Elisha — The Double Portion

He asked for twice Elijah's spirit — and performed twice as many recorded miracles

The Call — Following the Plow

When Elijah received the command to anoint Elisha as his successor, he found him plowing a field with twelve yoke of oxen — Elisha himself driving the twelfth. This was not a poor man's work. Twelve yoke of oxen was substantial wealth. Elisha came from means.

Elijah passed by and threw his mantle — his prophet's cloak — over Elisha's shoulders. That was the call. No words. Just the cloak. Elisha understood immediately what it meant and what it would cost:

1 Kings 19:19–21

“And he left the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said, Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee. And he said unto him, Go back again: for what have I done to thee? And he returned back from him, and took a yoke of oxen, and slew them, and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen, and gave unto the people, and they did eat. Then he arose, and went after Elijah, and ministered unto him.”

He killed his oxen, burned his plow, fed the people, and left. He burned the boat. There was no returning to the farm. This is the character of the man before a single miracle is recorded — total commitment, expressed by destroying the thing that would have let him turn back.

The Double Portion

When Elijah was about to be taken up into heaven, he asked Elisha what he wanted. The request Elisha made was remarkable for its boldness and its understanding of what he was asking:

2 Kings 2:9

“And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.”

Elijah's response acknowledged the magnitude of the request: “Thou hast asked a hard thing.” The condition was that Elisha would see Elijah taken up. He did. A chariot and horses of fire appeared, Elijah went up in a whirlwind, and Elisha saw it — and cried out, “My father, my father.” He picked up Elijah's fallen mantle, struck the Jordan River with it, and the waters parted. The double portion had been granted.

The Old Testament records approximately eight miracles performed by Elijah. Elisha performed at least sixteen — including two resurrections compared to Elijah's one, and one posthumously, when a dead man's body touched Elisha's bones in the tomb and the man revived (2 Kings 13:21). The double portion was literal.

The Invisible Army of Angels

When the king of Syria sent an army to capture Elisha at Dothan, Elisha's servant woke up and panicked — the city was surrounded by horses and chariots. Elisha's response is one of the most significant statements in all of scripture about the relationship between the physical and spiritual worlds:

2 Kings 6:16–17

“And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.”

The servant needed his eyes opened to see what was already there. The angelic army was already surrounding them. Elisha knew it. His servant didn't — not until Elisha prayed for his vision to be expanded.

This passage matters to LDS theology because it affirms what the restored gospel teaches explicitly: there is more going on than the natural eye can see. The veil is thin. God's hosts are present. The question is not whether they are there — it is whether our eyes have been opened to perceive them.

Healing Naaman the Leper — What It Teaches About Covenant

Naaman was the commander of Syria's army — an enemy of Israel, a powerful man, and a leper. A young Israelite servant girl in his household told him about the prophet Elisha. Naaman traveled to Israel with silver, gold, and expensive garments, expecting a grand reception.

Elisha did not come out to meet him. He sent a messenger with a simple instruction: wash seven times in the Jordan River. Naaman was furious. He expected drama — a prophet waving his hand, calling on the name of his God, performing something visibly impressive. A river? The Jordan wasn't even as good as Syria's rivers.

His servants persuaded him to try it anyway. He dipped seven times. His flesh was restored like a little child's. And Naaman returned with a declaration that remains startling from a Syrian general: “Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel” (2 Kings 5:15).

The healing of Naaman teaches two things simultaneously: first, that God's power extends to anyone who will follow His instructions — even a Syrian general, even an enemy; and second, that covenant obedience often looks smaller than we expect. Seven dips in a muddy river. The instructions God gives are not calibrated to impress. They are calibrated to change the one who obeys them.

Raising the Dead

The Shunammite woman had shown hospitality to Elisha repeatedly — she and her husband had built him a room on their roof. In return, Elisha prophesied that she would have a son, though her husband was old. She did. Years later, the boy died suddenly in his mother's lap at harvest time.

She did not tell her husband the boy was dead. She saddled a donkey, rode to find Elisha, and when she reached him she fell at his feet. Her statement to him was plain and devastating: “Did I desire a son of my lord? did I not say, Do not deceive me?”

Elisha went to the house, stretched himself upon the child, prayed, and the child came back to life (2 Kings 4:34–35). This miracle — like Elijah's resurrection of the widow's son, and like Christ's resurrection of Lazarus — demonstrates the same truth: the God of Israel has power over death itself. These are not merely impressive events. They are previews of resurrection.

LDS doctrine teaches that resurrection is a literal, physical, universal event — that every person who has died will rise again. The resurrections performed by Elijah, Elisha, and Christ are sign-acts pointing toward that universal truth. God does not merely preserve. He restores.

Multiplying Food

When a man brought twenty loaves of barley bread and some grain to Elisha, Elisha told him to set it before one hundred men. The servant objected: how can twenty loaves feed a hundred men? Elisha repeated the command. The hundred ate and had some left over (2 Kings 4:42–44).

Anyone who knows the Gospels recognizes this story immediately. Elisha's multiplication of food foreshadows Christ's feeding of the five thousand so precisely that it cannot be accidental. The same dynamic, the same objection, the same command, the same result with leftovers. Christ was not inventing a new miracle. He was completing a pattern that God had established centuries earlier through Elisha.

The Ax Head Floats

A company of prophets was cutting timber by the Jordan. One of them lost his borrowed ax head in the river — a crisis, since iron tools were expensive and hard to replace. He cried out to Elisha. Elisha cut a stick and threw it in the water where the ax head had fallen, and the iron floated to the surface (2 Kings 6:5–7).

This is not one of the grand, nation-altering miracles. It is a small act of practical mercy for one worried man who had borrowed something he couldn't afford to lose. Elisha's ministry consistently included both registers — the parting of rivers and the floating ax head, national deliverance and individual compassion. God's power is not reserved for crises of historical importance. He attends to what matters to you.

What Every Miracle Points To

Elisha's miracles follow a pattern that runs through all of scripture: they are not demonstrations of raw power for its own sake. They are acts of restoration — restoring health to the leper, restoring life to the dead child, restoring food to the hungry, restoring the borrowed ax head to the borrower. Every miracle is a local enactment of what God is doing on a cosmic scale.

Elisha's Miracles — The Record

• Waters healed at Jericho — 2 Kings 2:19–22
• The widow's oil multiplied — 2 Kings 4:1–7
• The Shunammite's son raised — 2 Kings 4:8–37
• Poisoned stew made safe — 2 Kings 4:38–41
• Twenty loaves feeding one hundred — 2 Kings 4:42–44
• Naaman the leper healed — 2 Kings 5:1–19
• Iron ax head floated — 2 Kings 6:1–7
• Syrian army blinded and led captive — 2 Kings 6:8–23
• Dead man revived at his tomb — 2 Kings 13:21

Christ's ministry echoed Elisha's at every point — healing lepers, multiplying food, raising the dead, restoring sight. The correspondence is not coincidence. It is the pattern of the One whose spirit Elisha carried, manifesting itself through successive servants until it was fully embodied in the Son of God Himself.

Elisha asked for a double portion. He got it. What he did with it was to point, again and again, toward the One in whom all those restorations would be made permanent — who would not merely raise the dead temporarily, but abolish death itself.