2 Kings4:18–37

Gâhar: the rare verb of bowing down, on the same mountain verbal / quotation: confirmed

The verb for what Elisha does over the dead boy, וַיִּגְהַ֖ר (gâhar, H1457), occurs in only three verses in the Hebrew Bible, and one of them is Elijah on this same Carmel, bowing to the earth with his face between his knees while he waits for rain (1 Kings 18:42). K&D makes the connection explicitly in his comment here, referring the reader to his note at 1 Kings 18:42. The Verifier records two further shared lexemes with that verse: Karmel (H3760) and berek, knee (H1290), which is the very word for what the boy died upon in v. 20. Three shared lexemes, one of them nearly unique, one of them the place, one of them the posture. Ellicott, weighing the same verb, notes that the LXX, Syriac and Vulgate all translate it bowed himself rather than "stretched himself," which is what makes the parallel with Elijah's crouch visible at all. The claim recorded here is lexical and postural, not a quotation: Elisha's successor-act is shaped like his master's, down to the verb.

1 Kings 18:42

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H1457 gâhar (in 3 vv), a genuinely rare root, plus H3760 Karmel (in 21 vv) and H1290 berek (in 25 vv). No quotation is claimed; the link is a rare shared verb in a shared setting, and K&D cross-refers the two passages himself.

No voice and no attending: the verdict passed on Baal verbal / quotation: confirmed

When Gehazi lays the staff and nothing happens, the text says וְאֵ֥ין ק֖וֹל וְאֵ֣ין קָ֑שֶׁב, no voice and no attending. The noun qesheb (H7182) is rare, occurring in three verses, and the Verifier identifies both of the others: 1 Kings 18:29, where the prophets of Baal cry all afternoon and "there was no voice, nor any that answered, nor any that regarded," and Isaiah 21:7, where the same root is used adverbially of hearkening diligently. Cambridge makes the 1 Kings identification directly: "It is the same which in the account of Elijah's contest with the Baal-priests is translated 'any that regarded'." Ellicott and Barnes give the same cross-reference, and K&D notes that the formula is "used of dead idols." The effect is severe and, I think, deliberate on the narrator's part: the phrase Scripture reserves for the silence of a god who is not there is turned, for one verse, against a prophet's own staff. JFB draws the moral the text seems to want, that no miraculous virtue resides "in any person, or in any rod."

1 Kings 18:29 · Isaiah 21:7

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H7182 qesheb (in 3 vv) with 1 Kings 18:29 (which also shares H6672 tsôhar, in 24 vv, and H6030 ʻânâh, in 318 vv) and with Isaiah 21:7. A rare lexeme in a near-identical formula; Cambridge, Ellicott, Barnes and K&D all make the 1 Kings 18:29 identification independently.

Elijah, Elisha, Paul: the body laid on the body typological

The Geneva editors, glossing v. 34, do not stop at the Elijah parallel. Their note (q) runs the posture forward into the New Testament: "Elijah did the same to the widow's son at Zarephath 1Ki 17:21 and Paul in Ac 20:10 signifying the care that should be in them, who bear the word of God and are distributors of spiritual life." Poole makes the identical chain at the same verse, citing 1 Kings 17:21 and Acts 20:10 together. The shared shape is concrete rather than verbal: a dead young person, a man who comes down and covers the body with his own, and life returning. At Troas, Paul "fell on him, and embracing him" said the life was still in him. Because the Acts reference is Greek and this unit is Hebrew, no shared lexeme is possible and none is claimed; the link is figural. Henry draws the same figure out as pastoral instruction: "Those who would convey spiritual life to dead souls, must feel deeply for their case, and labour fervently in prayer for them." The reading is old (Geneva 1599, Poole 1685) and it is a reading of the pattern, not a claim about the text's intention.

1 Kings 17:21 · Acts 20:10

basis: Figural, not lexical. Cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew), so no shared Strong's number is possible and none is claimed, and the pair is not among the Verifier's computed candidates. Recorded basis: the Geneva marginal note (q) and Poole both chain 1 Kings 17:21, this verse and Acts 20:10 explicitly at 2 Kings 4:34, and Henry reads the same posture figurally. Widely held in the Reformed commentary tradition rather than novel.

