16 myths
The prophet Elisha, heir to Elijah's mantle, who parted rivers, raised the dead, and performed miracles throughout Israel.
16 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines elisha, drawn from the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Talmud, Kabbalah, and later Jewish literature. Each story below synthesizes primary sources into a single narrative; follow any myth to read it, and from there into the source passages behind it.
A woman who built a room for a prophet so he could rest, who had asked for nothing, now rode hard toward him with her dead son lying upstairs.
An angel arrives to take Elijah from earth, finds him teaching Elisha, and returns empty-handed. Even death cannot interrupt a Torah lesson in the middle.
The word of God would not come to an angry prophet. Elisha called for a harpist, and when the strings played, heaven found a way in.
Elisha carried divine fire so concentrated his face burned lethal to look at. He traveled mountain to mountain, and one woman saw him coming.
Elisha received twice Elijah's spirit, but Gehazi turned the prophet's house into a hiding place for silver, garments, and leprosy.
Elisha asked for a double portion of Elijah's spirit. Elijah called it a hard thing. Elisha watched and received it, and the count came out exactly right.
A high official in wicked King Ahab's court hid a hundred prophets in caves, fed them on borrowed money, and died before repaying the debt.
Elisha's most gifted disciple inscribed the Divine Name on golden calves and made them utter the words of Sinai. Nothing after that could be undone.
Elisha multiplied a widow's oil, walked a blind army through the capital, and named the price of flour the morning a siege collapsed.
Elisha would not let Elijah vanish alone. He watched the fiery ascent, lifted the fallen mantle, and inherited a double portion of his master spirit.
Rabbi Yannai wore tefillin three afternoons after illness. The rabbis traced the custom to Elisha, whose head shone so bright the angels had to look away.
Elisha sent his servant ahead with his staff to revive a dead child. The boy did not move. The rabbis knew exactly why the wood failed.
Ben Sira says Elisha was appointed for the time, inscribed before the world broke, sent to heal it with Elijah's doubled spirit.
Four sages entered the Pardes. One came out and kept talking about two divine powers. The Talmud stopped using his name and called him Aher, the Other.
A woman from Shunam looked at the prophet Elisha and declared him a holy man of God. Vayikra Rabbah dug into how she knew, and what she was actually seeing.
Moses hid his face at the bush and was refused at the cave. Israel broke the covenant and earned a second chance. Gehazi just walked away.
