Ministry and Mission, Not Magic, in the Lives of Elijah and Elisha
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During the period that Elijah and Elisha served as prophets of the Lord, they performed many miracles which appear almost magical. They touched water with their cloaks and it parted. They healed the sick and caused food to multiply.
One might be tempted to argue that they were, in fact, magicians; no better than the sorcerers whom the Lord abhorred. If that’s the case, there is an inconsistency in the Bible: why did God favor these men while he condemned others?
But the fact is these two men did not perform magic tricks. Their works were facets of their ministry for the people in the name of God. They performed miracles facilitated by the Lord for the sake of his people. His favor is evidence of this.
The Miracles of Elijah and Elisha
Elijah and his protege Elisha performed some similar miracles: parting the Jordan, healing, raising the dead, feeding multiple people from a sparse amount of food. Elijah also prayed for and then ended a period of drought, and called for fire from heaven three times (twice to devour soldiers, once to consume a burnt offering). Elisha made an axe head float, led God’s people to victory over their enemies, and caused female bears to maul his enemies.
Some writers include prophecies in their list of miracles, but this article focuses on physical manifestations of God’s glory brought about through his prophets, signs that others could see, feel, touch, taste, and hear. For example, Ahazia sent soldiers to enquire of Elijah, whether he would live or die. Two groups of fifty soldiers and messengers were consumed by fire which Elijah called down on them, declaring “If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty” (2 Kings 1:10-11). This was miraculous.
One scholar explains that miracles served to “authenticate [God’s prophet] as the Lord’s spokesman [...]. In other words, [...] the miracles of Elijah and Elisha proved that God was sending prophets to His people.” However, Elijah delivered God’s message to the third set of fifty soldiers because the captain got down on his knees before Elijah in reverence to his station as God’s prophet. And the message he delivered – that Ahazia would die – was not a curse upon Ahazia, but a matter of fact delivered by God through his messenger, who was empowered by the Holy Spirit to prophesy.
A Double Dose
God performed more miracles through Elisha than through his predecessor. This could be owing to the double share of spirit Elisha inherited from Elijah. While Elijah waited to be taken into heaven by the Lord, he asked Elisha “Tell me what I can do for you before I am taken from you.” Elisha responded “Please, let me inherit two shares of your spirit.” Elijah’s response was that this is “difficult,” but if Elisha saw him being swept up into heaven, then Elisha’s request would come to pass. Elisha witnessed the event and received the double portion (2 Kings 2:9-11).
Gary L. Shultz Jr. explained that Elisha’s request probably refers “to the customs of inheritance for the firstborn son” which is what Elisha was, essentially. He was “designated by Elijah as his true and legitimate successor.” When Elisha asked for the double portion of Elijah’s spirit, he was asking “to be recognized as the firstborn of [his] ‘sons’” – Elijah’s disciples. Elijah could not automatically grant this request because it was not his to give but the Lord’s. Elisha did receive that double portion, however, because he witnessed Elijah’s ascent into heaven (2 Kings 2:10-12).
Shultz argues that “several of his miracles are intensifications of Elijah’s miracles.” So, for example, while Elijah feeds a widow, her son, and himself, “Elisha provides water for the soldiers and animals of Jehoram and Jehosaphat [...], multiplies the widow’s oil [...], heals deadly stew [...], and feeds many from twenty loaves of bread and some grain.” The disciple outshone his master.
Meeting Ordinary Needs
As one writer pointed out, many of the miracles performed by Elisha were directed at meeting the ordinary challenges of life, like hunger and healing. “A widow was about to lose her sons to slavery to settle a debt. [...] One son of the prophets lost a borrowed tool that was likely expensive. When Elisha saw that these faithful people of God could not meet their ordinary financial needs or feed themselves, his miracles met those needs.”
He not only gave the people what they required – such as the floating axe head – but he gave them more than they could have imagined. “The widow’s oil flowed and flowed. The sons of prophets were fed with a limited quantity of bread, and some was left over. Our Lord loves to bless His people extravagantly.”
Not all of the miracles were so ordinary: each man resurrected a dead son (1 Kings 17:17-24; 2 Kings 4:18-37), a feat which looks forward to the miracles of Jesus Christ himself. Elijah called for fire from heaven to consume his offering and to prove a point: his God is the only true God. Those who worshiped Baal were following a false god (1 Kings 18:36-38).
