Then Amaziah sent messengers to Jehoash son of Jehoahaz son of Jehu, king of Israel. He said, “Come, let’s meet face to face.” ¹ 

His assassination brought to fulfillment the Lord’s word to Jehu, ¹  “Four generations of your descendants will rule over Israel.” ²  That is exactly what happened. ³ 

The Lord made an agreement ¹  with them ²  and instructed them, “You must not worship other gods. Do not bow down to them, serve them, or offer sacrifices to them.

Don’t let Hezekiah talk you into trusting in the Lord when he says, “The Lord will certainly rescue us; this city will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.”

The people were silent and did not respond, for the king had ordered, “Don’t respond to him.”

In the eighteenth year of King Josiah’s reign, the king sent the scribe Shaphan son of Azaliah, son of Meshullam, to the Lord’s temple with these orders: ¹ 

Then Shaphan the scribe told the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a scroll.” Shaphan read it out loud before the king.

The king ordered all the people, “Observe the Passover of the Lord your God, as prescribed in this scroll of the covenant.”

King Jehoash of Israel sent this message back to King Amaziah of Judah, “A thornbush in Lebanon sent this message to a cedar in Lebanon, ‘Give your daughter to my son as a wife.’ Then a wild animal ¹  of Lebanon came by and trampled down the thorn. ² 

He sent ¹  this message to King Jehoshaphat of Judah: “The king of Moab has rebelled against me. Will you fight with me against Moab?” Jehoshaphat ²  replied, “I will join you in the campaign; my army and horses are at your disposal.” ³ 

Now a wife of one of the prophets ¹  appealed ²  to Elisha for help, saying, “Your servant, my husband is dead. You know that your servant was a loyal follower of the Lord. ³  Now the creditor is coming to take away my two boys to be his servants.”

Now Gehazi went on ahead of them. He placed the staff on the child’s face, but there was no sound or response. When he came back to Elisha ¹  he told him, “The child did not wake up.”

He brought the letter to king of Israel. It read: “This is a letter of introduction for my servant Naaman, ¹  whom I have sent to be cured of his skin disease.”

When Elisha the prophet ¹  heard that the king had torn his clothes, he sent this message to the king, “Why did you tear your clothes? Send him ²  to me so he may know there is a prophet in Israel.”

He answered, “Everything is fine. ¹  My master sent me with this message, ‘Look, two servants of the prophets just arrived from the Ephraimite hill country. ²  Please give them a talent ³  of silver and two suits of clothes.’”

So they went and called out to the gatekeepers ¹  of the city. They told them, “We entered the Syrian camp and there was no one there. We didn’t even hear a man’s voice. ²  But the horses and donkeys are still tied up, and the tents remain up.” ³ 

Now Elisha advised the woman whose son he had brought back to life, “You and your family should go and live somewhere else for a while, ¹  for the Lord has decreed that a famine will overtake the land for seven years.”

The king asked the woman about it, and she gave him the details. ¹  The king assigned a eunuch to take care of her request and ordered him, ²  “Give her back everything she owns, as well as the amount of crops her field produced from the day she left the land until now.”

So the king told Hazael, “Take a gift ¹  and go visit the prophet. Request from him an oracle from the Lord. Ask him, ²  ‘Will I recover from this sickness?’”

So Hazael went to visit Elisha. ¹  He took along a gift, ²  as well as ³  forty camel loads of all the fine things of Damascus. When he arrived, he stood before him and said, “Your son, ⁴  King Ben Hadad of Syria, has sent me to you with this question, ⁵  ‘Will I recover from this sickness?’”