb, 2021: 318). We are not told how old the boy is. He is, however, old enough to be out in the field during harvest, but young enough to be carried home by just one servant and to be sitting on his mother’s lap.

The mother has a donkey saddled and rides to find Elisha, who is at Mount Carmel. When she confronts the prophet with what has happened, Elisha gives an instruction to Gehazi:

‘Gird up your loins, and take my stick in your hand, and go. If you meet anyone, give no greeting, and if anyone greets you, do not answer, and lay my stick on the face of the child’ … Gehazi went on ahead and laid the stick on the face of the boy, but there was no sound or sign of life. He came back to meet him and told him, ‘The boy shows no sign of awareness’ (4.29–31).

We then come to the scene that is our main focus in this article: the scene where Elisha finds the boy in his bed, shuts the door, climbs onto the boy, and puts his mouth on the boy’s mouth, after which the boy sneezes and opens his eyes. Let us have a closer look at each of the four verses in this scene. ¹

‘Elisha came into the house, and look, the boy was lying dead on his bed’ (v. 32)

What does this verse tell us about the condition of the boy? The text plainly says that the boy is dead. The word translated ‘dead’ is meth (מֵת‎), which is the standard Hebrew word used to describe someone who is dead or has died.

Some scholars have nevertheless asked how much we can infer about the boy’s condition on the basis of this description. John Gray makes two points in this respect. His first point is that all that Gehazi has observed is that the boy has no ‘audible response’ or ‘sign of awareness’, and that, presumably, this is his reason for describing the boy as ‘dead’ (Gray, 1970: 498). Second, while meth (מֵת‎) may signify death, Gray argues, it may also ‘signify a weak form of life’ or ‘a temporary suspension of animation or deprivation of all the faculties rather than actual death’ (382). Gray’s proposal is that we should understand the boy as being in an ‘intermediary stage between life and death’ (497).

Richard D. Nelson (1989: 111) makes an analogous point:

There was no sharp line between life and death in Old Testament thought. Sickness or old age brought one down to the realm of death even while one was technically alive (Psalms 18.4–5; 116.3), and corpses were not considered to be ‘totally’ dead for a couple of days (John 11.6, 17). For this ancient narrative, modern medical categories are beside the point.

That some time had to pass before it was possible to be certain that a person thought of as dead really were irreversibly dead is attested in many ancient sources. Here, for example, is Plato:

And as to the laying-out of the corpse, first, it shall remain in the house only for such a time as is required to prove that the man is not merely in a faint, but really dead; and accordingly, in a normal case, the third will be the proper day for the carrying out to burial (Laws 959a).

We should accept the text’s claim that the boy is dead. At the same time, however, we must be careful not to assume, anachronistically, that today’s strict criteria for declaring that a person is dead were the criteria used in ancient Israel. Earlier in the scene there is some evidence that the notion of ‘dead’ that is employed is indeed an inclusive one, for the boy is described as ‘dead’ already at noon the same day that he has collapsed out in the field (4.20). Since it was already day (yom, יוֹם‎) when the boy went out to the field (4.18), no more than a few hours could have passed. So the concept of ‘dead’ that is employed admits of earlier application than ‘dead’ does today. So although the boy meets the criterion for being called ‘dead’ the way the term was used in ancient Israel, it is an open question how far the boy had progressed toward being ‘dead’ in the modern, stricter sense.

‘So he went in and shut the door behind the two of them, and he prayed to the Lord’ (v. 33)

Only two things happen in this verse: Elisha shuts the door and he prays. We have a question about the former act and an observation regarding the latter.

Is the closing of the door a trivial event or a deliberate act of isolation? Gray suggests the latter. The word translated ‘shut’ is saghar (סָגַר‎), which in other contexts is typically rendered in English as ‘isolated’ or ‘quarantined’ (e.g., Lev. 13) or as ‘confined‘ or ‘locked up‘ (e.g., Isa. 24; Jer. 13). Gray also observes that back when the room was described in 4.10, the use of the word ‘wall’ (qir, קִיר‎) indicates that Elisha’s room is not a temporary guest-chamber but a space where the ‘walls ensured privacy’. The addition of ‘behind the two’ (be’ad shenehem, בְּעַ֣ד שְׁנֵיהֶ֑ם‎) further emphasizes that Elisha is now assured that he and the boy are alone in the room (Gray, 1970: 495).

Shutting a door is often a mundane action that requires no particular explanation. This situation is so peculiar, however, and the shutting of the door is made so explicit that it makes sense to ask why Elisha shuts the door.

