Elisha Revives the Boy

Elisha Revives the Boy is the account in II Kings of a child’s death and restoration by the prophet Elisha. Raymond Moody cites it while discussing how long before modern medicine people had attempted resuscitation, and highlights the boy’s seven sneezes as a detail that may reflect a belief about the soul returning to the body.

The Boy’s Illness and Death

The episode begins when the boy goes out to his father among the reapers and complains of a headache. His father sends him to his mother with a servant; she holds him on her knees until noon, when he dies. She carries him to the bed of the man of God, lays him there, and shuts the door behind her.

The mother then saddles an ass and sets out with her servant to find Elisha. Her journey brings the crisis to the prophet rather than ending with the child’s death: Elisha rises and follows her back to the house.

Elisha’s Revival of the Boy

At the house, Elisha finds the child dead on his bed. He enters the room alone with him, shuts the door, and prays. He then lies upon the boy, placing his mouth on the child’s mouth, his eyes on the child’s eyes, and his hands on the child’s hands, before stretching himself over him.

The child’s flesh grows warm, but the account does not end with that first change. Elisha leaves the room and walks back and forth, then returns and stretches himself over the boy again. The child sneezes seven times and opens his eyes. Elisha calls the mother in and tells her to take up her son; she falls at his feet, bows to the ground, takes the boy, and goes out with him.

Resuscitation and the Sneeze

Moody introduces the passage from The Bible as a remarkable account of ancient resuscitation, following his mention of mouth-to-mouth techniques described on Phoenician medical tablets. The boy’s revival is presented in the scriptural narrative through prayer and close bodily contact, not as a procedure explained in modern medical terms.

Moody singles out the seven sneezes because many peoples have held the folk belief that a sneeze signals the soul’s return after briefly leaving the body. He suggests that this belief probably explains the otherwise puzzling detail in the story. The sneeze thus serves both as the narrative sign that the child has revived and, in Moody’s reading, as a trace of an older idea about the relation between body and soul.

Place in the Book’s Argument

The episode supports Moody’s point that attempts to revive the apparently dead have a long history; it does not establish that ancient practice resembled contemporary resuscitation in method or understanding. He also notes a similar, less detailed story in I Kings 17, placing the account within a broader scriptural record of revival from death.