John Gill Commentary 2 Kings 4

Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of
the prophets unto Elisha
This, according to the Targum, was the wife of Obadiah, who had hid the prophets by fifty in a cave in the times of Ahab; and so Josephus ^F17, and it is the commonly received notion of the Jewish writers; though it does not appear that he was a prophet, or the son of a prophet, but the governor or steward of Ahab's house; she was more likely to be the wife of a meaner person; and from hence it is clear that the prophets and their disciples married:

saying, your servant my husband is dead ;
which is the lot of prophets, as well as others, (Zechariah 1:5)

and you know that your servant feared the Lord ;
her husband was well known to the prophet, and known to be a good man, one of the 7000 who bowed not the knee to Baal, for the truth of which she appeals to Elisha; and this character she gives of her husband, lest it should be thought that his poverty, and leaving her in debt, were owing to any ill practices of his:

and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen ;
which it seems were allowed of when men became poor and insolvent, and died so, to which the allusion is in (Isaiah 1:1) (Matthew 18:25) , (See Gill on Matthew 18:25). Josephus ^F18 suggests, that the insolvency of this man was owing to his borrowing money to feed the prophets hid in the cave; and it is a common notion of the Jews that this creditor was Jehoram the son of Ahab; and in later times it was a law with the Athenians ^F19 , that if a father had not paid what he was fined in court, the son was obliged to pay it, and in the mean while to lie in bonds, as was the case of Cimon ^F20 , and others.

FOOTNOTES:

• F17: Antiqu. l. 9. c. 4. sect. 2.
• F18: Ibid.
• F19: Alex. ab Alex. Genial. Dier. l. 6. c. 10.
• F20: Cornel. Nep. in Vita Cimon. l. 5. c. 1.

And Elisha said to her, what shall I do for you ?
&c.] Or can I do, being poor himself, and unable to relieve her out of his substance, and not knowing where to get anything for her; and so what could she expect from him? signifying, that he pitied her case, but all that he could do was to give her his best advice, and pray for her:

tell me what you have in your house ?
that she could part with and dispose of, in order to pay her debt; and satisfy her creditor:

and she said, your handmaid has nothing in the house, except a
pot of oil ;
that is, nothing of any value; she might have some things, some sort of household goods, though perhaps she had parted with most of them in her poverty; this was the most valuable thing she had.

Then he said, go, borrow you vessels abroad of all your neighbours For he perceived that she had none:

even empty vessels ; which they might more readily lend her:

borrow not a few ; but as many as she could get; the prophet, under a divine impulse, was directed to say this to her, foreseeing, by a spirit of prophecy, that a large quantity of oil would be given her.

And when you are come in
Into her house:

you shall shut the door upon you, and upon your sons ;
that they might be alone in the house while the miracle was working; that they might not be interrupted in what they were to do, by the creditor coming in upon them, or by neighbours, who would be to get the oil from them in the vessels they had lent them: and that the miracle might appear the plainer, no oil being brought into the house by any:

and shall pour out into all these vessels ;
out of the single pot of oil into all they borrowed:

and you shall set aside that which is full ;
by itself, and fill the rest of the empty ones.

So she went from him
And did as he advised her, borrowed many empty vessels of her neighbours, having faith in what the prophet had said to her:

and shut the door upon her, and upon her sons ;
and then went to work as she was directed, with her sons:

who brought the vessels to her ;
the empty ones she had borrowed: and she poured out; the oil out of her pot into them.