T. R. Hobbs (1985: 52) writes that Elisha ‘shuts the door to ensure privacy’. Gray, although he does illuminate the nature and extent of the isolation, does not discuss what Elisha’s reasons for isolating himself and the boy from the others might be.

The main proposal, then, is that Elisha shuts the door for the sake of privacy. But privacy for whom? Presumably, this cannot be privacy for the boy. They are in the boy’s home; Gehazi has already tried to resuscitate him; and besides Gehazi, the only one that we know is present is his mother. Someone that might be present is the boy’s father, but we have not heard of him since his wife set out for Mount Carmel to get hold of Elisha. Everyone present, therefore, is already heavily involved in the situation.

If the door is shut for the sake of privacy, this is presumably for Elisha. He might, of course, be concerned about not being disturbed or interrupted. Elisha, however, is treated with so much reverence—and Gehazi is so intent on preventing people from interfering with the prophet—that it would be surprising if the others were to disturb him. We also know (or have strong reason to assume) that the boy has no siblings who might disturb Elisha. No siblings are mentioned, the mother was childless until Elisha said she would have a son, and the father was described as ‘old’ by Gehazi before the boy was conceived.

Hobbs remarks that ‘secrecy and private miracles are a distinctive part of the ministry of Elisha’ (1985: 78). If we grant that this is correct, then we are less in need of an explanation regarding why privacy is required in this particular case. This does, however, give rise to the broader question of why Elisha requires privacy generally and in the first place. One possibility is that Elisha needs privacy in order to perform miracles. He does, however, perform many other miracles in public (2 Kgs 2.18–22; 3.16–25; 4.38–41; 6.1–7; 5.1–19; 6.8–23).

Elisha’s act of praying presumably does not require any special explanation, given the situation that he is in. We want to note, however, that a distinguishing feature of this scene—compared with the resuscitation scene in 1 Kgs (see footnote 1)—is that here nothing is said about the content of the prayer.

‘Then he climbed up and lay down on the boy, and put his mouth on the boy’s mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on his hands. While he lay bent over him, the boy’s flesh became warm’ (v. 34)

This verse describes Elisha’s actions in detail. This suggests, prima facie, that these details are important. The actions, moreover, are remarkable ones. Although the very attempt to revive the boy does not require any particular explanation (for saving a child from dying is surely good), what requires an explanation is the curious way in which this is carried out.

Let us look at some of the explanations that have been offered. Gray (1970: 498) proposes that the verse describes ‘contactual magic whereby the properties of one party were transferred to another’. Julie Faith Parker (2013: 146–48) suggests that the prophet’s position over the boy could be ‘show­ing their relationship and perhaps signaling the child’s return to life’. S. Brent Plate and Edna M. Rodriguez Mangual (1999: 131) propose that ‘the prophet’s body becomes like that of a pregnant woman in that he doubles his body by mimetically stretching on top of the boy’s body’. Finally, Avishur Yitzhak (2009: 57) suggests that the involvement of the mouths might mean that this is a form of ‘whispering magic’.

We find none of these explanations satisfactory. The appeal to ‘contactual magic’ could explain why there is physical contact, but not why Elisha lays down on the boy with mouths and hands touching. Parker’s suggestion that this might be ‘showing their relationship’ refers, presumably, to the prophet’s much higher status. But that does not really explain the act of getting up on the bed and laying down there with the boy (although it could perhaps explain why, given that this is going to be done, the prophet is going to be on top).

The other part of Parker’s suggestion, that it is ‘perhaps signaling the child’s return to life’ is a reasonable one in that the child is about to return to life. Since this explanation appeals to the outcome, however, and not to Elisha’s actions, it could presumably be used to explain any action that preceded the outcome. The same challenge faces Plate and Mangual’s proposal that Elisha’s action is birth-like because it results in life. Although the action results in life, a man lying on top of a boy with ‘his mouth on the boy’s mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on his hands’ does not resemble childbirth.

Yitzhak’s proposal that this scene might depict ‘whispering magic’ faces the challenge that whispering is presumably done mouth to ear, not mouth to mouth, and would not require laying down over the boy.

Elisha’s actions in this scene, it seems, remain unexplained. Let us now turn to the final verse.

