“There Is a Prophet in Israel”  ·  2 Kings 2–7  ·  July 12, 2026

Teacher's deep dive

Lesson Overview: “There Is a Prophet in Israel”

2 Kings 2–7 covers the passing of the prophetic mantle from Elijah to Elisha and a rapid-fire sequence of miracles. It's an unusual stretch of scripture: we have almost none of Elisha's sermons, but we have more recorded miracles from him than from nearly any other Old Testament prophet. That's the interpretive key the Come, Follow Me outline hands us — Elisha's ministry itself is the testimony. Every miracle is a small enacted parable of what Jesus Christ does for souls: He purifies bad water (baptism), multiplies a widow's oil (grace exceeding our containers), raises the dead (resurrection), feeds a hundred with too little (the Bread of Life), heals a leper (cleansing from sin), and recovers a lost, borrowed ax head (restoring what we cannot restore ourselves).

The title phrase comes from 2 Kings 5:8 — Elisha's message to a discouraged king of Israel: let Naaman come, “and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.” The whole chapter block asks one question of every character: will you trust the word of the Lord through His prophet, even when it's inconvenient, unimpressive, or hard to believe? The little maid does. Naaman almost doesn't. Gehazi doesn't. The servant at Dothan learns to. The lepers of chapter 7 become unlikely messengers of it.

Story by story

Every story in 2 Kings 2–7, with an insight for each

1. Elijah is taken up; the mantle falls to Elisha (2:1–15). Elijah makes a farewell circuit (Gilgal → Bethel → Jericho → Jordan), and three times Elisha refuses to be left behind: “As the Lord liveth… I will not leave thee.” Elijah divides the Jordan with his mantle, Elisha asks for “a double portion of thy spirit,” and Elijah ascends in a whirlwind with a chariot of fire. Elisha picks up the fallen mantle and divides the Jordan himself.
Insight: “Double portion” isn't greed — it's the inheritance language of a firstborn son (Deut. 21:17). Elisha is asking to be Elijah's legitimate heir. And note what the watching sons of the prophets say: “The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha” — priesthood succession was visible and orderly, exactly like a prophet's passing today. The work didn't die with the prophet; it never does.

2. The waters of Jericho healed (2:19–22). Jericho's spring is bad and the land barren. Elisha throws salt in from a new cruse and the water is “healed unto this day.”
Insight: Salt in a brand-new vessel is covenant imagery (salt sealed offerings, Lev. 2:13). The instrument is ordinary; the power is God's. Also fun: chemically, salt makes water worse — so nobody could credit the salt. God often chooses means that guarantee He gets the glory.

3. The widow's oil (4:1–7). A prophet's widow faces her sons being taken as bond-servants for debt. Elisha asks what she has — “nothing… save a pot of oil” — and tells her to borrow “not a few” empty vessels. The oil flows until the last vessel is full, then stops.
Insight: The miracle was sized by her faith, not God's supply — the oil only stopped when the vessels did. Great question for the class: how many vessels would you have gathered? God starts with what we already have (“What hast thou in the house?”), not with what we lack.

4. The Shunammite woman and her son (4:8–37). A wealthy woman builds Elisha a little room on her wall. He promises her a son; the boy is born, then years later dies of a head injury in her arms. She saddles a donkey, rides straight to the prophet, and won't leave him. Elisha comes, prays, stretches himself on the child, and the boy is raised — foreshadowing Christ's raising of the widow's son at Nain (Luke 7).
Insight: Her answer while carrying a dead son is the most defiant faith in the chapter: “It is well.” She doesn't explain her grief to anyone but goes directly to the source of God's power. Receiving a prophet (building the room) put a prophet's blessing in her house — that's the Come, Follow Me point about receiving prophets today.

5. The poisoned stew and the barley loaves (4:38–44). During famine, wild gourds poison the prophets' pottage — “there is death in the pot!” Elisha throws in meal and it's harmless. Then a man brings twenty barley loaves; Elisha feeds one hundred men with leftovers, “according to the word of the Lord.”
Insight: Two food miracles back-to-back: one neutralizes what harms, one multiplies what's insufficient. That's a complete picture of grace — Christ both cancels the poison of sin and stretches our not-enough into more than enough. The bread miracle is a direct preview of the loaves and fishes.

6. Naaman the leper (5:1–19). A Syrian general, great and honorable, has leprosy. A captured Israelite girl points him to the prophet. The king of Israel panics at the request; Elisha sends a message: let him come. Naaman arrives with horses, chariots, and treasure — and gets a servant with instructions to wash seven times in the Jordan. He rages, his servants reason with him, he dips, and comes up with skin like a little child. He returns to confess: “There is no God in all the earth, but in Israel.”
Insight: Count the servants: the little maid, Elisha's messenger, Naaman's servants who talk him off the ledge. Every link in the miracle chain is a person without status. Naaman's gifts (about 750 lbs of silver and 150 lbs of gold!) are refused — grace can't be bought, which sets up the Gehazi story. And the healing didn't fix his body first; it fixed his pride first. The body followed.

