Musings on II Kings 4: 42-44 -- Elisha feeds 100

An interesting interlude. II Kings 4:42-44 -- 

Elisha feeding 100 men with “twenty loaves of barley and full ears of corn in the husk thereof.” Actually, he didn’t feed the people directly. He said to the servant (Gehazi perhaps) who had produced the provision, “Give unto the people, that they may eat... They shall eat and leave thereof.”* 

(Remember, there was “a dearth in the land,” and Elisha had already purified meal for the prophets. The 100 were probably the membership of the prophetic college of Gilgal, not all of them local – the number possibly enlarged because Elisha was visiting.)

*They shall eat, and shall leave thereof.—Heb., eating and leaving! an exclamatory mode of speech, natural in hurried and vehement utterance (Elliott’s Commentary for English Readers).

(“Eat and run”?) (“Run and not be weary, walk and not faint”?) (Get on with God’s work?)

Joyce Voysey

Ed. Of course, we are reminded of Jesus, an exemplary student of the Hebrew Scriptures who would have learned this story and then put the spiritual lesson into practical use by feeding thousands on more than one occasion. I love how Elisha says: Go ahead, for the Lord says there will be plenty for all, and some even be left over!" (II Kings 4: 43). That's gratitude in advance. Likewise, Jesus gave thanks for what they had and subsequently Jesus' disciples gathered twelve baskets of leftovers (John 6: 1-13). 

Jesus' follower, Paul, was therefore able to instruct his fellow travellers to "Let love be your greatest aim" (The Living Bible I Corinthians 14:1). "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy). 

 

 

The object, therefore, in communicating this account is not to relate another miracle of Elisha, but to show how the Lord cared for His servants, and assigned to them that which had been appropriated in the law to the Levitical priests, who were to receive, according to Deuteronomy 18:4-5, and Numbers 18:13, the first-fruits of corn, new wine, and oil. This account therefore furnishes fresh evidence that the godly men in Israel did not regard the worship introduced by Jeroboam (his state-church) as legitimate worship, but sought and found in the schools of the prophets a substitute for the lawful worship of God (vid., Hengstenberg, Beitrr. ii. S. 136f.).

Keil and Deitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

 

And how was it with Jesus who no doubt knew this story intimately? He also didn’t feed the people directly. He gave to the disciples and they did the distributing in an orderly fashion.

And they all ate and left thereof. Left, to a degree, the material sense of substance.