- 88-
It was quite in accordance with all this, and very significant, that in silence she
carried her dead child to the prophet's chamber, and there laid him on the bed. Here
let him rest, as it were, in keeping of the prophet's God, whose promise had first
brought him, till, if ever, the prophet's God would again waken him. And so, like the
prophet's widow when she received the Divine help, she shut the door. For, what had
man to do with it? her appeal lay directly to God. But she must have been a strong as
well as a good woman, strong also in faith, when she could so well keep her feelings
under control that her husband had not even suspicion of aught amiss when she
preferred the unusual request that one of the servants and one of the beasts of burden
should be sent back from the field, that she might at once resort to the man of God.
For it was neither New Moon nor Sabbath, when, as we are led to infer, the prophet
was wont to give religious instruction, and people gathered around him, and perhaps
came to Carmel from a considerable distance.^178
With a deprecating "Peace" - as it were, Pray let it be so – she waved aside the
inquiry of the busy man. And, once her home behind her, she fully gave herself to
what was before her. It was no longer a weak woman on whom the greatest earthly
sorrow had descended, but one strong, resolute, bent on a great purpose, and wholly
self-forgetful. As she had herself, no doubt for speed, seen to the saddling of the ass
(v. 24), so she now bade the servant: "drive on,^179 go; delay me not in my riding
[hinder me not, keep me not back], unless I bid thee."
The sun must have been declining towards the west, when, after that ride of fifteen or
twenty miles, she was nearing Carmel. From a bluff of the mountain the prophet had
been watching the rider speeding in such haste across the plain, and recognized the
Shunammite. Although not Divinely informed, and therefore not Divinely assured of
a happy issue, he must have known that only some great trouble to herself, her
husband, or her child, would have brought her on that afternoon and in such manner.
And so he sent Gehazi to meet her with an inquiry meant to reassure her, at least so
far as his own interest and sympathy were concerned. But all the more that she so
understood it, would she be neither detained by Gehazi, nor could she have opened
her heart to him. Indeed, to have attempted telling her sorrow or her need to any man
would have been to unfit her, in every sense, for telling it to the prophet. At sight of
Elisha the strong woman for the first time gave way. She had reached the goal, and
now in an agony of passion she threw herself at his feet and laid hold on them, as if
in her despair she could not let him go without helping her. It was, as in Jacob's
wrestling with the Angel, the mode of agonizing prayer suited to Old Testament
times, when God and His help, and, indeed, most spiritual realities were presented in
a concrete manner. From a spurious zeal for his master's honor, from false notions of
what became, or did not become - the consequences of his utter want of spiritual
insight and sympathy - Gehazi would have thrust her away. So would the multitude
have silenced blind Bartimaeus, and even the disciples sent away the importunate
(^)