7. Gehazi's greed (5:20–27). Elisha's own servant, having watched the miracle, chases Naaman down, lies to get the refused silver and clothing, hides them, then lies to Elisha. Naaman's leprosy cleaves to him.
Insight: Placed deliberately right after Naaman: a pagan general is cleansed by humble obedience while an insider who lived with the prophet is corrupted by what he wanted on the side. Proximity to the prophet isn't the same as following the prophet. Handle with care for kids — the point isn't fear, it's that honesty matters most for those who know better.

8. The floating ax head (6:1–7). The prophets are building a bigger dwelling; a borrowed ax head flies into the Jordan. The man is distressed — “alas, master! for it was borrowed.” Elisha casts a stick in, and the iron swims.
Insight: God cares about small losses that are big to us — especially what we owe others. The student couldn't restore what he'd lost; only the prophet's intervention could. That's the Atonement in miniature: Christ restores what we borrowed and can't repay. Iron doesn't swim, and lost things don't come back — except when God says otherwise.

9. The Lord's army at Dothan (6:8–23). Elisha keeps revealing Syria's battle plans to Israel, so the Syrian king sends an army by night to seize him. Elisha's servant sees the encirclement and panics; Elisha prays his eyes open — the mountain is full of horses and chariots of fire. The Syrians are struck blind, led to Samaria, then — at Elisha's insistence — fed a feast and sent home. “The bands of Syria came no more.”
Insight: Everyone remembers the chariots; almost no one remembers the ending — Elisha wins the war with a banquet. The chapter starts with armies and ends with mercy toward enemies, centuries before “love your enemies.” Second sight and second chances go together.

10. The siege of Samaria and the four lepers (6:24–7:20). Syria besieges Samaria into horrifying famine. Elisha prophesies that within a day, flour and barley will sell for pennies at the gate; a royal officer scoffs — even “windows in heaven” couldn't do it. That night the Lord makes the Syrian army hear the noise of a great host; they flee, leaving everything. Four lepers, with nothing to lose, discover the empty camp, feast — then stop themselves: “This day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace.” They report it, the city is saved, prices land exactly as prophesied, and the scoffer sees it but is trampled at the gate without tasting it.
Insight: God's messengers of salvation were the four most despised people in the story — the outcasts became the missionaries. “A day of good tidings” is literally the definition of gospel. And the phantom chariots the Syrians heard echo the real chariots of chapter 6: the unseen army was never hypothetical. The scoffing officer is the sober counterweight: the prophet's word comes true whether or not we believe it — belief only decides whether we partake.

Theme 1

God works through unimpressive means

Notice the pattern: salt heals a spring. A muddy river heals a general. Twenty barley loaves feed a hundred. The mightiest man in the lesson (Naaman — captain, honourable, mighty in valour) is saved by the testimony of the least powerful person in the lesson: an enslaved Israelite girl, far from home, who had every reason to stay silent. The story is deliberately upside-down — servants do all the spiritual heavy lifting while kings tear their clothes in panic (5:7). For 10–12 year olds this is the money insight: in God's economy, being young and “small” is not a disqualification. It's practically a calling card.

Unique detail worth sharing: Naaman expected a performance — “I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place” (5:11). Elisha didn't even come to the door. God stripped the miracle of all spectacle so that the only thing left to exercise was faith. When healing came, Naaman's skin became “like unto the flesh of a little child” (5:14) — the man who had to become humble like a child got skin to match.

Theme 2

Small and simple obedience precedes the miracle

Naaman's servants' logic in 5:13 is the doctrinal hinge of the chapter: if the prophet had asked “some great thing,” he'd have done it — so why not the small thing? Alma 37:6 is the perfect cross-reference: “by small and simple things are great things brought to pass.” The order matters everywhere in these chapters: the widow gathers vessels first, then the oil flows. Naaman dips seven times — presumably coming up leprous the first six. The miracle almost never comes before the obedience, and rarely on dip one.

Ask the class: what would “dipping six times and quitting” look like in real life? (Praying for a week and giving up; reading scriptures twice; apologizing once and abandoning the friendship.)

Theme 3

Spiritual eyes: seeing the unseen

The Dothan story (6:8–23) is structured entirely around sight. The servant sees the Syrian army; Elisha prays not for the army to leave but for the servant to see more — “Lord, open his eyes, that he may see” (6:17). Then the inversion: the Syrian soldiers are struck with blindness. The people who thought they could see couldn't, and the one who feared learned to see. Elisha's response to fear — “they that be with us are more than they that be with them” (6:16) — was true before the servant could see the chariots of fire. Reality doesn't change when our eyes open; our courage does.

This lands hard with kids feeling outnumbered at school. God's protection isn't usually visible, but it is real, and it is numerically superior. President Eyring: some who stand with you “will be invisible to your mortal eyes.”