‘He got down, walked once to and fro in the room, then got up again and bent over him. The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes’ (v. 35)

Elisha seems to be putting his act on hold and then resuming. What should we make of this? Gray (1970: 499) writes that this is ‘probably an act of relaxation after intense physical and spiritual concentration which had temporarily exhausted him’. Both Richard D. Nelson (1989: 174) and Wesley J. Bergen (1999: 102–103) propose that this is included for dramatic effect. Esther Fuchs (1999: 134) suggests that the ‘attempts to revive the dead son presents the process of resuscitation as a medical rather than miraculous ordeal’. Finally, Roy L. Heller (2018: 146n), although he provides no substantive explanation, suggests that, for grammatical reasons, the actions should be understood as independent attempts rather than as steps in a procedure.

None of these explanations is satisfactory either. For Elisha to need a rest, he should presumably have done something exhausting, but we are told of nothing but praying and lying over the boy. Admittedly, Gray might be right that the act of concentration needed for a miraculous reviving is exhausting, but no other miracle in the Deuteronomistic history requires a break halfway through.

The proposal that the pause is included by the author for dramatic effect, as a cliffhanger, is plausible in literary terms, but it does not help us make sense of the action of Elisha as a person or character.

The claim that Elisha’s actions here might be medical rather than miraculous is an interesting one. We are, after all, not told of any divine intervention, for it is not said that the boy came to life as a result of the prayer being heard. Here the present scene differs from the previous scene involving Elijah (see footnote 1), where we are first told what the content of the prayer is (1 Kgs 17.21) and then that ‘the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah’ whereupon the boy ‘revived’ (17.22). In the present scene we are simply told that Elisha prayed, and that the boy later awoke. So, while we might assume a causal connection between the prayer and the awakening, this is not said in the text. That, in turn, might lend some credence to the medical interpretation.

A problem, however, is that laying down on someone twice does not resemble a medical procedure. It could presumably have been a medical procedure if Elisha was blowing into the boy’s mouth, but we are just told that he put his mouth on the boy’s mouth the same way he put his hands on the boy’s hands. These actions, then, also remain unexplained.

What about the seven sneezes? It might be said that sneezing is a sign of life, since one must be alive in order to sneeze. That, however, is also true of most other bodily responses.

In summary, then, it seems that many questions regarding this scene are left unanswered. There seems to be no good explanation for why Elisha shut the door; why he got up the bed and lay down on the boy with his mouth on the boy’s mouth; why he got down, walked, and got up again and bent over the boy a second time; and why the boy sneezed. We also do not have an explanation of why these come together and in the order that they come.

Admittedly, it might be that the actions simply are inexplicable. Since the actions are described in detail, however it is worth considering an alternative explanation which does seem to make sense of the biblical text.

Making sense of Elisha and the boy in the bed

Our hypothesis is that Elisha is sexually abusing the boy. Let us explain how this hypothesis makes sense of the scene.

The sexual abuse interpretation explains why Elisha ensures complete privacy, even though many of his other miracles are performed in public. It also explains why Elisha ‘climbed up and lay down on the boy, and put his mouth on the boy’s mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on his hands‘. While the alternative suggestions could only explain one of these, the sexual abuse interpretation makes sense of all of them, for these are all typical of sex. If Elisha is sexually abusing the boy, it is also understandable why he would make some way toward the goal, then take a break, and then proceed all the way to the goal. This is very much the way sex builds up toward a climax.

What about the sneezing? First, the act of sneezing—with its spasmodic movements and ejaculation of fluid from the body—seems like a naïve description of a sexual climax. Second, the word translated ‘sneeze’ is zarar (זָרַר‎), which also means ‘toss’, ‘spray’, ‘strew’, and ‘sprinkle’.

The sexual abuse interpretation, then, appears to help us make sense of the details of the scene, and to do so in a straightforward way.

We want to note that although the sexual abuse interpretation arguably makes it more likely that the boy should be understood as not being dead in the strict, contemporary sense of that term, there is nothing in the sexual abuse interpretation that excludes the option that there could also be a reawakening process taking place.

While we are the first to suggest that this scene depicts sexual abuse, it is worth noting that other commentators have hinted in this direction.

Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes (2000 [1989]: 153) suggests that the stick which Elisha tells Gehazi to put on the boy’s face should be understood as a phallus. Dijk-Hemmes does not, however, consider a sexual interpretation of the resuscitation scene.

Rhiannon Graybill (2019: 36) observes that Elisha’s positioning himself on the boy is ‘sexually suggestive’, adding that to mime sex with children ‘is not a typical biblical act’. Our view is that the positioning that is described is not sexually suggestive but sexual and that Elisha’s actions do not mime sex with a child but constitute sex with a child.

