Shunammite Woman

Biblical Account

She appears in 2 Kings 4:8–37 and 8:1–6. Scripture does not give her name. Shunem, where she lived, is known as a village near the Jezreel Valley. The New Korean Revised Version calls her a "noble woman" (KJV: "a great woman"). The underlying Hebrew term is understood to denote a person of wealth or standing.

She often provided meals for Elisha when he passed through Shunem. Eventually she spoke to her husband, and they built a small chamber furnished with a bed, a table, a stool, and a candlestick where he could stay. When Elisha, through his servant Gehazi, asked what might be done for her in return, she declined, saying, "I dwell among mine own people" (2 Kings 4:13). When Gehazi told Elisha that she had no son and that her husband was old, Elisha told her that she would embrace a son the following year, and it came to pass as he had said.

When the child had grown, he complained of pain in his head while in the harvest field and died on his mother's lap. The woman laid the child on Elisha's bed and went to find Elisha at Mount Carmel. To those who asked after her welfare along the way, she answered only, "It is well." When she reached Elisha, she caught hold of his feet. Gehazi went ahead with the prophet's staff and laid it on the child's face, but there was no response. Elisha, who followed, prayed and stretched himself upon the child, and "the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes" (2 Kings 4:35).

In chapter 8, following Elisha's counsel, she went to live in the land of the Philistines during a seven-year famine. On her return she appealed to the king to recover her house and land. At that very moment Gehazi was telling the king how Elisha had restored the child to life. The king ordered that her land be returned to her, together with all its produce during her absence.

Significance within Scripture

This narrative parallels Elijah's raising of the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17). It is commonly interpreted as showing that Elisha is the prophet who carries on Elijah's ministry. The New Testament does not mention her by name. Many interpreters, however, hold that Hebrews 11:35, "Women received their dead raised to life again," refers to this woman and the widow of Zarephath. The account is also read in connection with Jesus' raising of the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7). Nain is thought to lie near Shunem.

Interpretation and Points of Discussion

• Many commentators read her as a model of hospitality and faith. Some interpreters also note that she, rather than her husband, takes the initiative in making decisions and acting on them.
• Interpretations differ over her words "It is well" after the child's death. Some see them as a confession of faith; others see them as a determination to go straight to the prophet without disclosing what had happened.
• In historical-critical scholarship, the Elisha stories are regarded as a collection of prophetic traditions, and the chronological relationship between chapters 4 and 8 is also debated.
• Abishag, who attended David in his old age (1 Kings 1:3), is also called "a Shunammite," but in Scripture the two are different people. The tradition that this woman's son later became the prophet Habakkuk is found only in some Jewish sources and not in the Bible.

In the Korean Church

Sermons frequently emphasize her devoted hospitality toward the prophet, the faith she displayed in the midst of suffering, and the earnestness with which she clung to Elisha's feet. Some sermons apply the account of her hospitality as an example of serving ministers. Others, however, caution against narrowing the passage to a lesson about hospitality toward pastors alone. In Sunday schools, it is taught mainly as the story of Elisha raising a dead child.