“Then she called to her husband, and said, “Please send me one of the young men and one of the donkeys, that I may run to the man of God and come back.” So he said, “Why are you going to him today? It is neither the New Moon nor the Sabbath.” And she said, “It is well.”” (2 Kings 4:22-23NKJV)
What was the exact reason the Shunammite woman was visiting Elisha on the occasion mentioned in our opening bible text? It was that her son was dead. And how was that Elisha’s problem? Was he the one that killed the boy? No, he was not the one that killed the boy. But he was the one that prophesied that the woman and her husband would have him, having been childless for years. And his prophecy at the time did not suggest that the boy would not live long at all. So, it made sense for the woman to want to meet him to find out what went wrong or missing.
But then, as we also see in our opening text, this woman would not tell her husband her real reason for wanting to meet Elisha. She would not tell him that their boy, their only child, had died from his brief illness. Why?
First, the reason was that she wanted to protect the man. And how was she protecting him by not telling him right away that their son was gone? Well, as the account goes, this woman’s husband was already an old man when the prophecy came that they would have a child. Evidently, he had become even older when the body suddenly took ill and died. So, to bring him news of the death of his boy, his only child, at that age may be as good as handing him a death sentence. Or what do you think?
Now remember that though Jacob had twelve sons, when he learnt of the death of Joseph, he became an unhappy and depressed old man. And he would have died in depression, if he had not been blessed by God to see Joseph again. Also, remember that even though David did not touch Nabal’s family at all, the man still had a heart attack just by hearing what David and his men could have done to him and his family. So, it is not everyone that has a strong heart to handle bad news and not be destroyed by it. (Cf. Gen 37 & 1Sam 25)
At any rate, my point is that it was because the Shunammite woman cared about her husband and wanted to protect him from the shock of their boy’s death that she did not immediately inform him of what had happened. She most likely did not know how exactly the old man would respond to the news. And she was not willing to risk anything. So, she just told him that all was well. And all eventually ended well.
But what if all had not ended well? What would she have done? Well, even if all had not ended well, it would still have been clear to everyone around that she did her best to protect her old husband from being destroyed by the news of the death of their only child.
More so, this woman had no intention of giving her son up to death like that. Instead, she was going to meet the man of God that gave them the prophecy about the birth of the boy to do something about the situation. But would she have been able to do that, if she had told her husband what happened and the man had fainted or died? Would that not have been another problem on its own, a problem that may have made meeting the man of God to bring their boy back to life impossible or difficult for her? It would!
Then let us even say that her husband took the bad news in good faith. Did the woman have any guarantee that he would be on the same faith page with her in meeting the man of God to bring the boy back to life? No, she did not! And if the man should be unbelieving in the situation, would he have helped the matter at all? No!
So, that woman was not just after protecting her husband from grief, she was also after protecting her own faith from being paralysed or made ineffective by anyone’s unbelief. And we should learn from her.
What should we learn from her? First, we should learn to protect our loved ones from information or news that may ruin them.
See, because of the conditions of some people, it may not be appropriate or good to expose them to certain news or information. Otherwise, things may worsen for them. So, if we truly love them, we will do our best to keep them from seeing or hearing anything that may make a bad situation worse for them.
However, we should also know that there are times that keeping certain information away from some people is nothing but making a bad situation worse for them and perhaps for us too. So, before we decide to keep any vital information away from those who deserve to have it, we should be sure that our doing so is not going to worsen things for them or us.
The second lesson from that woman is the need for us to protect our faith from any form of unbelief. We must not assume that all those who love us and are good to us are people of faith. That is because some, many or all of them may not be people of faith at all. And where are not sure of this, it will be wisdom for us to make the exercise of our faith private. Otherwise, the unbelief of even the good or righteous people in our lives may make our faith weak or ineffective in enjoying God’s provision of favour, restoration or protection.
Copyright © 2025, Reality Desk, a ministry of Alaythia Bible Church –This material is the sole property of Reality Desk. It may be copied for personal non-commercial use only in its entirety free of charge. All copies must contain this copyright notice. Please direct any questions you may have to pastor@abcministryng.com or call: 08037592851 (WhatsApp Number: 08146472876)