Prophet Elisha (Israel)

Elisha son of Shaphat was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen at Abel-meholah when Elijah threw his mantle over him (1 Kings 19:19–21). At the Jordan, the Bible tells, he asked his master for a "double portion" of his spirit, saw him swept up in a whirlwind with a chariot of fire, then parted the river himself with the fallen mantle. The deeds of 2 Kings 2–13 follow: he healed Jericho's bad spring with a bowl of salt; filled a widow's borrowed jars with oil so creditors could not enslave her sons; promised a son to the Shunammite woman who had built him a rooftop room, later raising the boy from death; and cured Naaman, Aram's army commander, of leprosy by sending him to dip seven times in the Jordan. At Dothan he struck an Aramean force sent to seize him with blindness and led it into Samaria, and when Ben-hadad's siege starved the city he foretold its relief: the Arameans fled overnight.

Over some fifty years, from Jehoram to Joash, he also helped make kings. In Damascus he wept as he told Hazael he would rule Aram and ravage Israel, and he sent a disciple to anoint Jehu, who wiped out Ahab's dynasty. Dying, he had King Joash shoot "the arrow of victory" over Aram, and a corpse later thrown into his tomb revived on touching his bones. Hazael and Jehu both appear in Assyrian inscriptions, and Jericho's spring, Ein es-Sultan, is still called Elisha's Spring.