"Is there, then, nothing which we can do for her?" asked Elisha of Gehazi.[72]
There was. Gehazi had learnt that the sorrow of her life--a sorrow and a source of reproach to any Eastern household, but most of all to that of a wealthy householder--was her childlessness.
"Call her," he said.
She came back, and stood reverently in the doorway. "When the time comes round," he said to her, "you shall embrace a son."
The promise raised in her heart a thrill of joy. It was too precious to be believed. "Nay," she said "my lord, thou Man of God, do not lie unto thine handmaid."
But the promise was fulfilled, and the lady of Shunem became the happy mother of a son.
III. The charming episode then passes over some years. The child had grown into a little boy, old enough now to go out alone to see his father in the harvest fields and to run about among the reapers. But as he played about in the heat he had a sunstroke, and cried to his father, "O my head, my head!" Not knowing how serious the matter was, his father simply ordered one of his lads to carry the child home to his mother. The fond mother nursed him tenderly upon her knees, but at noon he died.
Then the lady of Shunem showed all the faith and strength and wisdom of her character. "The good Shunammite," says Bishop Hall, "had lost her son; her faith she lost not." Overwhelming as was this calamity--the loss of an only child--she suppressed all her emotions, and, instead of bursting into the wild helpless wail of Eastern mourners, or rushing to her husband with the agonising news, she took the little boy's body in her arms, carried it up to the chamber which had been built for Elisha, and laid it upon his bed. Then, shutting the door, she called to her husband to send to her one of his reapers and one of the asses, for she was going quickly to the Man of God and would return in the cool of the evening. "Why should you go to-day particularly?" he asked. "It is neither new moon, nor sabbath." "It is all right," she said;[73] and with perfect confidence in the rectitude of all her purposes, he sent her the she-ass, and a servant to drive it and to run beside it for her protection on the journey of sixteen miles.
"Drive on the ass," she said. "Slacken me not the riding unless I tell you." So with all possible speed she made her way--a journey of several hours--from Shunem to Mount Carmel.
Elisha, from his retreat on the hill, marked her coming from a distance, and it rendered him anxious. "Here comes the Shunammite," he said to Gehazi. "Run to meet her, and ask Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband? is it well with the child?"
"All well," she answered, for her message was not to Gehazi, and she could not trust her voice to speak; but pressing on up-hillwards, she flung herself before Elisha and grasped his feet. Displeased at the familiarity which dared thus to clasp the feet of his master, Gehazi ran up to thrust her away by force, but Elisha interfered. "Let her alone," he cried; "she is in deep affliction, and Jehovah has not revealed to me the cause." Then her long pent-up emotion burst forth. "Did I desire a son of my lord?" she cried. "Did I not say do not deceive me?"
It was enough--though she seemed unable to bring out the dreadful words that her boy was dead. Catching her meaning, Elisha said to Gehazi, "Gird up thy loins, take my staff, and without so much as stopping to salute any one, or to return a salutation,[74] lay my staff on the dead child's face." But the broken-hearted mother refused to leave Elisha. She imagined that the servant, the staff, might be severed from Elisha; but she knew that wherever the prophet was, there was power. So Elisha arose and followed her, and on the way Gehazi met them with the news that the child lay still and dead, with the fruitless staff upon his face.