To his credit, Theodore W. Jennings understands the scene as sexual. He does not, however, understand it as abusive. Jennings (2005: 99–114) suggests that Yahweh’s phallic force is transferred to the boy, and that this is what revives him. For Jennings, this scene is but one of many homoerotic passages in the Hebrew Bible. Thus our hypothesis, that the scene involves sexual abuse, does not appear to have been considered in the scholarly literature. ²

Is our hypothesis a credible one? So far, we have suggested that this hypothesis makes sense of the events in 2 Kgs 4.32–35 considered in isolation. We will now argue that this hypothesis also enables us to make sense of two other events in the Elisha narrative that have long puzzled scholars: The mauling of the harassing boys in 2 Kgs 2.23–25 and King Jehoram’s recompense to the Shunammite boy’s family in 2 Kgs 8.1–6.

Making sense of the mauling of the harassing boys

The scene reads as follows:

He [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, ‘Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!’ When he turned around and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. From there he went on to Mount Carmel and then returned to Samaria (2 Kgs 2.23–25).

This scene gives rise to at least two questions: Why are the boys harassing Elisha? And why is the response so brutal?

Let us start with the first question. A common explanation of the harassment is Elisha’s baldness, a trait that makes him stand out compared to his predecessor Elijah, who is described as a ‘hairy man’ in 2 Kgs 1.8 (Cogan and Tadmor 1988, 38; Graybill 2019, 34–35). Some propose that Elisha might also be mocked for being a prophet (Bergen 1999, 69–70; Parker 2013, 95; Heller, 2018, 128–129).

Are these explanations satisfactory? The appeal to Elisha’s baldness is difficult to accept as a sufficient explanation. First, there were presumably many bald men around. Did this crowd of small boys – presumably at least forty-two of them, for forty-two of them were killed – generally harass bald men that walked by? In the patriarchal world of ancient Israel, where power was held by older men (a population in which baldness is presumably common) and children’s rights were unheard of, this would seem like a risky enterprise. We seem, moreover, not to hear of this kind of harassment of other prophets. Elisha’s baldness, therefore, seems to be an insufficient explanation.

The alternative proposal, that the reason for the harassment is that Elisha is a religious man, is interesting in that it opens up the possibility that the specific focus of the harassment (i.e., the baldness) need not be the reason why the harassment takes place. The boys could, after all, have a motive to harass Elisha for reasons that are unrelated to his baldness; his baldness could just be the most convenient feature to pick on.

Admittedly, groups of children sometimes act randomly and irrationally. If this was just random jeering from a group of children, then Elisha’s response becomes all the more incomprehensible. It seems, on the face of it, shocking. There are two main ways that commentators have sought to make sense of Elisha’s response.

One is to suggest that when the boys are mocking Elisha, they are not just mocking him as a man: Since Elisha is a man of God (e.g., 2 Kgs 4.7, 21, 25, 27), to mock Elisha is to mock God (Hobbs 1985: 18–24; House 1995: 260–261; Provan, 1995: 175). The other way is to suggest that the boys in question are not ‘small/young boys’, but youths or young men (Woods, 1993: 47–58; Wiseman, 1995: 210–11; Bodner, 2013: 2). In that case, they could pose a threat to Elisha, and then they would presumably also be more responsible for their actions.

Regarding the first option, that the boys are blasphemous, it should be noted that the boys’ shouting does not reference Elisha being a prophet; it is not even made clear that the boys know that he is a prophet. Sometimes the boys’ shouting is translated not as ‘go away’ but as ‘go up’, which is consistent with the Hebrew. This could mean that he should continue upward (Bethel is uphill from Jericho) but it could alternatively mean that he should ascend to heaven, as Elijah had done already (2 Kgs 2.11). Although blasphemy was a serious offense in Ancient Israel, this is only possibly blasphemy—we just hear ‘go up/away baldhead’—and it is said by children. Having forty-two of the children mauled by bears is, by any standard, a very harsh response.

Let us now turn to the second way of making sense of Elisha’s response, which is that these boys are in fact youths in their late teens. This option has been defended by appealing to places in the Hebrew Bible where the words that are used here, na’ar (נַעַר‎), and qatan (קָטָן‎), are used to refer to older youths and young men (at Gen. 37.2, 41.12; 1 Sam. 16.11; 2 Sam. 14.21, 18.5; 1 Kgs 3.7). This argument is, however, not convincing.

