Elisha and the Widow - The Rest of the Story

There is a story in the prophets that is seven verses long. We will read it as it appears in written form. Then we will read it again, this time using commentary from the Talmud. And then we will read it a third time, using commentary from Kabbalah and Chassidus.

Kings II Chapter 4, Verses 1-7

"One woman, a wife of one of the prophet's student-prophets, cried out to Elisha, saying, 'Your servant, my husband, has died, and you know that your servant was G-d fearing. Now the creditor is coming to take my two children to be his slaves.'

"Elisha said to her, 'What can I do for you? Tell me, what have you in the house?'

"She said, 'Your maid has nothing in the house except for a pitcher of oil.'

"He said, 'Go, borrow empty vessels from all your neighbors - do not restrict the number of vessels. Then go in and lock the door behind you and behind your children. Pour from your pitcher of oil into all these empty vessels, and carry away the full ones and bring the empty ones to fill.'

"She went from him and locked the door behind her and behind her children. They brought vessels to her and she poured. When all the vessels were full she said to her son, 'Bring me another vessel.'

"He said to her, 'There is not another vessel,' and the oil stopped.

"She came and told the man of G-d, and he said, 'Go sell the oil and pay your creditor, and you and your children will live on what will remain.'

Left to ourselves, this is a simple enough story. A widow is in trouble, so she goes to the prophet Elisha for help, and he makes a miracle for her. Her pitcher of oil turns into a well of oil. Now she is able to pay off her creditor, save her children from slavery, and she is also saved from her dire poverty because there is something left over from the miracle that she and her children can live on. Nice.

Let's dig a little deeper.

The widow of one of Elisha's student-prophets came to him because she was in trouble with a creditor. If she didn't pay her debt, the creditor would take away her two sons. Our Sages tell us that the woman's husband was the Prophet Ovadiah, a minor prophet who passed away as a young man. He left his wife with many debts because he had borrowed money to hide and sustain 100 other prophets (Kings I, chapter 18). The widow tells Elisha that her husband was a G-d fearing man (see Kings I, 18:3). Upon his death, the debt came due. Elisha asks her what she has in the house, and when she tells him she has a pitcher of oil, he tells her to borrow empty vessels from her neighbors without stinting, and then go home, lock the door, and fill the vessels with the oil from her pitcher. The woman borrows the vessels, goes home, locks the door, and fills the vessels. When the vessels are already full, she doesn't know it and asks her son to give her another vessel. He tells her there are no more empty vessels, and the oil stops flowing. She returns to the man of G-d and tells him what happened, and he tells her to go and sell the oil and pay her debt. She and her children will live on what will remain.

This time around, we'll ask some questions. Why is this story included in the Jewish scriptures? What does it mean? What does it teach us? What's going on "between the lines"?

The first thing to note is that it has always been our tradition to go to a man of G-d for help when we have a problem. We should seek the holiest person we can find, the prophet of the generation. The prophet will not take it as an insult that he is being asked to help with a non-spiritual problem. The man of G-d offers advice, or performs a miracle, or does whatever else is necessary to help.

After the woman told Elisha about her problem, he asked her to tell him what she had in the house. Elisha asked her this question because even a miracle has to begin with something physical, natural and non-miraculous. If a miracle is completely detached from nature, then the miracle doesn't take on real existence. In order to create something real, there must be a connection or attachment to something already in existence. Even a man of G-d cannot create something out of nothing; only G-d Himself can do that. Elisha asked her what she had in the house because he needed something to work with and he needed to know what was available. The woman replied that she had a pitcher of oil, so Elisha worked with the oil. The pitcher of oil became a well of oil, and the woman was able to fill up all the empty vessels she had obtained.

When giving his instructions, Elisha told the woman to lock the door behind her before pouring the oil. This doesn't seem to be a very essential part of the story; why is it so important that she lock the door? Even if she had to lock the door, why does the Torah tell us about it? There are many incidents that the Torah skips. For example, the Torah doesn't bother to say that she went out and borrowed the vessels, and it doesn't mention how her neighbors responded - that's all completely omitted. We are told she left the prophet, locked the door and poured. Poured into what? So we know she went to her neighbors and borrowed. We are not told about the borrowing itself because it's not important and the Torah never wastes words. We are told about locking the doors, and we're told about it twice:

 "'Then go in and lock the door behind you and behind your children. . . .'"

"She went from him and locked the door behind her and behind her children."

What is the importance and significance of this?

Anything G-dly and anything holy demands modesty. A miracle, then, demands modesty. Without the modesty, the miracle won't happen. By mentioning the locked door twice, the Torah is emphasizing that the miracle could not have occurred without the modesty.

