A Double Portion, and What He Did With It

When Elijah is taken up in the whirlwind, Elisha tears his own clothes, picks up the fallen mantle, and strikes the Jordan with it just as his master had. The water parts, and the sons of the prophets watching from Jericho recognize at once that the spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha. He had asked for a double portion of that spirit before the ascent, the customary share of a firstborn heir, and the biblical narrative bears the claim out: Elisha performs roughly twice as many wonders as Elijah across his own, longer ministry.

The miracles that follow are domestic and civic as often as they are dramatic. He multiplies a widow's jar of oil so she can pay her debts and keep her sons out of slavery. He restores life to the son of a Shunammite woman who had given him lodging, after first sending his servant Gehazi ahead with his staff, which fails to revive the child, so Elisha comes himself and stretches out over the body. He purifies a pot of poisoned stew for the company of prophets, feeds a hundred men from twenty barley loaves with food left over, and makes a borrowed iron axe head float to the surface of the Jordan for a workman who feared he could not repay it. Each of these is a small crisis of ordinary life, not a national confrontation like Carmel, which is part of why Elisha's ministry reads as more embedded in daily community than Elijah's.