Prophecy in 2 Kings

As Elijah and Elisha walk on together, “a fiery chariot and fiery horses came between the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.” (2:11)

Reading

Elijah does not die. He crosses the Jordan with Elisha and is taken up, and Elisha cries out after him as his father and Israel's true strength (2:12). Because Elijah was taken alive, Israel waited for him to come back: Malachi promises that God will send Elijah the prophet before the day of the LORD, to turn the hearts of fathers to their children (Malachi 3:23–24), and Sirach says he was taken up to be ready for the appointed time (Sirach 48:9–10).

Fulfilled

John the Baptist comes in the spirit and power of Elijah (Luke 1:17), and Jesus says, “Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him” (Matthew 17:12). On the mountain of the Transfiguration, “Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him” (17:3). Elijah's ascent also foreshadows Christ's Ascension, though Christ goes up not in a borrowed chariot but by his own power.

Why mystery

Jesus also says “Elijah will indeed come and restore all things” (Matthew 17:11), and many Fathers expected Elijah to return before the end, often seeing him as one of the two witnesses of Revelation 11. The Church has not defined this; it remains open, and is no ground for naming times or persons.

See also

Prophecy in Malachi: Elijah before the day of the LORD.

“May I receive a double portion of your spirit.” (2:9)

Reading

Elisha asks for the inheritance of a firstborn son, a double share, of his master's spirit. Elijah says it will be his if he sees him taken up (2:10). Elisha sees, takes up the mantle that fell from Elijah, strikes the Jordan, and the waters part as they did for his master. The prophets of Jericho recognize that the spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha (2:15).

Fulfilled

This is a type drawn out in Christian reading, not a prediction. The disciples watch Jesus taken up (Acts 1:9) and wait for the promised Spirit (1:8), which comes upon them at Pentecost (2:4), so that they do the works he did and greater ones (John 14:12). The apostles' signs in Acts continue those of Jesus, as Elisha's continued Elijah's.

Unfolding

The mantle has not been put down. The Spirit given to the Church passes from generation to generation, and every confirmation is a share in it.

“Give it to the people to eat, for thus says the LORD: You will eat and have some left over.” (4:43)

Reading

A widow about to lose her sons to a creditor has “nothing in the house but a jug of oil” (4:2). At Elisha's word it fills every vessel she can borrow, until “There is none left” (4:6). Later a man brings Elisha “twenty barley loaves” (4:42); his servant asks, “How can I set this before a hundred?” (4:43). They eat, and “they had some left over, according to the word of the LORD” (4:44).

Fulfilled

John tells the feeding of the five thousand with this chapter in view. A boy has “five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?” (John 6:9). All eat their fill, and twelve baskets of fragments are gathered (6:12–13). What Elisha did for a hundred, Jesus does for thousands, and then gives himself as the bread from heaven (6:51). The liturgy reads 2 Kings 4:42–44 with John 6:1–15 on the same Sunday.

“So Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times, according to the word of the man of God. His flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.” (5:14)

Reading

Naaman, a Syrian general and a leper, comes to Elisha expecting a great rite. He is told only, “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will heal, and you will be clean” (5:10). He nearly refuses, then obeys, and is healed with the flesh of a child. He returns confessing, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel” (5:15).

Fulfilled

Jesus names Naaman at Nazareth: “there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 4:27). The Fathers read his washing as a figure of Baptism: a foreigner made new in the Jordan, the river where Christ would be baptized, coming up with the flesh of a little child, born again. St. Ambrose explains it this way to the newly baptized in his On the Mysteries. The liturgy reads this chapter with Luke 4:24–30 in Lent, the season of preparation for Baptism.

Unfolding

The nations still come to the waters. Every Baptism repeats what Naaman learned: salvation is God's gift, received in humility through a simple sign.

“He spoke kindly to him and gave him a throne higher than that of the other kings who were with him in Babylon.” (25:28)

Reading

Nebuchadnezzar's army breaks into Jerusalem. “He burned the house of the LORD, the house of the king, and all the houses of Jerusalem” (25:9). “And thus Judah went into exile from their native soil” (25:21). It seems the end of the temple, the land and the throne promised to David forever (2 Samuel 7:16). But the book ends with Jehoiachin, the exiled king of David's line, raised up from prison in the thirty-seventh year of his exile; “he ate regularly in the king's presence as long as he lived” (25:29).

Fulfilled

The Catechism says the exile, which looked like the failure of the promises, was in fact a sign of God's faithfulness and the beginning of a promised restoration, already in the shadow of the Cross (CCC 710). The line did not die out. Matthew traces it through the exile: “After the Babylonian exile, Jechoniah became the father of Shealtiel” (Matthew 1:12), and counts “from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah, fourteen generations” (1:17). The king lifted from prison to a place of honor at the table points to the Son of David raised from the tomb.

See also

Prophecy in Jeremiah, the prophet of the fall of Jerusalem.