God used these opportunities to demonstrate the authenticity of his prophets, to receive glory, and to point to the coming of Hi Son Jesus Christ. But these miracles remind us that our prosaic hurdles are important to the Lord, and point to the humanness of Jesus Christ who lived among and served ordinary sinners as a humble man himself.
Spirit, Not Magic
What arguments support the idea that the Holy Spirit, not some magical powers, were responsible for the miracles of Elijah and Elisha? After all, the Holy Spirit is barely mentioned. The Spirit’s presence is mostly suggested, starting from the point at which Elisha asks for that double portion. Shultz reminds us that “the presence and power of the Lord God of Israel in human beings is the Holy Spirit of God.” Later on, we see Elisha doing something which only the Lord is permitted to accomplish: the “work of purification and judgment against sin among his people, which are works of the Holy Spirit.”
When we see miracles in Scripture, we know that they come from the Lord because of their purpose. The narrative of these two prophets’ service to the Lord and for the people of Israel comes at a “decisive juncture in Israel’s history, as Ahab and Jezebel are leading the people away from God and towards the god Baal.” They demonstrate what it looks like to live in submission to God and they “remind the people who God really is.”
Their miracles are not party tricks. As noted above, Elijah’s challenge to the Baal worshipers demonstrates that there is no power in any other so-called god. Scripture’s “emphasis on the Holy Spirit in the life and ministry of Elisha helps us to understand his purpose in Kings and the whole of the biblical canon.” His life shows us “covenant faithfulness, [...] as a Spirit-empowered man of God who walks with God, represents God, and demonstrates the way to covenant faithfulness.”
God also demands reverence. The curse of the she-bears takes place when youths insult Elisha and reject him as prophet of the one true God. As Elisha was walking to Bethel, “some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, chanting “Go up, baldy! Go up, baldy!” (2 Kings 2:23). Elisha cursed them by calling for female bears to maul them, 42 youths in all.
We wonder if this was an angry over-reaction to one who was sensitive about his balding pate, but Elisha called for the bears “in the name of the Lord” (v.24). Anything he does in the Lord’s name prospers because the Spirit of God prompts him, including this particularly aggressive defense of his role as God’s prophet.
The Coming Christ
But Elisha’s life in particular also provides “a preview of what it will mean to walk with God in the new covenant in Jesus Christ.” The Bible is filled with Christ-like characters – individuals who represent the Messiah in some way, though not completely. They are not sinless men and women, but some elements of their lives provide a foretaste of what the Savior would be like. Elisha foreshadowed the coming Christ to the point that his bones provided life to a dead man who touched them (2 Kings 2:20-21). Christ would go beyond this power, rising from the grave bodily, fully formed, and restoring life to every believer who had already and would later die.
Elisha provides imagery suggestive of Christ’s new covenant, his grace and mercy among the people in spite of how they reject him and the one who sent him. “Elisha’s first act of conquest as the Lord’s Spirit-empowered prophet is to bring blessing to a land that was cursed.” Not only did he choose to bless them, but the people received their blessing as the people of Jesus’ time received theirs: “they show[ed] faith in God” says Shultz.
He was Spirit led, and we can begin to understand the importance of the Holy Spirit in the life of the One who would save God’s elect: the Christ. No one has power in himself to bring about salvation, which was one thing Elijah and Elisha were not able to affect, for themselves or anyone else.
Not Magic: Miracles
As one expert puts it, “Sorcery, often associated with witchcraft, divination, and the use of magical arts, is consistently condemned in the Bible.” Whenever anyone calls on a power other than that which the Lord gives through his Holy Spirit, “through rituals, spells, or the assistance of spirits,” he or she is rejecting the Lord’s “divine will and authority.”
The miracles of two prophets, whose job was to call people back to the Lord, could not have originated in anything other than God’s power or they would have failed. They would have called for fire and heard either silence or been consumed themselves. Their efforts to multiply food would have raised false hopes but left starving people.
God seeks his glory at all times, and people who submit to him as Lord are sometimes used in these ways, although such dramatic miracles are less common in the Bible than we might realize. When we read about them, they are designed to call our attention to the power of God, which is far greater than we can imagine, and even greater than the miracles of Elisha and Elijah portray.
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