Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Kings 8

How the kindness of the Shunammite woman to Elisha was further rewarded through the prophet’s influence with the king.

Then spoke Elisha. —Rather, Now Elisha had spoken. The time is not defined by the phrase. It was after the raising of the Shunammite’s son (2 Kings 8:1), and before the healing of Naaman the Syrian, since the king still talks with Gehazi (2 Kings 8:5).

Go you. —The peculiar form of the pronoun points to the identity of the original author of this account with the writer of 2 Kings 4:0. Moreover, the famine here foretold appears to be that of 2 Kings 4:38 and following, so that the present section must in the original document have preceded 2 Kings 5:0. Thenius thinks the compiler transferred the present account to this place because he wished to proceed chronologically, and supposed that the seven years’ famine came to an end with the raising of the siege of Samaria.

For a famine. — To the famine. The sword, the famine, the noisome beasts, and the pestilence were Jehovah’s four sore judgments, as we find in Ezekiel 14:21.

And it shall also come upon. — And, moreover, it comes into.

Seven Years. —Perhaps not to be understood literally, any more than Dante’s

“O caro Duca mio che più di sette
Volte m’hai sicurtà renduta.”—Inferno 8:97.

After the saying. — According to the word.

In the land of the Philistines. —The lowlands of the coast were not so subject to droughts as the limestone highlands of Israel. (Genesis 26:1.) The Philistines, besides, dealt with foreign traders who put in to their shores. (Compare to Joel 3:4-6.)

At the seven years’ end. —Omit the.

She went forth. —From Shunem to Samaria.

For her house and for her land. —Literally, with regard to her house, etc. She found them in the possession of strangers. The State may have occupied the property as abandoned by its owner; or, as is more likely, some neighboring landowner may have encroached upon her rights. She therefore appealed to the king.

And the king talked. — And the king was speaking to.

Gehazi. — He, therefore, was not yet a leper (2 Kings 5:27). So Keil and some earlier expositors. But lepers, though excluded from the city, were not excluded from conversation with others. (Luke 17:12.) Naaman was apparently admitted into the royal palace (2 Kings 5:6).

The way, however, in which Gehazi is spoken of as “the servant of the man of God” (compare 2 Kings 5:20) seems to imply the priority of the present narrative to that of 2 Kings 5.

Tell me, I pray thee, all the great things. — “The history of Elijah and Elisha has a distinctly popular character; it reads like a story told by word of mouth, full of the dramatic touches and vivid presentations of detail which characterise all Semitic history that closely follows oral narration. The king of Israel of whom we read in 2 Kings 8:4, was, we may be sure, not the only man who talked with Gehazi, saying, ‘Tell me, I pray thee, all the great things that Elisha hath done.’ By many repetitions the history of the prophets took a fixed shape long before it was committed to writing, and the written record preserves all the essential features of the narratives that passed from mouth to mouth, and were handed down orally from father to child.” (Prof. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, p. 116.)

A dead body. — The dead.

Cried. — Was crying. Literally, the Hebrew reads, And it came to pass, he (emphatic) was telling ... and behold the woman was crying, etc. The woman came in, and began her prayer to the king, while he was talking with Gehazi about her and her son.

This is her son. —Who was now grown up, and came as his mother’s escort.