Elisha Raises the Shunammite Woman’s Son is an account in The Bible that Raymond Moody presents as an ancient instance of resuscitation. The boy’s recovery follows his sudden death, his mother’s journey to Elisha, and Elisha’s repeated physical contact with the child; Moody also draws attention to the seven sneezes as a detail linked to folk beliefs about the soul returning to the body.

Biblical Account and Crisis

In the passage from Second Kings, the boy has grown old enough to go out to his father among the reapers. He complains that his head hurts, and his father tells a lad to carry him to his mother. The child sits on her knees until noon, then dies. His death is reported plainly, before the account turns to the mother’s actions and her appeal to the man of God.

She carries the boy to the man of God’s bed, lays him there, shuts the door, and goes out. She saddles an ass and tells her servant to drive forward; the passage then follows her as she reaches Elisha. The account gives little detail about the journey, but its sequence makes her departure a direct response to the child’s death and leads from the household crisis to Elisha’s intervention.

Elisha’s Intervention and the Boy’s Return

When Elisha arrives, the boy is still dead and lying on the bed. Elisha enters, shuts the door with the two of them inside, and prays to the Lord. He then lies upon the child, placing his mouth on the boy’s mouth, his eyes on the boy’s eyes, and his hands on the boy’s hands, and stretches himself over him. The child’s flesh grows warm.

Elisha leaves the room and walks back and forth in the house. He returns, stretches himself over the boy again, and the child sneezes seven times and opens his eyes. Elisha calls the mother in and tells her to take up her son. She enters, falls at Elisha’s feet, bows to the ground, takes up the boy, and goes out with him. The ending returns the child to his mother through a series of distinct gestures: Elisha’s instruction, her reverence, and her taking him away.

Resuscitation and the Significance of the Sneeze

Moody introduces the passage in response to a question about whether resuscitation existed before modern medicine. He sets the account alongside much older descriptions of mouth-to-mouth respiration on Phoenician medical tablets, treating it as evidence that attempts to revive the apparently dead have a long history. The biblical scene combines prayer with direct bodily contact, rather than describing a method in modern clinical terms.

Moody singles out the boy’s seven sneezes as an otherwise puzzling detail. He notes that many peoples have held the folk belief that a sneeze signals the soul’s return to the body after briefly leaving it, and suggests that the detail may reflect that belief. This is Moody’s interpretation of the narrative, not an explanation supplied by the biblical passage itself. He also points to a similar but less detailed account in First Kings, placing the story within a broader scriptural pattern of revival without claiming that the two accounts are identical.