Elijah and Elisha in the Gospels

Continuing my series on articles from the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (2nd edition), we will look how Elijah and Elisha (mostly Elijah though) show up in the Gospels and point to the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus (from Kenneth Litwak’s article).

Elijah and Elisha

Elijah and Elisha had a very interesting (and bizarre) run as prophets in 1–2 Kings. They show up again in the Gospels. Elisha is referred to only once in Luke, while Elijah is referenced in all four (and shows up in three of them!). Aside from that, there are events that resemble events that happened in the lives of Elijah and Elisha. As Kenneth Litwak notes, “Elijah is far more prominent than Elisha for at least two reasons. First, Elijah did not die but ascended, and Malachi predicted that Elijah would return as the messenger going before Yahweh and bringing restoration. Second, Elijah was viewed as the prophet par excellence” (229). Jesus himself identifies John the Baptist as being the Elijah who was prophesied by Malachi to appear, while the Gospel authors portray Jesus as being like both Elijah and Elisha, since he is “a prophet who performs mighty deeds” (229).

Elijah and Elisha in the Old Testament

In his article on Elijah and Elisha, Litwak surveys these two wild prophets in the OT and in Second Temple Jewish Literature, but here I will survey just the OT portion. Elijah suddenly appears in 1 Kings 17 (not 1 Kings 19 as Litwak mistakenly wrote) by confronting King Ahab. Elisha appears at the end of chapter 19 when he gets Elijah’s cloak thrown over him as a sign that he is to serve Elijah and eventually succeed him. The narrative of these two prophets ends in 2 Kings 13 (Elijah’s ends in 2 Kings 2).

Both prophets preach against the sins of the northern kingdom and perform mighty deeds and miracles in the name of Yahweh. Elijah prayed that rain would end and begin again, and Elisha made an axe head float, healed an army commander of leprosy, and more.

Malachi predicts that Elijah would return before the great and terrible day of Yahweh (Mal 4:5–6) to bring restoration. Elijah is usually associated with the messenger in Malachi 3:1 as well (see Mark 1:2).

Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

Matthew

Matthew and Mark both explicitly refer to Elijah nine times, but Matthew draws more explicit connections between John the Baptist and Elijah. Litwak writes, “Matthew’s Gospel explicitly identifies John with Elijah” (229). In Matthew 11:7–19, Jesus identifies John with the messenger promised by Malachi 3:1. After asking the crowds what they expected to see with John the Baptist, Jesus declares John to be “more than a prophet” (11:9) and that John is the one written of in Malachi 3:1 (which would connect him to 4:5–6):

“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
    who will prepare your way before you.”

In verses 13–14 Jesus again admits that John is the Elijah to come, ”For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.” This validates John and his ministry. As well, since John came first to prepare the way of the Lord, and Jesus is the one who came after John, this has “startling Christological implications” on who Jesus is according to R. T. France. Litwak writes, “Accepting that John the Baptist is Elijah is to ‘embrace a whole package of eschatological fulfillment in Jesus,’ for which most of those listening to Jesus were not ready” (France, 432).

Litwak writes that after Jesus’ transfiguration, “Matthew is the only evangelist who makes an explicit link at this point between John the Baptist and Elijah (Mt 17:13) in the conversation that Jesus had with the disciples on the way down the mountain, while Luke contains no details of this conversation (Lk 9:36)” (229).

Mark

Mark makes connections between Elijah and John the Baptist, but they are more implicit. In Mark 1:2, Mark combines Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 3:1 as a way of explaining who John the Baptist is.

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,

“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”

Isaiah prophesied of a new exodus that would take place among God’s people. John is the messenger to proclaims this “way of the Lord.” As Litwak writes, “If John is the messenger of Malachi who precedes Yahweh, then Jesus should be identified with Yahweh. Furthermore, since Malachi asserts that those who refuse to turn to God in *repentance will be judged, Mark’s quotation implies that John’s message must be heeded. Otherwise, Yahweh (Jesus) will come to his temple and bring judgment” (230). And we see Jesus pronounce judgment on the temple in Mark 13.

The connection between John the Baptist and Elijah is strengthened by Mark 1:6 refers to John’s clothing as being made of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist. This makes a further connection with Elijah who had a very similar style of clothing (2 Kings 1:8). “This continuity provides validation for John’s message and actions, including his message about Jesus” (230).

After Jesus’ transfiguration, Jesus speaks of Elijah coming and restoring all things (Mk 9:12). According to Richard Bauckham, this is likely “a reference to the Jewish belief that Elijah would bring general eschatological restoration.” However, in no Second Temple Jewish text we have today do we see a chronological order to the coming of Elijah and the Davidic Messiah, and certainly not to the suffering and rising of the Son of Man. So while we don’t have any “significant literary evidence of a Jewish belief that Elijah would come before the Messiah, but the fact that this connection seems to be implied in the Gospels suggests that such a view was current among some Jews in the first century a.d.” (230).

In Mark 9:13 Jesus speaks of Elijah suffering “as it is written about him.” While Jesus could be referring to a prophecy about John the Baptist, this has proven difficult for Hebrew exegetes to detect. It is more likely that Jesus is thinking about general Scripture patterns. The first Elijah experienced opposition and rejection during his lifetime, and this was the general experience of most of the biblical prophets. While Mark makes no mention of Elisha, it may be that if John the Baptist is a second Elijah, then Jesus is a second Elisha, performing more miracles of greater effect that Elisha himself (Mk 7:37; cf. compare 2 Kgs 4:42–44 with Mk 6:44 and 8:8–9).

