2 Kings 4:43

And his servitor said, What, should I set this before an hundred men? He said again, Give the people, that they may eat: for thus saith the LORD, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(43) Servitor.—Minister, or attendant.

What, should I set this before an hundred men?—Or, How am I to set? &c. (Comp. Matthew 14:33.)

He said again.—And he said.

They shall eat, and shall leave thereof.—Heb., eating and leaving! an exclamatory mode of speech, natural in hurried and vehement utterance.

Benson Commentary

2 Kings 4:43. What! should I set this before a hundred men? — Just as the apostles said to the Lord Jesus, when he intended to feed a far greater number with less food. He said again, Give unto the people, &c. — Do as I order you, and make no objections. For thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof — As the multitude left of the loaves and fishes which Christ caused to be set before them. The similitude between several of the miracles of Elijah and Elisha, and those of the Lord Jesus, is very striking, and may be considered as a proof that they all acted by the power of one and the same Spirit. The miracles of the Son of God, however, were both far more in number, and far greater, than those which were performed by these his servants.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

4:38-44 There was a famine of bread, but not of hearing the word of God, for Elisha had the sons of the prophets sitting before him, to hear his wisdom. Elisha made hurtful food to become safe and wholesome. If a mess of pottage be all our dinner, remember that this great prophet had no better for himself and his guests. The table often becomes a snare, and that which should be for our welfare, proves a trap: this is a good reason why we should not feed ourselves without fear. When we are receiving the supports and comforts of life, we must keep up an expectation of death, and a fear of sin. We must acknowledge God's goodness in making our food wholesome and nourishing; I am the Lord that healeth thee. Elisha also made a little food go a great way. Having freely received, he freely gave. God has promised his church, that he will abundantly bless her provision, and satisfy her poor with bread, Ps 132:15; whom he feeds, he fills; and what he blesses, comes to much. Christ's feeding his hearers was a miracle far beyond this, but both teach us that those who wait upon God in the way of duty, may hope to be supplied by Divine Providence.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

This miracle was a faint foreshadowing of our Lord's far more marvelous feeding of thousands with even scantier materials. The resemblance is not only in the broad fact, but in various minute particulars, such as the distribution through the hands of others; the material, bread; the surprised question of the servant; and the evidence of superfluity in the fragments that were left (see the marginal references). As Elijah was a type of the Baptist, so Elisha was in many respects a type of our Blessed Lord. In his peaceful, non-ascetic life, in his mild and gentle character, in his constant circuits, in his many miracles of mercy, in the healing virtue which abode in his bodily frame 2 Kings 13:21, he resembled, more than any other prophet, the Messiah, of whom all prophets were more or less shadows and figures.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

43. They shall eat, and shall leave thereof—This was not a miracle of Elisha, but only a prediction of one by the word of the Lord. Thus it differed widely from those of Christ (Mt 15:37; Mr 8:8; Lu 9:17; Joh 6:12).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And his servitor said,.... His servant Gehazi very probably:

what, should I set this before one hundred men? for so many, it seems, the sons of the prophets were in this place; and these loaves being very small, no more, it is thought by some, than one man could eat, and the ears of corn but few, the servant suggests they would be nothing comparatively to such a company of men:

he said again, give the people, that they may eat; he insisted upon it that his orders should be obeyed:

for thus saith the Lord, they shall eat, and shall leave thereof; it was suggested to him by a spirit of prophecy, there would be enough for them, and to spare.

Geneva Study Bible

And his servitor said, What, should I set this before an hundred men? He said again, Give the people, that they may eat: for thus saith the LORD, They shall eat, and {x} shall leave thereof.

(x) It is not the quantity of bread that satisfies, but the blessing that God gives.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

43. And his servitor [R.V. servant] said] The word is not the usual one for ‘servant’ which has occurred above in this chapter; but it is rendered elsewhere by ‘minister’ or ‘servant’ (see Exodus 24:13; Exodus 33:11), and nowhere but here ‘servitor’. As the word is used, in the passages referred to, of Joshua, the minister of Moses, it seems likely that Gehazi, the special attendant on Elisha, is here meant.

before an hundred men] Probably the number of the prophetic college at Gilgal. We have seen above (2 Kings 2:7) that these communities had many members, not all perhaps resident regularly, but likely to gather in full force when Elisha was visiting their society.

He said again] R.V. But he said. There is nothing in the text to warrant the ‘again’.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 43. - And his servitor said, What, should I set this before an hundred men? The servant felt that the quantity was quite insufficient, and thought it absurd to invite a hundred men to sit down to a meal, which would not satisfy a fifth of the number; but Elisha repeated his command. He said again, Give the people, that they may eat. This time, however, he added an explanation of the proceeding: for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof. God had supernaturally intimated to him that the quantity of food would prove ample for the hundred men; they would show that they had had enough by leaving some of it. And the result was as predicted. 2 Kings 4:43

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Feeding of a Hundred Pupils of the Prophets with Twenty Barley Loaves. - A man of Baal-Shalisha (a place in the land of Shalisha, the country to the west of Gilgal, Jiljilia; see at 1 Samuel 9:4) brought the prophet as first-fruits twenty barley loaves and כּרמל equals כּרמל גּרשׂ, i.e., roasted ears of corn (see the Comm. on Leviticus 2:14), in his sack (צקלון, ἁπ. λεγ., sack or pocket). Elisha ordered this present to be given to the people, i.e., to the pupils of the prophets who dwelt in one common home, for them to eat; and when his servant made this objection: "How shall I set this (this little) before a hundred men?" he repeated his command, "Give it to the people, that they may eat; for thus hath the Lord spoken: They will eat and leave" (והותר אכול, infin. absol.; see Ewald, 328, a.); which actually was the case. That twenty barley loaves and a portion of roasted grains of corn were not a sufficient quantity to satisfy a hundred men, is evident from the fact that one man was able to carry the whole of this gift in a sack, and still more so from the remark of the servant, which shows that there was no proportion between the whole of this quantity and the food required by a hundred persons. In this respect the food, which was so blessed by the word of the Lord that a hundred men were satisfied by so small a quantity and left some over, forms a type of the miraculous feeding of the people by Christ (Matthew 14:16., 2 Kings 15:36-37; John 6:11-12); though there was this distinction between them, that the prophet Elisha did not produce the miraculous increase of the food, but merely predicted it. The object, therefore, in communicating this account is not to relate another miracle of Elisha, but to show how the Lord cared for His servants, and assigned to them that which had been appropriated in the law to the Levitical priests, who were to receive, according to Deuteronomy 18:4-5, and Numbers 18:13, the first-fruits of corn, new wine, and oil. This account therefore furnishes fresh evidence that the godly men in Israel did not regard the worship introduced by Jeroboam (his state-church) as legitimate worship, but sought and found in the schools of the prophets a substitute for the lawful worship of God (vid., Hengstenberg, Beitrr. ii. S. 136f.).