Theme 4

The prophet's word always comes true

Chapter 7 is the capstone most classes skip: Samaria is starving under siege, and Elisha prophesies that by tomorrow flour will sell cheap at the gate. A royal officer scoffs — even if God made “windows in heaven,” impossible. Four lepers outside the wall discover the Syrian camp abandoned (the Lord made the army hear phantom chariots — echoing the real chariots of chapter 6), and after feasting, they say one of the great missionary lines in scripture: “this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace” (7:9) — we have good news, how can we keep it to ourselves? The prophecy is fulfilled to the letter, and the scoffing officer sees it but doesn't taste it (7:17–20). Trusting the prophet isn't about the odds; it's about the source.

Bridge to today: the same test — “is there a prophet in Israel?” — has the same answer. President Dallin H. Oaks holds the same keys Elisha held. D&C 1:38: “whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.”

Story to share · 1

“What does that have to do with MY problem?”

Elder L. Whitney Clayton told about a young bishop who spent hours every week helping people in his ward with big, hard problems — trouble at home, trouble at work, questions they couldn’t answer.

His counsel was almost always the same: get back to the small, simple things — really read the scriptures, really pray, keep serving. And people often pushed back: “I don’t think you understand me, Bishop. What does doing any of those little things have to do with the issues I’m facing?”

But over the years, that bishop and Elder Clayton both noticed something: the people who did the small, simple things were “blessed with faith and strength that go far beyond the actual acts of obedience themselves.”

That’s exactly Naaman’s story. He wanted to do “some great thing” to be healed. The prophet asked him to do something almost embarrassingly simple: wash seven times in a muddy river. The miracle came only after he humbled himself and did the simple thing.

Source: Elder L. Whitney Clayton, “Whatsoever He Saith unto You, Do It,” Apr. 2017

Story to share · 2

The Army You Can’t See

Elisha’s young servant woke up one morning in Dothan, stepped outside, and saw an entire enemy army — horses, chariots, soldiers — surrounding the city, sent to capture them. He panicked: “Alas, my master! how shall we do?”

Elisha wasn’t worried. He prayed, “Lord, open his eyes, that he may see.” And suddenly the young man saw the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire — God’s army had been there the whole time.

President Henry B. Eyring promised that the same is true for each of us: “Like that servant of Elisha, there are more with you than those you can see opposed to you. Some who are with you will be invisible to your mortal eyes. The Lord will bear you up and will at times do it by calling others to stand with you.”

And Elder Ronald A. Rasband added: “We may or may not have chariots of fire sent to dispel our fears … but the lesson is clear. The Lord is with us, mindful of us and blessing us in ways only He can do.”

Pres. Eyring, “O Ye That Embark,” Oct. 2008 · Elder Rasband, “Be Not Troubled,” Oct. 2018

Key passage · Naaman is healed

2 Kings 5:1–3, 9–14

Read 2 Kings 5 →

Key passage · The Lord’s army

2 Kings 6:15–17

Read 2 Kings 6 →

More from this week

Other miracles of Elisha

• 2 Kings 2:19–22 — Elisha heals the waters of Jericho with salt

• 2 Kings 4:1–7 — The widow’s pot of oil is multiplied

• 2 Kings 4:18–37 — The Shunammite’s son raised from the dead

• 2 Kings 4:42–44 — 100 men fed with 20 loaves

• 2 Kings 6:1–7 — The borrowed ax head floats

Full Come, Follow Me outline for July 6–12 →

Teacher's cheat sheet

Jeopardy Answer Key

Elisha's Miracles

100 — What did Elisha throw into Jericho's bad spring? Salt (2 Kgs 2:19–22)
200 — What did Elisha multiply for the widow in debt? Her pot of oil (2 Kgs 4:1–7)
300 — What borrowed thing did Elisha make float? An ax head (2 Kgs 6:1–7)
400 — Twenty barley loaves fed how many men? 100 (2 Kgs 4:42–44)

Naaman's Story

100 — Naaman's disease? Leprosy (2 Kgs 5:1)
200 — Who said a prophet could heal him? The little maid, a young Israelite servant girl (5:2–3)
300 — What was he told to do? Wash seven times in the Jordan (5:10)
400 — Healed skin was like the skin of a ___? A little child (5:14)

Chariots of Fire

100 — Which army surrounded Dothan? The Syrian army (6:13–14)
200 — “Open his eyes, that he may ___” See (6:17)
300 — What did the servant see? Horses and chariots of fire — the Lord's army (6:17)
400 — “They that be with us are ___ than they that be with them.” More (6:16)

Prophets & Us

100 — How was Elijah taken to heaven? A whirlwind, with a chariot and horses of fire (2:11)
200 — What clothing of Elijah's did Elisha pick up? His mantle (his cloak) (2:13)
300 — Who is the prophet in Israel today? President Dallin H. Oaks (sustained Oct. 2025)
400 — Every miracle of Elisha points us to whom? Jesus Christ