Shâlâh: 'do not deceive me' and 'be not now negligent' structural / thematic: confirmed

Her reproach at v. 28 turns on תַשְׁלֶ֖ה (shâlâh, H7952, Hifil), which the lexicon glosses "to mislead." The Verifier finds the root in only two verses in the canon, the other being Hezekiah's charge to the Levites at 2 Chronicles 29:11, "my sons, be not now negligent." The two senses are not the same: hers is causative and accusatory, his is a warning against slackness. What they share is a single very rare root about letting something drop that was entrusted to you. Cambridge notes that she deliberately chose a weaker word here than the one she used at 4:16, which is worth holding onto: even in her accusation she is measuring her language. I record the lexical link as real and the thematic overlap as suggestive only.

2 Chronicles 29:11

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H7952 shâlâh (in 2 vv), one of the rarest roots in the canon. Deliberately downgraded from verbal: although the rarity would permit a verbal tier, two isolated uses of a rare root in different senses and unrelated settings are not evidence of allusion, and I claim no quotation, dependence or literary echo in either direction. The confirmed item is the shared root; the thematic overlap (something entrusted being let drop) is thin and offered as suggestion only.

Gehazi: the servant who is always near and never holds it structural / thematic: confirmed

The name גֵּיחֲזִ֣י (Gêychăzîy, H1522) occurs in twelve verses in the canon, nearly all of them in the Elisha cycle, and the Verifier's candidate list is essentially his biography. Here he carries his master's staff to a dead child and produces no voice and no attending. At 2 Kings 5:20 to 25 he runs (the same root rûwts, H7323, that Elisha uses of him at 4:26) after Naaman's silver and comes back leprous. At 2 Kings 8:4 to 5 the king is asking him to recount "all the great things that Elisha has done," and he is in the middle of telling this very story when the Shunammite walks in to petition for her house. The narrator has built a three-panel study of a man who stands closest to the power and is the only person in the cycle who never receives anything from it. Maclaren, on the message Gehazi carried at v. 26, puts the character in one line: "It is hard for selfish indifference to carry tender words without freezing them."

2 Kings 5:20 · 2 Kings 5:25 · 2 Kings 8:4 · 2 Kings 8:5

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H1522 Gêychăzîy (in 12 vv) across all four references, plus H7323 rûwts (in 92 vv) and H5288 naʻar (in 221 vv) with 2 Kings 5:20 to 21 and H113 ʼâdôwn (in 285 vv) with 2 Kings 5:25 and 8:5. Deliberately not tiered verbal: a shared proper name marks the same character in one narrative cycle, which is not a verbal allusion.

The other Shunammite: a town that produces women who are not named structural / thematic: confirmed

The gentilic הַשּׁוּנַמִּ֥ית (Shûwnammîyth, H7767) occurs in eight verses, and the Verifier finds the other five in the opening of 1 Kings, where Abishag the Shunammite is brought to the dying David and then becomes the pretext for Adonijah's execution (1 Kings 1:3, 1:15; 2:17, 2:21, 2:22). These are two different women, and nothing in the brief connects them beyond the town. What the shared word does show is a narrative habit: the books of Kings twice bring a woman of Shunem into the story of a powerful man, name her only by her village, and let her stand at the point where life and death are being decided. At 1 Kings 2:22 the word even stands beside ʼêm, mother, as here. I record the correspondence and claim nothing causal.

1 Kings 1:3 · 1 Kings 2:21 · 1 Kings 2:22

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H7767 Shûwnammîyth (in 8 vv) across all three references, plus H517 ʼêm (in 202 vv) with 1 Kings 2:22. The women are distinct; the recorded basis is a shared gentilic and a shared narrative position, not an allusion.

Zarephath: the same miracle, run differently structural / thematic: confirmed

Every commentator in the brief reads this chapter against 1 Kings 17:17 to 24, where Elijah carries a widow's dead son up to his own bed and raises him. Ellicott says outright that the Elijah narrative "is imitated in the present account." Cambridge says "the whole narrative must be compared with the action of Elijah at Zarephath." Gill, Poole and Pulpit all cite 1 Kings 17:21 at the moment Elisha lies on the child, and Geneva's marginal note (q) chains Elijah, Elisha and Paul at Acts 20:10 together. The shared elements are concrete: a promised or only son, a prophet's own bed, a shut door, a prayer, and a body-to-body posture. K&D then presses the difference, arguing that Elijah's child revived at once while Elisha's revived by degrees, and concluding that "Elisha did not possess the double measure of the spirit of Elijah." Ellicott rejects the inference on textual grounds: "the narrative in 1 Kings 17:17 seq. is plainly abridged." I record the parallel as certain and the K&D inference as contested.

