Elisha

Elisha is a prophet of Yahweh in the northern kingdom of Israel, presented in the narrative of 2 Kings as the successor of Elijah and repeatedly called “the man of God” (2 Kings 4:16; 4:42; 5:14; 7:2). The Hebrew name ʾĕlîšāʿ means “God has saved,” and the Greek form Eliseus is the name used in the Septuagint and in the New Testament (Luke 4:27). The text places his ministry in the ninth century BCE; the narratives do not give a systematic chronology but attach episodes to the reigns of Israelite kings.

Scripture describes his succession in terms of the Spirit rather than of office. At the separation, “a chariot of fire and horses of fire” divides the two men and Elijah goes up “by a whirlwind into heaven” (2 Kings 2:11), and the following scenes attribute Elisha’s acts to his prayer and to Yahweh’s word rather than to his own power: he shuts the door and prays (2 Kings 4:33), and the multiplied loaves are eaten with some left over “according to Yahweh’s word” (2 Kings 4:44). The episodes given to him mix provision and rescue with severity: the widow’s creditor and her two children (2 Kings 4:1), the promise of a son to a woman who protests that he must not lie to her (2 Kings 4:16), bread for the people from twenty barley loaves (2 Kings 4:42), Naaman’s flesh restored “like the flesh of a little child” in the Jordan (2 Kings 5:14), and Gehazi struck with Naaman’s leprosy for taking payment (2 Kings 5:20; 5:27).

A recurring motif in these scenes is sight. Elisha asks that his servant’s eyes be opened, and the young man sees the mountain “full of horses and chariots of fire around Elisha” (2 Kings 6:17); the captain who doubts the promised relief is told he will see it but not eat of it (2 Kings 7:2). Historically, scholars have read the Elisha material as a cycle of prophetic legends about a northern prophet associated with prophetic guilds (the “sons of the prophets,” 2 Kings 4:1) and with sites such as the Jordan and Baal Shalishah (2 Kings 4:42); the Deuteronomistic editing of Kings frames these stories within an assessment of Israel’s kings, though interpreters differ over how much of the material is early and how much is later shaping.

Christian traditions read him differently. The New Testament itself cites the healing of Naaman the Syrian as an example of grace shown outside Israel (Luke 4:27), and patristic writers commonly treated the sevenfold dipping in the Jordan as a type of baptism — an interpretive reading rather than a statement the text makes. Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic calendars commemorate him as a saint, while Pentecostal and charismatic readers often emphasize the requested “double portion” of Elijah’s spirit as a model of Spirit-empowered ministry; historical-critical and Reformed readings tend rather to stress prophetic succession, covenant faithfulness, and the word of Yahweh fulfilled.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.