Elisha

The holy Prophet Elisha lived in the Kingdom of Israel in the ninth century before Christ. He was the disciple and successor of the holy Prophet Elijah, one of the great wonderworkers of the Old Testament, and for more than sixty years he was the voice of God to the people of Israel and to its kings. His story is told in the Third and Fourth Books of Kings (1 Kings 19 and 2 Kings 2 to 13 in the Hebrew numbering). The Orthodox Church commemorates him on 14 June (old style Menaion; 27 June in the civil calendar of the Julian Churches).

The calling

He was the son of Shaphat, a wealthy landowner of Abel-⁠meholah, near the Jordan, and he grew up working the land. At Mount Horeb God commanded Elijah to anoint Elisha as prophet in his place. Elijah found him ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen, and as he passed he threw his mantle over him. Elisha asked only to kiss his father and mother. He slaughtered a yoke of oxen, boiled the flesh with the wood of the plough, shared this farewell meal with his people, and followed Elijah to serve him.

For some years he stayed at the side of the elder prophet. When the hour of parting came, Elijah said, Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you. Elisha asked for a double portion of his spirit, the share of the firstborn. Elijah answered that the thing was hard, but that it would be given him if he saw him taken up. They were speaking as they walked when a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and parted them, and Elijah was carried up in a whirlwind. Elisha cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and its horsemen. He took up the mantle that had fallen, struck the Jordan with it, and the waters parted. The sons of the prophets saw it and knew that the spirit of Elijah rested on him.

Wonders

Scripture records many signs worked through him, and the tradition counts twice as many as Elijah's. At Jericho he healed the unwholesome spring by casting salt into it. When the armies of Israel, Judah and Edom were dying of thirst in the wilderness on their way against Moab, at his word the valley was filled with water. He multiplied the oil in the vessel of a prophet's widow, so that she paid her debt and saved her sons.

A woman of Shunem who had received him with hospitality was given a son at his word. When the child died, Elisha prayed and raised him. In a time of famine he turned a poisoned pottage into wholesome food and fed a hundred men with twenty barley loaves, with some left over. He made an iron axe head float on the Jordan. At Bethel, when youths mocked him, he cursed them in the name of the Lord, and bears came out of the wood and tore forty-⁠two of them.

He healed Naaman, the commander of the army of Syria, of leprosy, sending him to wash seven times in the Jordan. Naaman acknowledged that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel. Gehazi, the prophet's servant, took gifts from Naaman in secret and was struck by the leprosy of which Naaman was cleansed. Our Lord recalls this healing in the Gospel of Luke. At Dothan, when the Syrian army surrounded the city, Elisha prayed, and his frightened servant saw the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire around the prophet. The Syrian soldiers were struck with blindness and led to Samaria.

Among the kings

Elisha lived under six kings of Israel, from Ahab to Joash, and the Scripture calls him the man of God. He foretold the end of the siege and famine of Samaria. At Damascus he declared that Hazael would reign over Syria. He sent one of the sons of the prophets to anoint Jehu king of Israel and to end the house of Ahab, as the Lord had commanded Elijah. The Wisdom of Sirach says that while he lived he trembled before no ruler, and no one could overcome his word.

In old age he fell ill, and King Joash came to weep over him, calling him the chariot of Israel and its horsemen. The prophet had the king open the window toward the east and shoot an arrow, and said that it was the arrow of the Lord's deliverance from Syria. He then had Joash strike the ground with the arrows, and as the king stopped after three strikes, the prophet told him he would win three victories and no more. Elisha reposed at Samaria, old and full of days. Neither he nor Elijah left a book, for their preaching was spoken.

After his repose

A year later a funeral party, frightened by raiders, cast a dead man into Elisha's grave, and as soon as he touched the prophet's bones he revived and stood up. The Wisdom of Sirach sums up his life: he worked wonders in life, and his deeds were marvellous in death. The Church sees in this an ancient sign of the grace which works through the relics of the saints.

According to tradition his relics lay with those of Obadiah and Saint John the Forerunner at Sebaste, which grew from ancient Samaria. In the time of Julian the Apostate (361 to 363) the pagans were ordered to burn them, but believers saved a part and carried it to Alexandria. Some Orthodox sources record their translation on 20 June to Constantinople, with the relics of Apostles Luke, Andrew and Thomas, under Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus. A church was built in his honour at Constantinople, and Saint John of Damascus wrote a canon for him. Relics of Elisha are claimed today by the Coptic monastery of Saint Macarius in Egypt, and a monastery bears his name at Jericho, near the spring he healed. He is also remembered on 20 July with Elijah, Moses and Aaron. In the twentieth century the humble priest Nicholas Planas had a great love for him and was granted to see him in visions.