2 Raja-raja 8:1-6

Elisha Again Helps the Shunammite Woman

8:1 Now Elisha advised the woman whose son he had brought back to life, “You and your family should go and live somewhere else for a while, ¹  for the Lord has decreed that a famine will overtake the land for seven years.” 8:2 So the woman did as the prophet said. ²  She and her family went and lived in the land of the Philistines for seven years. 8:3 After seven years the woman returned from the land of the Philistines and went to ask the king to give her back her house and field. ³  8:4 Now the king was talking to Gehazi, the prophet’s ⁴  servant, and said, “Tell me all the great things which Elisha has done.” 8:5 While Gehazi ⁵  was telling the king how Elisha ⁶  had brought the dead back to life, the woman whose son he had brought back to life came to ask the king for her house and field. ⁷  Gehazi said, “My master, O king, this is the very woman and this is her son whom Elisha brought back to life!” 8:6 The king asked the woman about it, and she gave him the details. ⁸  The king assigned a eunuch to take care of her request and ordered him, ⁹  “Give her back everything she owns, as well as the amount of crops her field produced from the day she left the land until now.”

[8:1]  ¹ tn Heb “Get up and go, you and your house, and live temporarily where you can live temporarily.”

[8:2]  ² tn Heb “and the woman got up and did according to the word of the man of God.”

[8:3]  ³ tn Heb “and went out to cry out to the king for her house and her field.”

[8:4]  ⁴ tn Heb “man of God’s.”

[8:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Gehazi) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[8:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[8:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “and look, the woman whose son he had brought back to life was crying out to the king for her house and her field.”

[8:5]  sn The legal background of the situation is uncertain. For a discussion of possibilities, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 87-88.

[8:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “and the king asked the woman and she told him.”

[8:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “and he assigned to her an official, saying.”