Pots Of Oil And Poison

Stories From The Hebrew Bible
POTS OF OIL AND POISON

Throughout the land of Israel lived families who listened to the teaching of the prophets and worshiped the Lord. They were among the seven thousand in Israel who never bowed their knees to the images of Baal. Elisha went through the land meeting these people; teaching and leading them in their worship. They were called “sons of the prophets.” God spoke to some of them and they became prophets of the Lord.

One day, the wife of one of these “sons of the prophets,” came to Elisha and said,

O man of God, my husband is dead; and you know that he served the Lord while he lived. He was owing some money when he died; and now the man to whom he owed it has come, and he says that he will take my two sons to be his slaves, unless I pay the debt.

In those times, when a man owed a debt, either he or his children could be sold to pay it off. Elisha said to the woman, “What shall I do to help you? What have you in the house?”

“I have nothing in the house,” answered the woman, “except a pot of oil.”

Then Elisha said to her, “Go to your neighbors and borrow of them empty jars and vessels and bowls; borrow a great many. Then go into the room and shut the door upon yourself and your sons; and pour out the oil into the vessels, and as each vessel is filled, set it aside.”

The woman went out and borrowed of all her neighbors vessels that would hold oil, until she had lots of them. Then she went into the house and shut the door and told her sons to bring the vessels to her one by one; and she poured out oil, filling vessel after vessel, until all were full. At last they said to her, “There is not another vessel that can hold oil.”

And then the oil stopped running. If she had borrowed more vessels, there would have been more oil. She came and told Elisha, the man of God. And he said, “Go and sell the oil; pay the debt, and keep the rest of the money for yourself and your sons to live on.”

At another time Elisha came to Gilgal among the mountains, near Bethel, and with him were some of these men, the sons of the prophets. It was a time when food was scarce, and they sought in the field for vegetables and green things to be eaten. One man by mistake brought a number of wild gourds, which were poisonous, and threw them into the pot to be cooked with the rest of the food.

While they were eating, they suddenly felt that they had been poisoned and cried out, “O man of God, there is death in the pot!”

Then Elisha took some meal and threw it into the pot with the poisoned food. And he said, “Now take the food out of the pot and let the people eat of it.”

They did so; and there was no longer any poison in the food.

At one time a man came bringing to the prophet a present of loaves of barley bread and some ears of new corn in the husks. There were with Elisha that day a hundred men, and Elisha said to his servant, “Give this to the people for their dinner.”

And the servant said, “What, should I give this for a meal to a hundred men?”

And Elisha said, “Yes, set it before them and let them eat. For the Lord says, ‘They shall eat and shall have enough, and shall leave some of it.’”

So, he gave them the food; and every man took as much as he wished, and some was left over, according to the Word of the Lord.

Once, a company of these “sons of the prophets” went down from the mountains to a place near the river Jordan and began to build a house; and Elisha was with them. As one of the men was cutting down a tree, the head fell off from his ax, and dropped into the water. In those times iron and steel were very scarce and costly. The man said, “O my master, what shall I do, for this was a borrowed ax!”

Then Elisha asked to be shown just where the ax head had fallen into the water. He cut off a stick of wood and threw it into the water at the place. At once the iron ax head rose to the surface of the water and floated, as if it were wood. The prophet said, “Reach out and take it,” and the man took the iron.

By these works of power all the people came to know that Elisha was a true prophet of the Lord and spoke as with the voice of the Lord of Israel.