This chapter treats of the miracles of Elisha, of his multiplying a poor widow's pot of oil for the payment of her husband's debts, 2Ki 4:1 of obtaining a son for a Shunamitish woman, who had been very hospitable to him, 2Ki 4:8, of his raising up her son to life when dead, 2Ki 4:18, of his curing the deadly pottage made of wild gourds, 2Ki 4:38, and of his feeding one hundred men with twenty barley loaves, 2Ki 4:42.
Ver. 1. Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha,.... This, according to the Targum, was the wife of Obadiah, who had hid the prophets by fifty in a cave in the times of Ahab; and so Josephus , and it is the commonly received notion of the Jewish writers; though it does not appear that he was a prophet, or the son of a prophet, but the governor or steward of Ahab's house; she was more likely to be the wife of a meaner person; and from hence it is clear that the prophets and their disciples married:saying, thy servant my husband is dead; which is the lot of prophets, as well as others, Zec 1:5and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord; her husband was well known to the prophet, and known to be a good man, one of the 7000 who bowed not the knee to Baal, for the truth of which she appeals to Elisha; and this character she gives of her husband, lest it should be thought that his poverty, and leaving her in debt, were owing to any ill practices of his:and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen; which it seems were allowed of when men became poor and insolvent, and died so, to which the allusion is in Isa 1:1,See Gill on "Mt 18:25".
Josephus suggests, that the insolvency of this man was owing to his borrowing money to feed the prophets hid in the cave; and it is a common notion of the Jews that this creditor was Jehoram the son of Ahab; and in later times it was a law with the Athenians , that if a father had not paid what he was fined in court, the son was obliged to pay it, and in the mean while to lie in bonds, as was the case of Cimon , and others.
Antiqu. l. 9. c. 4. sect. 2. Ibid. Alex. ab Alex. Genial. Dier. l. 6. c. 10. Cornel. Nep. in Vita Cimon. l. 5. c.