Even His Bones Kept Working

Elisha's ministry reaches beyond individual wonders into the politics of two kingdoms. He sends a member of the prophetic guild to anoint Jehu as king of Israel with instructions to destroy the house of Ahab, setting in motion the bloody end of that dynasty. In Damascus he weeps before Hazael, foreseeing the harm Hazael will do to Israel once he succeeds Ben-Hadad as king of Aram, and Hazael becomes king shortly after their meeting. Both episodes place a prophet, rather than a priest or a king's own court, at the hinge of dynastic succession in two separate nations.

His best known single story is the healing of Naaman, the commander of the Aramean army, who arrives in Israel seeking a cure for his leprosy and is offended to be told, secondhand through a messenger, simply to wash seven times in the Jordan. Naaman's recovery after he swallows his pride and obeys becomes a story about who God will heal and on what terms, later cited as an example that mercy has never been confined to Israel alone. Elisha's own death is unremarkable by comparison, an illness rather than a translation to heaven, but the biblical text adds one more wonder after it: a corpse hastily thrown into his tomb to escape a raiding party touches Elisha's bones and comes back to life, the only posthumous miracle attributed to any figure in the Hebrew Bible.