SUMMARY OF 2 KINGS 2:4:38-44
Elisha instructs his servant to feed the company of prophets. The servant collects a wild vine’s gourds and cooked it in the stew. The men could not eat it because it tasted of death. Elisha put some flour in the stew to neutralize the bad ingredients.
Elisha feeds 100 men with 20 loaves of barley bread and some heads of new grain. The Lord had said the men would eat and have some left over.
BSF Study Questions People of the Promise: Kingdom Divided Lesson 9, Day 4: 2 Kings 4:38-44
8 ) The needs are the basic need to eat.
9a) God is showing how he cares to meet our basic needs.
b) None.
10) It’s encouraging because sometimes it is the little things or the basic things that can be the most meaningful to others.
Conclusions BSF Study Questions People of the Promise: Kingdom Divided Lesson 9, Day 4: 2 Kings 4:38-44
More great miracles I had forgotten. Immediately upon reading Elisha feeding the 100, you think of Jesus feeding the 5,000. How great the Lord is to show his people precursors to Jesus.
End Notes BSF Study Questions People of the Promise: Kingdom Divided Lesson 9, Day 4: 2 Kings 4:38-44
The famine mentioned in verse 38 may be the seven-year famine alluded to in 2 Kings 8:1-3
Elisha feels he has to fix the food since it was his servant that mistakenly prepared a bad food to eat. Some Bible scholars think it was a gourd known as colocynth that grows near the Dead Sea. It can be fatal, and it tastes extremely bitter. God purified the pot; not the flour.
Normally, firstfruits were reserved for God (Leviticus 23:20) and the Levitical priests (Numbers 18:13; Deuteronomy 18:4-5). Because the religion in the Northern Kingdom was apostate, the loaves of bread were brought to the most religious person.
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