Another puzzling statement follows.

"When all the vessels were full she said to her son, 'Bring me another vessel.'

"He said to her, 'There is not another vessel,' and the oil stopped."

Why doesn't the Torah simply say, "When the vessels were full, the oil stopped"?

The oil did not stop flowing by itself when the vessels were full. The Torah states clearly that the vessels were full and yet the oil continued to flow (i.e., the woman asked for another vessel because the oil was still flowing). When the son said there were no more vessels, only then did the oil stop. The miracle stopped when someone said "no more." Had he not said that, the oil would have continued indefinitely, because no limit was placed on how much oil was going to come out of that pitcher. If there had been more vessels, there would have been oil to fill them. Even when there were no more vessels, as long as no one "turned off the tap," the oil continued pouring. When someone said "we have no more vessels," which means, "we can't take this miracle anymore, we can't contain it anymore," only then did the oil stop.

From this we learn that as long as we are able to receive goodness and holiness, that is, as long as we have the "vessels" to contain it, it will be given to us.

After the oil stopped, the woman went back to the prophet and told him what had happened. Elisha now instructed her to sell the oil. Why did she go back to Elisha? The Talmud says that while the vessels were being filled, the price of oil went up. The woman returned to Elisha to find out if she should sell now, or wait for the price of oil to rise more. Elisha told her to sell now, pay her debt, and then she and her children will live on what is left over. The Talmud explains that since Elisha didn't place any limit on "you and your children," this phrase includes all of the children's children and descendants. Therefore, this family would be wealthy until the end of the line, so to speak - until the resurrection of the dead. The woman and her descendants would continue to live on "what will remain" for all generations to come until the resurrection.

Two more questions. Why did the woman tell Elisha that her husband was a G-d fearing man? If he was the Prophet Ovadiah, didn't Elisha already know he was G-d fearing? And why did the woman "happen" to have a pitcher of oil? Why didn't she "happen" to have a pitcher of wine or a pitcher of water or a barrel of grain or a fruit tree in the back yard? Every word and every detail in the Torah is purposeful. The fact that the woman had a pitcher of oil means something. What? These questions cannot be answered at the level we just learned. We must take another look at the story, this time with an eye on the "soul" of the story.

The very first chapters of the Torah tells us that G-d created the world with speech. He said "Let there be" and so it was. When G-d said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures," animals were created. Animals have "animal souls." That is, animals have a life force which enables them to move around, to feed and defend themselves, to procreate, etc. Most of these instincts and activities are based on one fundamental drive: the will to survive. Man, too, was created by Divine speech, and so man, too, has a life force and a will to survive. But there is something more:

"G-d formed the man of dust from the ground, and He blew into his nostrils the soul of life; and man became a living being." (Genesis 2:7)

Something additional and unique took place when G-d created man. Not only did G-d say and there was, but G-d "blew into his nostrils the soul of life." So man has an "animal soul," because "G-d said," but man also has a "G-dly soul," because man became a living being only after G-d blew, from His own essence, the soul of life into Adam's nostrils. Human beings, then, are composed of earthy matter and animal souls, but we also have an element of Divinity. One aspect of the human being comes from "dust from the ground," and one aspect of the human being was breathed into our bodies by G-d. These two elements, "the animal soul" and "the G-dly soul" reside together in one body. The body and animal soul are created first, and then the G-dly soul, which once resided in G-d Himself, so to speak, is added.

Our story now takes on an astonishing dimension.

"One woman, a wife of one of the prophet's student-prophets, cried out to Elisha, saying, 'Your servant, my husband, has died, and you know that your servant was G-d fearing. Now the creditor is coming to take my two children to be his slaves.'

"Elisha said to her, 'What can I do for you? Tell me, what have you in the house?'

"She said, 'Your maid has nothing in the house except for a pitcher of oil.' "He said, 'Go, borrow empty vessels from all your neighbors - do not restrict the number of vessels. Then go in and lock the door behind you and behind your children. Pour from your pitcher of oil into all these empty vessels, and carry away the full ones and bring the empty ones to fill.'

"She went from him and locked the door behind her and behind her children. They brought vessels to her and she poured. When all the vessels were full she said to her son, 'Bring me another vessel.'

"He said to her, 'There is not another vessel,' and the oil stopped.

"She came and told the man of G-d, and he said, 'Go sell the oil and pay your creditor, and you and your children will live on what will remain.'

