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Updated: June 20, 2025
Not even Gehazi, or any other stickler for propriety, has the heart to thrust her back this time. The story draws a curtain over that meeting in the prophet's chamber. Sad hearts who have vainly longed for such a moment, can fancy the rapture.
"Yonder is the Shunammite woman; run and meet her," exclaimed Elisha to his servant, shading his eyes from the sun with his hand, as he looked and saw her yet afar off, riding in haste. Gehazi ran as he was told, and when they met he asked her in an anxious voice, "Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child?"
The father saw his son was ill, and bade a lad carry the little boy to his mother, on whose knees he sat till noon, and then he died. Next we see the mother leaving her dead son, and journeying to find the prophet. Elisha sees her coming, and sends Gehazi to inquire if all is well.
Some have considered this merely as an evasive answer, made for the purpose of avoiding conversation with Gehazi, with whom she did not wish to enter into the particulars of her present situation.
Here he was met by the daughter; she, it appeared, was anxious to do a little business on her own account; perhaps, like Gehazi, to 'take somewhat' from the foreigner whom her father had spared. 'A silver crucifix and chain for the neck; monsieur would perhaps be good enough to accept it? Well, really, Dennistoun hadn't much use for these things. What did mademoiselle want for it?
And he called Gehazi, and said, Call this Shunammite. So he called her. And when she was come in unto him, he said, Take up thy son. 37. Then she went in, and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the ground, and took up her son, and went out. 2 KINGS iv. 25-37.
Brightwen, a precise and polished gentleman who evidently never made an exaggerated statement in his life, was, I think, faintly scandalized; he soon left us, and I do not recollect his paying us a second visit. For my silent part, I felt very much like Gehazi, and I would fain have followed after the banker if I had dared to do so, into the night.
Instead of obeying the behest of Elisha, not to speak a word on his way to the child of the Shunammite, Gehazi made sport of the task laid upon him. To whatever man he met he addressed the questions: "Dost thou suppose this staff can bring the dead back to life?" The result was that he forfeited the power of executing the errand with which he had been charged.
Kirk's wizards defended the lawfulness of their clairvoyance by the example of Elisha seeing Gehazi at a distance. The second sight was hereditary in some families: this is no longer thought to be the case. Kirk gives some examples of clairvoyance, and prescience: he then quotes and criticises Lord Tarbatt's letters to Robert Boyle.
The punishment was terrible. Was it deserved? Had the master a right to pass this sentence? "The leprosy of Naaman" yes! but had Gehazi caught nothing from Elisha? Most commentators fall on Gehazi with one accord. He is pilloried as a liar. He is branded as a thief. He is bracketed with Achan, and coupled with Judas. They flatter the master, they are hard on the man.
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