In Genesis 37.2 and 41.12 נַעַר‎ (‘boy’) is used to refer to Joseph in his late teens. He is not, however, called קָטָן‎ (‘small’) boy.

In 1 Sam. 16.11–12 נַעַר‎ (‘boy’) is used to refer to David’s seven older brothers, whose age are unknown. Only the youngest one (David) is also described as קָטָן‎ (‘small’). Although his age is unknown, he is so young that, initially, he is not even considered a potential candidate for being anointed by Samuel. He is included because Samuel had been instructed to disregard ‘appearance and height of his stature’, and to reject each of the other brothers, which leads Samuel to insists that the youngest one should also be brought in for consideration (1 Sam 16.7). Irrespective of David’s age at this point, קָטָן‎ can mean either ‘small/young’ or it can mean ‘smallest/youngest’, so the comparative element could be an additional contributing factor to this choice of word.

In 2 Sam. 14.21 and 18.5 נַעַר‎ (‘boy’) is used to refer to Absalom when he is in his late twenties. Here, however, there is also no קָטָן‎, and the context is that David is talking about his son about whom he is worried.

In 1 Kgs 3.7 the word נַעַר קָטָן‎ (‘small boy’) is used by King Solomon to refer to himself when he is an adult. The context, however, is that David has just died, and Solomon must now step up as the king, and Solomon refers to this in a prayer: ‘O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am merely a small boy (נַעַר קָטָן‎); I do not know how to go out or come in’ (3.7). Solomon is describing himself in relation to the task of becoming a king.

In the scene where the boys are mauled by the bears, the boys are also referred to by another term, yeled (יֶלֶֶד‎). This is usually translated as as ‘boy’ or ‘child’. In support of the interpretation that the jeering boys are in fact older youths, however, it is sometimes pointed out that the term is used in 1 Kings 12.8–10 to refer to King Rehoboam’s advisors, and that these are adults. While it is indisputable that the kings advisors are adults, the verses in which they are referred to as יֶלֶֶד‎ are specifically those in which they are referred to as having previously been King Rehoboam’s childhood friends.

Even if נַעַר קָטָן , נַעַר‎, and יֶלֶד‎ are used in these contexts to refer to persons in their late teens or twenties, this does not mean that someone called ‎ נַעַר , קָטָן , נַעַר‎ and יֶלֶד‎ is likely to be in their late teens or twenties. A father might call his sons in their 20s ‘my little boys’, but this does not mean that ‘little boys’ means men in their 20s. A term’s outlier references in certain contexts do not determine its meaning.

While Fred E. Woods, one of the proponents of interpreting the boys as older, suggests that they are in fact ‘young men’ (1993: 47–58), it does not seem reasonable to interpret ‘young men’ as 10-year-old boys by appealing to the fact we can find several instances in which a 10-year-old boy has been referred to as ‘young man’.

Although the desire to make Elisha’s response less shocking is an understandable one, the suggestion that נַעַר קָטָן‎ here means older youths is not persuasive. It is worth noting, moreover, that this was decidedly not the way the text was understood among the 3rd Century BCE translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. In the Septuagint (4 Reigns 2.23), נַעַר קָטָן‎ is translated paidákia mikrá (παιδάκια μικρά). Mikrá means ‘small’. Paidákia means not just ‘boys’ (that would be paidi); paidákia is the diminutive form of ‘boys’. The Septuagint, therefore, describes the boys as something like ‘small boylings’. To our knowledge, no ancient authors objected to the translation; the suggestion that those who harass Elisha are in fact older youths appears to emerge only in tandem with attempts at making Elisha’s actions more palatable to modern readers.

Can we make sense of the extreme response to the jeering boys? Many have given up. In the Talmudic tradition, a way to avoid the problem has been to suggest that although the books of Kings are in general truthful accounts of events that happened, the mauling of the boys never happened (Alter, 2018: 2:534n). Gray (1970: 479) concludes that the whole story with the boys and the bears is ‘in every respect a puerile tale’ and that ‘there is no serious point in this incident’.

On the contrary, we want to suggest that the sexual abuse hypothesis makes sense both of the boys’ harassment of Elisha and of the harsh response.

The boys are not happy about Elisha’s visit. They shout for him to go away and emphasize something insulting, and intentionally hurtful, to get him to leave. We also know that Elisha has previously been visiting Bethel (2 Kings 2:2). Since Elisha must turn around to confront the boys, the boys could, alternatively, be coming from Jericho. Elisha, however, has also previously been to Jericho (2 Kings 2.4).

