Elisha

Elijah leaves his prophetic cloak behind for his disciple Elisha. Elisha's miracles are reported to have been even more numerous and spectacular than those of his predecessor. In the course of his career, Elisha causes an iron ax head to float on water, a child to rise from the dead, jars of oil to fill magically,

poisoned soup to become edible, twenty barley loaves to feed 100 men, and lepers to be cleansed; he also foretells droughts, famines, victories, and deaths.

The healing of Naaman

Naaman was a Syrian army commander who had leprosy. Naaman had heard of Elisha through an Israelite slave girl. When Naaman came to Elisha, he offered to pay for the cure. Elisha refused, but instructed Naaman to wash seven times in the Jordan River. When the leprosy disappeared, he tried again to pay Elisha, but the payment was refused. Gehazi, Elisha's servant, followed Naaman and told him that Elisha had changed his mind. He took Naaman's money. When Elisha found out what Gehazi had done, he cursed him with Naaman's leprosy (5:1-27).

Elisha secretly anoints Jehu

Jehu is a former captain of Ahab's guard. Elisha anoints him king of Israel. Jehu plunges Israel into a bloodbath. Citing Elijah's curse on Ahab's house, Jehu totally annihilated Ahab's dynasty. Jehu also assembled all Baal worshipers in the great temple that Ahab had built in Samaria, the capital city, and orders eighty trusted executioners to kill everyone inside. The temple is demolished and its site turned into a public latrine. For all his savage zeal, however, even Jehu does not entirely win the Deuteronomists' approval. In neglecting to remove Jeroboam's golden calves from Bethel and Dan, he did not serve Yahweh wholeheartedly. Nor was Jehu an effective king in a secular sense. His purges and massacres may have pleased some, but he left Israel politically weak without allies, and considerably smaller in size than it had been under Omri and Ahab.