While Litwak didn’t mention how some people in Jesus’ day thought Jesus was Elijah (in the famous “Who do people say that I am?” section, Mk 8:28), it is interesting that that order of John the Baptist, Elijah, and the prophets of old in 8:28 is also seen in Mark 6:14–15. (On this, see below on the Luke section.)

Luke

Explicit References

Luke also connects John the Baptist with Elijah, and that begins when the angel Gabriel announces John’s birth to Zechariah. Again, Malachi 3:1 and 4:6 are used here (Lk 1:16–17). Litwak notes that Gabriel’s “words are not prophecies for John to fulfill but rather are characterizations that describe what his ministry will be like. They assert not that John is Elijah but rather that John will be Elijah-like, with a similar mission” (230).

At the end of Luke 1, Zechariah implies that his son John will walk in the ways of Elijah who will prepare the Lord’s ways:

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,

Jesus legitimizes John as a prophet in Luke 7:24–30 (in the parallel to Matthew 11:7–19 above), as the one who fulfills Malachi 3:1.

In Jesus’ sermon in the Nazareth synagogue in Luke 4, he uses “Elijah and Elisha as examples of prophets who aided Gentiles while not aiding Israelites” (230). This points to the focus God will have on Gentiles with Jesus’ followers. In the first of those OT stories, Elijah was sent to a widow in 1 Kings 17 during a famine in Israel. Upon his arrival Elijah told the widow to give him some food. She does, and miraculously she and her son have food until the famine ends. Elijah lived with her and her son for some time, and it is implied that Elijah (an Israelite) would have eaten with them (gentiles).

Luke has an interest in Jewish-Gentile relations, particularly in the book of Acts (Jews and Gentiles eating together, Acts 10–11; connections between Elisha and Naaman and Peter and Cornelius, Acts 10). Jesus’ use of Elijah and Elisha here “point not to the rejection of Israel but rather to “‘Jewish-Gentile reconciliation’” (230). As well, in light of Isaiah 61:1–2, it was not only pious Jews but outsiders and outcasts who would experience God’s salvation:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
    he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
    and the day of vengeance of our God;
    to comfort all who mourn.

When Jesus asks “Who do people say that I am?” one of the answers is Elijah (Lk 9:7–8, 19–20; cf. Mt 16:14–16; Mk 6:14–15; 8:27–29). Litwak writes, “The report of these ideas focuses on characterizing Jesus as a prophet like Elijah… and the mention of John the Baptist likely points to Jesus’ future participation in the common fate of prophets, which when tied to Peter’s confession, indicates that ‘Jesus’ messiahship involves his suffering the fate of the prophets’” (230).

Luke’s Use of Elijah/Elisha Imagery

Instead of using only explicit or implicit references to Elijah and Elisha, Luke uses images from these narratives to shape how Jesus’ ministry is presented. Luke 7:11–17  and the raising of the widow’s son in Nain reflects elements of when Elisha raised a widow’s son from the dead (2 Kings 4:32–37). The healing of a centurion’s servant (Lk 7:1–10) seems to reflect 1 Kings 17:8–16. Luke 9:61–62 shares an encounter between Jesus and a “would-be” follower, which shares vocabulary with Elisha’s calling to his prophetic ministry (1 Kgs 19:19–21).

When a Samaritan village refuses to welcome Jesus and his disciples during their journey to Jerusalem, “James and John ask Jesus if he would like them to call down fire from heaven to consume the villagers (Lk 9:54). This is an allusion to 2 Kings 1:10, 12, 14, in which Elijah caused fire to consume soldiers of the king who had come to seize him” (230). Samarian is also mentioned in Luke 9:52, as it was in 2 Kings 1:3, which only strengthens the allusion. It may be that Elijah’s ascension (2 Kgs 2:11–12) was used as a model for Jesus’ ascension (Lk 24:50–53).

John

Unlike the Synoptics, “John’s Gospel says comparatively little about John the Baptist or Elijah. In fact, the only references to Elijah (Jn 1:21, 25) are part of a discussion with John the Baptist in which he explicitly denies being Elijah” (230). Litwak gives different reasons for this denial by scholars. He notes that while John is modeled after Elijah, in the Synoptics it is Jesus who makes explicit that John is Elijah. John the Baptist’s denial “is consistent with his humble stance vis-à-vis Jesus (Jn 1:26–27; 3:25–30)” (230).

John and the Synoptics all present John the Baptist as the voice crying in the wilderness from Isaiah 40:3 (Mt 3:3; Mk 1:3; Jn 1:23). Aside from this, John doesn’t focus on John the Baptist as being a second Elijah. In John’s Gospel, “the most important attribute of John [the Baptist] is that he was a witness to Jesus” (230).

Since this is a dictionary on the Gospels, the book of Acts lied outside of Liwak’s perview, but I’ll add that Paul quotes from Isaiah 6 at the end of Acts.

²³ When they had appointed a day for him, they came to him at his lodging in greater numbers. From morning till evening he expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets. ²⁴ And some were convinced by what he said, but others disbelieved. ²⁵ And disagreeing among themselves, they departed after Paul had made one statement: “The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet:

²⁸ Therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen.”