The Shunamite Woman Knew Elisha Was Holy Before Her Husband Did

He came through Shunem often enough that she started listening for him on the road. The first time, she went out and took hold of him and made him come in and eat. After that he ate at her table whenever he passed, and she watched him do it, year after year, the way a woman watches a man she is trying to work out.

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She Called Him Holy

One evening she told her husband, "I know that this man of God who keeps passing our house is holy."

Her husband did not argue with the facts. He argued with the word. The man was a prophet. Prophets came through. Israel had produced a great many of them, some frightening, some fraudulent, and being one of them proved nothing.

She did not back down. There had been a great many prophets. Not one of them had she ever called holy.

The Sheet Had Nothing On It

"Let us make him a small room up on the roof," she said. "A bed. A table. A chair. A lampstand. He can turn in there when he comes."

They built it. He used it.

When he had gone she went up and stripped the bed herself, the way a woman running a household strips a bed, and looked at what she was holding. There was nothing on it. Not once. Not in all the times he stayed under her roof.

That is what she had been reading all those years, and it was not his miracles at Jericho. It was the linen. And this: in all the time he had come and gone from her house, he had never once let his eyes rest on her face. She had a word for a man like that, and it was not prophet. How she knew stayed a secret between her and the bedding. She gave her husband the conclusion and kept the evidence. The conclusion was holiness.

A Son at the Doorway

One day Elisha asked his servant Gehazi what could be done for her. She had gone to considerable trouble. Gehazi knew the household accounts. "She has no son," he said, "and her husband is old."

Elisha sent for her. She came and stood in the doorway of the little room and would not come further in.

"At this season, next year, you will be holding a son."

"No," she said. "My lord, man of God. Do not lie to your maidservant."

She had put that down years ago. Putting it down had cost her something, and she was not going to pick it back up in a doorway on a stranger's word and carry it around for twelve months. She conceived. At that season, the next year, she was holding a son.

The Boy Died on Her Knees

He grew old enough to go out to the reapers with his father. He was standing in the field in the heat when he said, "My head. My head." His father told a servant to carry the boy to his mother. The servant picked him up and brought him in and set him on her lap. She sat with him on her knees until noon, and at noon he died.

She carried him up the outside stairs to the roof room, laid him on the prophet's bed, shut the door on him, and came back down. "Send me a servant and one of the donkeys," she told her husband. "I am going to the man of God and coming back."

"Why today? It is not the new moon. It is not the Sabbath."

"It is well," she said. She saddled the donkey herself and told the boy driving it not to slow down for her unless she said so, and rode for Carmel.

Gehazi Put His Hands on Her

Elisha saw her coming across the slope while she was still far off and sent Gehazi down the hill with the questions. "Is it well with you? Is it well with your husband? Is it well with the child?"

"It is well," she said, and went straight past him and up the hill and took hold of the prophet's feet with both hands. Gehazi came down on her to shove her off. He put his hands on the glory of her beauty, on her chest, and pushed. The master was holy. The attendant was not.

"Leave her," Elisha said. "Her soul is bitter in her, and the LORD has hidden it from me and has not told me."

He went up to the roof room alone and shut the door with the two of them inside. He lay down on the boy, mouth on mouth, eyes on eyes, hands on hands, and the child's flesh warmed under him. He got up and walked the length of that small room and back. He lay on him again. The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.

Elisha called down the stairs. She came up and went down on the floor of the room she had built and put her face on it. Then she stood, and picked up her son, and carried him out. The bed was still the bed she stripped. The sheet had told her the truth before the boy ever lived, and it held him when he died, and it gave him back.