On the sexual abuse hypothesis, Elisha could have been laying down on one or more of these boys as well; this might very well not have been appreciated, and the other boys might have been warned. This would give the boys a credible motive for shouting at him and insisting he should go away.

On the sexual abuse hypothesis, Elisha’s baldness, although it is the focus of the harassment, is not its motivating reason.

But why are the boys killed? As we shall now see, Elisha has a pattern of killing off people who learn what he is doing and might reveal it to others.

Making sense of King Jehoram’s recompense to the Shunemmite boy’s family

All of the events that we have been discussing take place during the reign of King Jehoram of Israel. Hitherto, moreover, King Jehoram’s reign has been a rather prosperous one. When we get to 2 Kgs 6, however, his kingdom is facing a desperate situation:

Then King Ben-Hadad of Aram mustered his entire army, and he marched against Samaria [the central city of the kingdom] and laid siege to it. And there was a great famine in Samaria. And they held Samaria siege until the famine was so great that a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver and one-fourth of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver (2 Kings 6.24–25).

We can read, moreover, that as the famine progresses, a mother cooks and eats her son (2 Kgs 6.29).

King Jehoram blames Elisha for the siege and the resulting famine (2 Kgs 6.30–31). Is the king justified in putting the blame on Elisha? The answer is, it seems, yes, for two reasons. The first reason is that when Naaman, the mighty military commander of the Aramean army, had become ill, Elisha healed him (5.1–14). The second reason is that King Jehoram had recently held the Aramean army captive and wanted to use this opportunity to strike them down (6.20–21). Elisha, however, instructed the king not to strike down the captive army and told him instead to ‘set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink, and let them go to their master’ (6.22–23). It is not unreasonable, therefore, for the king to blame Elisha for the siege and the resulting famine.

We now come to the following scene, involving the Shunammite woman and her son:

Now Elisha had said to the woman whose son he had restored to life, ‘Get up and go with your household and settle wherever you can, for the Lord has called for a famine, and it will come on the land for seven years’. So the woman got up and did according to the word of the man of God; she went with her household and settled in the land of the Philistines for seven years (2 Kgs 8.1–2).

When is this taking place? If the events in 2 Kgs 8 take place after the events in 2 Kgs 7, the famine is now over and the food, we are told, is abundant (2 Kgs 7.16–20). It is more likely, therefore, that we are now jumping back in time, to some point shortly before the Aramean siege.

Irrespective of when this takes place, however, two questions arise. First, why the seeming hurry? Elisha’s instruction (‘Get up and go’) gives the impression that the Shunammite woman must act immediately. Unlike a plague, however, a famine—i.e., a lack of food—is seldom an immediate threat. Rather, people eat what they have stored and find that due to food shortages, prices rise. For a wealthy woman, such as the Shunammite, prices would have to rise dramatically before she starved.

Second, why is the Shunammite woman and her family going all the way to the Philistines? The Philistines were far away, down by Gaza, practiced a foreign religion and spoke a foreign language, and had for a long time been at war with the tribes of Israel and Judah. Why this destination? Why not just go to the southern kingdom of Judah, with which the northern kingdom of Israel still had close ties and a friendly relationship (2 Kgs 8.16–29; 9.15)?

The story continues:

At the end of the seven years, when the woman returned from the land of the Philistines, she set out to appeal to the king for her household and her land. Now the king was talking with Gehazi the man of God’s lad, saying, ‘Tell me all the great things that Elisha has done’. While he was telling the king how Elisha had restored a dead person to life, the woman whose son he had restored to life appealed to the king for her house and her land. Gehazi said, ‘My lord king, here is the woman, and here is her son whom Elisha restored to life’. When the king questioned the woman, she told him. So the king appointed an official for her, saying, ‘Restore all that was hers, together with all the revenue of the fields from the day that she left the land until now’ (2 Kgs 8.3–6).

Here the Shunammite woman has returned and cries out about an injustice that has been done and presents it before the king. Gehazi is telling the king about things Elisha has done. Gehazi says ‘‘My lord king, here is the woman, and here is her son’, so the boy is present. The Shunammite woman’s husband is not mentioned. He was, however, described as ‘old’ even before the boy was conceived, so he might have died during the time spent in the land of the Philistines. After Gehazi has spoken to the king, ‘the king questioned the woman’ and ‘she told him’. The king then appoints her an official to make sure that she receives due recompense.

