Second Kings 13:20-21
‘Elisha had fallen sick of the illness from which he died…. And Elisha died, and they buried him…. The bands of the Moabites invaded…. As they (the Israelites) were burying a man…, they spied a band of men…. They cast the man into the tomb of Elisha. And when the man, let down, touched the bones of Elisha — he revived and stood up on his feet!’ Second Kings 13:214,0-21.
Unlike Elijah who was taken up into Heaven without dying, his successor Elisha the Prophet died. He became sick of a mortal illness. Then, after his death, he was buried here on Earth.
Elisha fell sick of a mortal disease, and died at a great age. He had been called by Elijah to be a Prophet in the reign of Ahab, and did not die till that of Joash. 41 years elapsed between the year that Ahab died and the commencement of the reign of Joash, so Elisha must have held his prophetical office for at least fifty years and have attained the age of 80.
They buried Elisha just as marauding bands of Moabites then entered the land. It came to pass, that at the burial of a man by the Israelites, they saw the marauding bands coming. So, in the greatest haste, the Israelites then placed the dead man in the grave of Elisha who had just been buried — for the purpose of escaping from the Moabites, and properly burying the dead man later.
Elisha was buried at the very time these yearly-returning Moabite marauders invaded the land. However, when another dead man was let down into the Prophet’s grave and touched the bones of the dead and buried Elisha, that other dead man revived and stood up on his feet. The body of the dead man, then, went and touched the dead and buried Elisha. But as soon as the dead man made contact with the dead Prophet, the dead man came back to life.
The earlier Israelites did not bury their dead in coffins, but just wrapped them in linen and then laid them in tombs hewn out of the rock. The tomb was then covered with a large stone, which could easily be removed. The dead man might therefore, on being let down, very easily have come into contact with the bones of the dead Elisha.
The purpose of this miracle of the restoration of the dead man back to life, was not to show how even in his grave Elisha surpassed his predecessor Elijah in miraculous power. It was rather to impress the seal of divine attestation upon the prophecies of Elisha when dead, concerning the then-future victory of Joash over the Syrians (Second Kings 13:14-18).
The Lord thereby bore witness that He was not only the God of the dead, but also of the living. For His Spirit was thereby seen to have been raised above death and corruptibility.
The prophecy which Elisha uttered before his death, was here soon followed by the account of its fulfilment (Second 13:22-25). For Joash then again took from the Syrian Hazael the cities which the latter had earlier taken from Israel. All these revivals, then, followed the death of Elisha!