1 Kings 17:21

basis: Not among the Verifier's computed candidates for this unit, so no shared-lexeme count is offered and none is claimed. The recorded basis is the unanimous cross-reference of six named commentators in the brief (Ellicott, Cambridge, Gill, Poole, Pulpit, K&D) plus the Geneva marginal note, resting on shared narrative structure rather than shared vocabulary.

Women received their dead raised to life again structural / thematic: confirmed

Benson, commenting on the mother's silent preparations at v. 21, cites Hebrews 11:35: "By this faith women received their dead raised to life." Barnes reaches for the same verse at v. 34, reading Elisha's persistence through it. The plural "women" in Hebrews is usually understood to gather up exactly two episodes, Zarephath and Shunem, which makes this the New Testament's own summary of the unit. The link cannot be tiered verbal: Hebrews is Greek and Kings is Hebrew, so no shared Strong's lexeme can exist between them, and the Verifier offers no basis. What can be said is that the epistle credits the raising to faith, and locates that faith in the women rather than in the prophets, which is a reading of this chapter that the Hebrew narrative itself supports: the mother's oath at v. 30 is the reason Elisha comes at all.

Hebrews 11:35

basis: Cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew), so shared Strong's numbers are impossible and no verbal tier is available. Basis: Hebrews 11:35 is a summary allusion, not a quotation, and Benson and Barnes both cite it against this unit in the brief.

He gave him to his mother ancient/widely-held

⚙ Elisha's last word in the miracle is an imperative to a mother: שְׂאִ֥י בְנֵֽךְ, lift up thy son (nâsâʼ, H5375). It is the same root the father used at v. 19 to have a dying boy lifted and carried off, now turned around. Ellicott sets the Gospel line beside it without argument, because none is needed: "So our Lord 'delivered to his mother' the young man whom He raised from death by His word (Luke 7:15)." Barnes and Cambridge give the identical cross-reference independently. The correspondence is not only verbal but situational: at Nain it is a widow's only son, carried out of the town on a bier, and the evangelist's whole note is the handing back. Both stories end not with the prophet's glory but with a woman holding her living child, and in both the narrator declines to say anything at all about what the boy saw. This is the ancient and widely held reading of the verse, recorded by three of the commentators in this brief.

Luke 7:15

By prayer, and by a word ancient/widely-held

⚙ K&D states the contrast at length and it is worth preserving intact, because it is the oldest Christian reading of the Elisha raisings. Elijah and Elisha both "accomplished the miracle through their prayer"; Christ "recalled the dead to life by one word of His omnipotence" (Mark 5:39 to 42; Luke 7:13 to 15; John 11:43 to 44), which K&D takes as "a sign that He was the only-begotten Son of God, to whom the Father gave to have life in Himself, even as the Father has life in Himself" (John 5:25 and following). He adds the further step: Peter, at Joppa, raises Tabitha through prayer in that name, so the apostolic pattern is Elisha's pattern, not Christ's. The structural point stands independently of K&D's contested claim about Elisha's lesser measure of spirit. Elisha must shut a door, pray, climb a bed, lie on a corpse, get up, pace, and lie down again; what he cannot do is speak. The gap between the prophet who labours over the dead and the Lord who addresses them is exactly the gap the Gospels are written to display.

John 11:43 · Luke 7:13 · John 5:25 · Acts 9:40

Mouth upon mouth: the living laid down on the dead novel

⚙ This is a figural reading, offered as such. The shape of the miracle is a descent and a contact. The prophet goes up to a bed and comes down onto a body, and the text is almost uncomfortably specific about the fit: mouth on mouth, eyes on eyes, כַּפָּ֣יו (kaph, H3709, the hollow of the hand) on palms, until וַיָּ֖חָם, and it became warm. Ellicott reads the warming as "the life of the Divine Spirit which was in Elisha" imparted by contact, and sends the reader to Genesis 2:7, where God breathes into a shaped body mouth-first. Poole insists the heat was not transferred physically but proceeded "from a principle of life, which was already infused into the child." Geneva's note (q) takes the posture as a standing figure for ministry, "the care that should be in them, who bear the word of God and are distributors of spiritual life," and Henry applies it the same way: "Those who would convey spiritual life to dead souls, must feel deeply for their case." ⚙ My own extension beyond those sources, and I mark it as mine: the pattern of a living one who takes the exact dimensions of a dead one, in a shut room, and gives his own warmth into it until the dead breathes, is the pattern of the incarnation and of the cross, and the seven sneezes are the first respiration of a body that did not breathe on its own. Geneva, Ellicott, Poole and Henry supply the elements; the christological shape I am drawing from them is novel and should be tested.

Genesis 2:7 · Acts 20:10