Elisha and the Widow’s Oil

4 Now the wife of a member of the company of prophets cried to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant feared the Lord, but a creditor has come to take my two children as slaves.”^(A)

³ The company of prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha and said to him, “Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?” And he said, “Yes, I know; keep silent.”^(A)

²⁵ and, as he could not pay, the lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions and payment to be made.

² For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many; we must get grain, so that we may eat and stay alive.” ³ There were also those who said, “We are having to pledge our fields, our vineyards, and our houses in order to get grain during the famine.” ⁴ And there were those who said, “We are having to borrow money on our fields and vineyards to pay the king’s tax.^{(A) 5} Now our flesh is the same as that of our kindred; our children are the same as their children; and yet we are forcing our sons and daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have been ravished; we are powerless, and our fields and vineyards now belong to others.”^(B)

⁵ And from the throne came a voice saying,

³⁹ “If any who are dependent on you become so impoverished that they sell themselves to you, you shall not make them serve as slaves.^{(A) 40} They shall remain with you as hired or bound laborers. They shall serve with you until the year of the Jubilee. ⁴¹ Then they and their children with them shall go out from your authority; they shall go back to their own family and return to their ancestral property.^(B)

² But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.^(A)

¹³ For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.^(A)

²⁶ “Brothers and sisters,^[a] you descendants of Abraham’s family and others who fear God, to us^[b] the message of this salvation has been sent.