In seeking to make sense of this passage, Bergen (1999: 152–57) writes that what the Shunammite woman is telling the king ‘is obviously about the raising of her son, rather than her sojourn in Philistia’ (1999: 153). This is the topic of the king’s discussion with Gehazi, and there is no indication of a change of topic. But why, Bergen asks, is king Jehoram interested in hearing Elisha’s deeds told and even retold? The king is already familiar with his works, for over the last decade Elisha has been the chief prophet in Jehoram’s kingdom. The king, moreover, is no fan of Elisha’s: Recall that in 2 Kgs 5–6 he blamed Elisha for the Aramean siege and the resulting famine. So why would he be drawing attention to Elisha’s prophetic deeds? This, Bergen suggests, remains a puzzle.

Bergen suggests that Gehazi’s contribution is equally puzzling. By this point, Elisha has decisively broken with Gehazi; Elisha made Gehazi a leper for accepting two silver talents for the healing of Naaman, the commander of the Aramean army, even though Elisha had declined Naaman’s offer to pay (2 Kgs 5.15–27). So why would Gehazi be drawing attention to Elisha’s prophetic deeds?

Bergen further points out that while it is strange that King Jehoram and Gehazi are party to all this, it is also strange that Elisha does not participate. Finally, Bergen points out that it is unclear why the Shunammite woman, who has previously received help from Elisha, should now get even more help from the king. Given the amount of help that she has already received, surely there would be more needy people that the king could be helping. Bergen concludes that the story contains so many narrative anomalies that we must give up the attempt to make sense of it as a coherent whole.

However, the sexual abuse hypothesis, we suggest, is an alternative that makes sense of all of the otherwise puzzling features of this scene.

If Elisha had been abusing the boy sexually (2 Kings 4.32–35), and he came to fear that the Shunammite woman was onto this and might tell on him, it makes sense why he would send her and her boy far away and to do so hastily. This would also explain why it would not be sufficient, at least in Elisha’s judgment, that she go south to the kingdom of Judah. Indeed, the close ties and communications between the two kingdoms would then, from Elisha’s point of view, be a disadvantage rather than an advantage, for then information about what Elisha had been doing could very easily have been sent from Judah to Israel.

This hypothesis also explains why the king is enquiring about Elisha’s resuscitation of the boy. But why, then, does the king ask to be told all the great things that Elisha has done? The word translated as great is gadol (גָּ דוֹל‎). While גָּ דוֹל‎ may be translated as great, its primary meaning is ‘big’, so it need not require a positive evaluation. Indeed, it is used to describe the Shunammite woman in 2 Kgs 4.8; in that context, גָּ דוֹל‎ is often translated as ‘wealthy’. Presumably, the king is here inquiring about Elisha’s wonder-making more broadly. Notice that the king wisely hears the testimony of Gehazi and the Shunammite woman separately.

What about Gehazi? Since Elisha has broken with Gehazi and has made him a leper, it is puzzling why Gehazi would tell the king about Elisha’s virtues. It is not, however, puzzling why he would tell the king about Elisha’s vices – which is what he is doing here given the sexual abuse interpretation. This explanation also makes sense of why Gehazi is a relevant witness. Outside of the Shunammite woman’s family and Elisha himself, he is the only one who has knowledge about what happened.

Notice that what Gehazi is telling the king is how Elisha did his deeds. This explains why Elisha himself is not present. If Elisha knew that the Shunammite woman had returned and was talking to the king, he would be wise to keep away. Given this interpretation, we can further make sense of Elisha’s actions immediately after the Shunammite’s meeting with King Jehoram – namely to have King Jehoram assassinated.

Elisha instructs one of his disciples to find Jehu, a military commander in the Kingdom of Israel, and ‘get him to leave his companions, and take him into an inner chamber. Then take the flask of oil, pour it on his head, and say, “Thus says the Lord: I anoint you king over Israel”. Then open the door and flee; do not linger’ (2 Kgs 9.2–3). The servant evidently did as he had been told. He found Jehu, isolated him from the men (seemingly, his fellow military commanders), poured the anointing oil on him and said:

Thus says the Lord the God of Israel: ‘I anoint you king over the people of the Lord, over Israel. You shall strike down the house of your master Ahab’. … Thus says the Lord the God of Israel: ‘I anoint you king over the people of the Lord, over Israel. You shall strike down the house of your master Ahab … Cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel’. (2 Kgs 9.6–8)

Then the disciple fled, just as Elisha had told him.

