Then Elisha in deep anguish went up to the chamber and shut the door, and saw the boy's body lying pale upon his bed. After earnest prayer he outstretched himself over the little corpse, as Elijah had done at Zarephath. Soon it began to grow warm with returning life, and Elisha, after pacing up and down the room, once more stretched himself over him. Then the child opened his eyes and sneezed seven times, and Elisha called to Gehazi to summon the mother.
"Take up thy son," he said. She prostrated herself at his feet in speechless gratitude, and took up her recovered child, and went.
IV. We next find Elisha at Gilgal, in the time of the famine of which we read his prediction in a later chapter.[75] The sons of the prophets were seated round him, listening to his instructions; the hour came for their simple meal, and he ordered the great pot to be put on the fire for the vegetable soup, on which, with bread, they chiefly lived. One of them went out for herbs, and carelessly brought his outer garment (the _abeyah_)[76] full of wild poisonous coloquinths,[77] which, by ignorance or inadvertence, were shred into the pottage. But when it was cooked and poured out they perceived the poisonous taste, and cried out, "O Man of God, death in the pot!"
"Bring meal," he said, for he seems always to have been a man of the fewest words.
They cast in some meal, and were all able to eat of the now harmless pottage. It has been noticed that in this, as in other incidents of the story, there is no invocation of the name of Jehovah.
V. Not far from Gilgal was the little village of Baalshalisha,[78] at which lived a farmer who wished to bring an offering of firstfruits and _karmel_ (bruised grain) in his wallet to Elisha as a Man of God.[79] It was a poor gift enough--only twenty of the coarse barley loaves which were eaten by the common people, and a sack[80] full of fresh ears of corn.[81] Elisha told his servitor[82]--perhaps Gehazi--to set them before the people present. "What?" he asked, "this trifle of food before a hundred men!" But Elisha told him in the Lord's name that it should more than suffice; and so it did.