In Hebrew, the words for "one woman" are "Isha Echat." The Kabbalah and Chassidus tell us that the deeper, hidden, meaning of "Isha" is "the soul of fire" (i.e., the G-dly soul) because "Isha," is related to the Hebrew word, "Aish," or fire.

"Isha" is a minor prophet. A prophet is someone who hears G-d's call. The soul, every soul, hears G-d's call and each soul is therefore a prophet. In our story, Elisha is a man's name. In Hebrew, this word can be broken down into two: "Eli" "Sha" - my G-d who responds.

The story, then, is a record of a conversation between the G-dly soul and G-d Himself, the G-d who responds. The G-dly soul comes to G-d, crying, "I served you with a G-dly fire in Heaven. But now you have put me into a body, and this fire is dying."

The G-dly soul is completely spiritual. It was once united with G-d in Heaven, where it was able to bask in His holy perfection and experience fiery love and fear, uninhibited and undisturbed by constricting earthy concerns. The soul was taken from this paradise and put into a body already inhabited by an animal soul. The animal soul utterly confuses the G-dly soul with its drives and passions for material pursuits. The drives of the animal soul are not "bad" - but they are not spiritual. A physical being wants to eat, to drink, to be comfortable, and it loves physical gratification and is not by nature concerned with G-dliness. So the love that the soul had for G-d is now polluted with other loves. Consequently, the G-dly soul no longer feels the G-dly fire it had previously experienced as a matter of course.

So the soul continues, saying, "You know that I served you with fear." When the soul was in Heaven, it felt both a deep love for G-d and an intense fear and awe of Him. Fear and awe is what we experience when we are in the presence of greatness. We feel small and humble and we worry about making a blunder or a faux pas in the presence of the great one. When the soul was in Heaven, the Presence of G-d was unobstructed, but now the G-dly soul, living in the body, finds that G-d's greatness is concealed. The feeling of awe and fear is therefore lost, so the soul is bewildered and discouraged.

To make matters worse, the creditor, which is the animal soul, is constantly demanding. When the G-dly soul wants to pray or do a mitzvah or study Torah and thereby connect with G-d, the animal soul distracts it with demands: "I want to eat. I want to drink. I want to sleep. I want to play. I want to work." Now, though, the situation has become desperate: "The creditor is coming to take my two children to be his slaves."

"Children" represent the emotions. Love and fear of G-d are born out of an understanding of G-d, an awareness of His goodness and greatness, so they are the two children in the story. The soul is complaining that the animal soul not only injects its own version of love and its fear into the picture, but "it's so demanding that it actually wants to take my emotions to be its slaves." It wants the love of G-d to become a love of self. It wants the fear of G-d to become a fear of anything that will threaten my physical existence.

G-d says to the soul, "Tell me, what do you have in the house?" The G-dly soul is a complete structure; it has a whole set of talents. If its love and fear are not working and feel dead, what about compassion? What about intelligence? What about commitment? Where are the rest of the attributes that a soul has? The soul replies, "Your maid has nothing in the house except for a pitcher of oil."

The other attributes are not "in the house" because the animal soul has corrupted everything else by turning the G-dly soul's noble and exalted expressions into desires for self-gratification, luxuries, power and honor. True, the G-dly soul has talents, but the animal soul also has talents which it uses to battle the corresponding G-dly attributes.

The G-dly soul is made up of five parts and the animal soul is made up of four parts. The G-dly soul has emotions, the animal soul has emotions. The G-dly soul has intellect, the animal soul has intellect. The G-dly soul has faith, the animal soul has faith. The G-dly soul has self-sacrifice, the animal soul has self-sacrifice.

So what's left? The soul says to G-d, "I have nothing left except for that fifth part, the part that the G-dly soul has and the animal soul doesn't." What's that? The pitcher of oil. There is "nothing in the house except for a pitcher of oil."

The obvious, revealed part of Torah is called water because like water, it is clear and available. The deeper part of Torah is called wine. Wine is not readily available; it's hidden in the grape. Wine has to be extracted from the grape and pressed and aged. It therefore represents the deeper part of Torah, and we have to dig a little to find it. The essence of Torah is called the oil. The oil in olives is more difficult to extract than is wine from a grape. It therefore represents the essence of Torah which is not easily available or visible. All of this likewise applies to the soul. There is a part of the soul that is visible and obvious and available (water). There's a part of the soul that is deep and mystical and hidden (wine). And there's the essence of the soul, the oil.

The soul says, "I have nothing left, no G-dly talents that are pure and uncorrupted by the animal soul. So what's left is just the core, the essence of the soul, its G-dliness, its Jewishness." This is described as an oil pitcher because the body is like a pitcher which contains this oil.