Jehu’s first response is perplexity and disbelief. When he tells the other men what happened, however, they submit to him and declare that now ‘Jehu is king’ (2 Kgs 9.13). Jehu then seizes the opportunity and starts the killing spree that Elisha, via his disciple, had ordered.

He finds out that King Jehoram is in Jezreel, a city just four kilometers south of Shunem. It might very well be, therefore, that this takes place during the very visit to the area when the king ruled that the Shunammite boy’s family deserves compensation. Jehu then manages to get King Jehoram isolated from his associates and then ‘shot Jehoram between the shoulders, so that the arrow pierced his heart, and he sank in his chariot’ (2 Kgs 9.24). In line with Elisha’s instructions in 2 Kgs 9.7, moreover, Jehu then went on to also kill the King of Judah and the relatives and associates of both kings (2 Kgs 10.6–13).

Elisha’s instigation of king Jehoram’s assassination might be explained in other ways. It is notable, however, that instigating the king’s assassination is Elisha’s very first action after King Jehoram has decided that the Shunammite boy’s household deserves recompense.

The overall plausibility of the sexual abuse interpretation

Several aspects of the Elisha narrative, it seems, are well explained by the sexual abuse interpretation: The shutting of the door, the lying on the boy in his bed, Elisha’s mouth being on the boy’s mouth, and—arguably—the sneezes. It further makes sense of the harassing boys and King Jehoram’s recompense. It accounts for this, moreover, in a straightforward manner and by appeal to a phenomenon that we know is relatively prevalent: child sexual abuse. Finally, we seem to be lacking any satisfactory competing explanation to account for these events. The sexual abuse interpretation does, however, give rise to a question: What, then, might have been the motive behind the writing of these parts of 2 Kings?

Now, if Elisha is rightly interpreted as someone who is sexually abusive, then presumably, the disclosure of this would have to be the intention of at least some of its authors. In that case, the simplest account of the author(s) motive is that the story is a thinly veiled warning about predatory behavior of persons in positions of religious authority. Had it not been veiled, it would have been very challenging for this warning to be included in, and to remain in, the canon.

Several features of the story suggest it was intended, at least in part, as a warning against Elisha. First, this would explain why Elisha does not seem to come off very well from the story. Indeed, he comes off as cold. Notice, for example, that after the massacre of the boys outside of Bethel, the reader is told that ‘from there he went on to Mount Carmel’ and the massacre is never mentioned again. This could also explain why the Shunammite woman comes across as an admirable and morally upright character, even though she stands up against the prophet.

It is noteworthy, moreover, that the story contains no explicit divine endorsements of Elisha. As Bergen (1999: 103) observes: ‘While Elisha directs words or thoughts toward YHWH, YHWH is not given credit for either word or deed. It is Elisha who acts’. Heller (2018: 222), similarly, notes that ‘the only divine words that the characters or we hear are those spoken by Elisha. The only contact with the divine that the characters or we have in the story is through Elisha, alone’. This could be accidental, but it could also be an indication that readers may not simply assume that what Elisha does is good. Finally, we want to draw attention to two aspects of the story that hint at abusive behaviour on Elisha’s part. As Bodner (2014: 77) observes, ‘it is notable that children in crisis form a common thread in a number of episodes early in Elisha’s career’. This need not require an explanation, for helping children in need is surely good, but it is worth noticing that the needy children Elisha seeks out are consistently young boys. Moreover, he seeks out young boys in families in which the father is old and, seemingly, rather powerless (2 Kgs 4.8–36) or where there is no father present, as is the case when Elisha miraculously helps a widow’s two boys (2 Kings 4.1–7).

Hobbs (1985: 52), as noted above, observes that ‘secrecy and private miracles are a distinctive part of the ministry of Elisha’. We see this with the shutting of the door, but just before that, recall that as he is sending Gehazi ahead first with the stick, Elisha says to him: ‘If you meet anyone, do not greet him, and if anyone greets you, do not answer him’ (2 Kgs 4.29). There is also a shutting of a door in the case where Elisha helps rescue the widow’s two boys (4.1–7). Whereas Elisha is secretive about what he himself does, he also makes sure he knows what others do. One of the servants of the King of Aram says that the king cannot be too careful when it comes to Elisha, for that man gets to know and will retell even ‘the words that you speak in your bed chamber‘ (2 Kgs 6.12) and of course Elisha has messengers (6.33). These seem to be pointing out salient aspects of the behavior of abusive people.