13. Elisha said to Gehazi, “Tell her, ‘We appreciate the kind concern you have shown us. What can we do for you? Can we put in a good word for you to the king or to the commander of the army?’”“No,” she replied, “my family takes good care of me.”
14. Later Elisha asked Gehazi, “What can we do for her?”Gehazi replied, “She doesn’t have a son, and her husband is an old man.”
15. “Call her back again,” Elisha told him. When the woman returned, Elisha said to her as she stood in the doorway,
16. “Next year at this time you will be holding a son in your arms!”“No, my lord!” she cried. “O man of God, don’t deceive me and get my hopes up like that.”
17. But sure enough, the woman soon became pregnant. And at that time the following year she had a son, just as Elisha had said.
18. One day when her child was older, he went out to help his father, who was working with the harvesters.
19. Suddenly he cried out, “My head hurts! My head hurts!”His father said to one of the servants, “Carry him home to his mother.”
20. So the servant took him home, and his mother held him on her lap. But around noontime he died.
21. She carried him up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, then shut the door and left him there.
22. She sent a message to her husband: “Send one of the servants and a donkey so that I can hurry to the man of God and come right back.”
23. “Why go today?” he asked. “It is neither a new moon festival nor a Sabbath.”But she said, “It will be all right.”
24. So she saddled the donkey and said to the servant, “Hurry! Don’t slow down unless I tell you to.”
25. As she approached the man of God at Mount Carmel, Elisha saw her in the distance. He said to Gehazi, “Look, the woman from Shunem is coming.
26. Run out to meet her and ask her, ‘Is everything all right with you, your husband, and your child?’”“Yes,” the woman told Gehazi, “everything is fine.”
27. But when she came to the man of God at the mountain, she fell to the ground before him and caught hold of his feet. Gehazi began to push her away, but the man of God said, “Leave her alone. She is deeply troubled, but the lord has not told me what it is.”
28. Then she said, “Did I ask you for a son, my lord? And didn’t I say, ‘Don’t deceive me and get my hopes up’?”
29. Then Elisha said to Gehazi, “Get ready to travel; take my staff and go! Don’t talk to anyone along the way. Go quickly and lay the staff on the child’s face.”