G-d says to the soul, "Go and gather empty vessels - as many as you can." An empty vessel, according to the Talmud, is a mitzvah performed without feeling, i.e., a body without a soul. G-d is saying to the soul, "Do mitzvahs without feeling. Gather as many empty vessels as you can get. Don't minimize the value of this empty vessel - you will pour your oil into those empty vessels."

The soul's complaint is, "How can I do a mitzvah when I don't love G-d or fear G-d? I just don't feel anything. I don't feel G-dliness and I don't feel inspired." G-d responds, "An empty vessel should not be disparaged. In fact, an empty vessel can be great, precisely because it's empty." When a person does a mitzvah with love and fear, he's using the love and fear that come from his understanding, his spirituality, his love of G-d, his desire to get into Heaven. He feels inspired, he feels holy, he feels spiritual. There's a lot of self involved. But if a person has nothing to pour into his mitzvah because he doesn't experience these G-dly emotions, all he has available to pour is his oil, that is, his essence. He does the mitzvah not because he loves G-d, not because he's spiritual, not because he's inspired - but because he's a Jew. He pours his identity into the mitzvah, his essential being.

We've all heard stories about irreligious Jews who were told to bow to a cross. The Jew won't do it. Why? Because someone is tampering with his oil. He refuses to bow to the cross not because he loves G-d, fears G-d, is inspired, is turned on to Judaism - none of the above. He says no because he's a Jew.

When the soul leaves Heaven and enters a body, it is shocked. It had a completely spiritual and holy existence but suddenly finds itself in the body of a baby. All the baby wants to do is eat and be pampered. As the child grows up, the soul says, "I don't understand. What is this? What am I supposed to do now? Sure, I can do a mitzvah, but what kind of mitzvah is it? I'm going to do a mitzvah while I'm thinking about eating? It's all lost, it's gone, I'm destroyed." G-d responds, "It was holier in Heaven and in Heaven you did have a strong love and a strong fear and deep emotions and so on, and that's great for Heaven. But here there's something even greater - an empty vessel into which you pour your oil. The empty vessel is a pure vessel because your holy feelings are very nice but also very messy because they're YOURS, and that's messy. An empty vessel allows the mitzvah to just be itself. You're not tampering with it. So when you pour your oil into the mitzvah, now you've got an incredible combination of pure mitzvah and pure soul. In Heaven you never even discover the oil of the soul because there's no reason to go any deeper than the wine. But on earth, being challenged by the animal soul's wine, the G-dly soul has to dig deeper and come up with its oil. This oil is a well of oil that will never run out. It will fill as many empty vessels, mitzvahs, as you want. Therefore, obtain as many vessels as you can and don't stint! If you do this, then you AND your children will be alive until the resurrection."

I would venture to say that when we read this story the first time, nobody thought it was about the soul coming to G-d and crying about its condition. The story is included in the Jewish scriptures to address the person who says something like: "I feel Jewish in my heart, but I feel uncomfortable about doing mitzvahs because I have no conscious sense of G-d or G-dliness. Doing some ancient ritual that I don't understand makes me feel ridiculous." This story says to such a person, "Don't worry. Do the mitzvah anyway. Your feelings are understandable; you went through the trauma of separating from G-d and losing your G-dly talents. But the secret is to dig deeper, dig until you reach the oil of your soul. When you do this, there is going to be a profit, a remainder. You are going to receive a profit because you gave up Heaven and invested in earth. You gave up the feelings of love and fear that you had for free in Heaven. You were put in a body with an animal soul and there you went past your understanding and your desires and your sense of self until you reached the oil. The feelings of love and fear, your children, were born anew, this time born from your own essence. This time your love and fear can't be lost or taken from you. Instead, both you and your children will live until the resurrection."

The soul has levels that resemble water, wine and oil. The problem is that between the wine and the oil there is a blank space. Between the wine, which is the finest of a person's talents, and the oil, we feel nothing. When we go past the wine, our talents have ended and it's like being in outer space; we're not on earth and we're not on the sun. We're in a cold, black, empty void. So the soul cries, "What happened?" G-d responds, "It's OK, that emptiness is only the space between the wine and the oil. The oil is the essence of the soul and the soul is G-dly. So don't stop - pour your oil into the mitzvah. From the oil you will have wine and you will have water. Everything will come back, only this time it will be Divine instead of human because it will be born from your G-dly essence."

© Copyright It's Good To Know™ Inc. - 2003/5763

Shopping cart

0 Product(s) in cart

Total $0.00

» Checkout

It's Good News