The Land Given Back

The Story

Years earlier, the prophet Elisha had stayed in the home of a woman from Shunem. She and her husband built him a little room on their roof. God gave her a son, and when the boy later died, Elisha raised him back to life.

Now Elisha came to her with a warning. A famine is coming, he said. It will last seven years. Take your family and go live somewhere else.

She believed him. She took her household and lived in the land of the Philistines for seven years.

When the famine ended, she came home and found that her house and land had been taken. So she went to the king to ask for them back.

At that exact moment, the king was talking with Gehazi, Elisha’s servant. “Tell me, I pray thee, all the great things that Elisha hath done,” the king said. And Gehazi was telling him how Elisha had raised a dead boy to life.

Just then, the woman walked in to make her appeal.

“My lord, O king,” Gehazi said, “this is the woman, and this is her son, whom Elisha restored to life.”

The king asked her about it, and she told him the story. Then the king appointed an officer and said, give her back everything that was hers, plus all the crops the field has produced since the day she left.

Reflection