2 Kings 2 · a question people ask
Did Elisha ask to be twice as great as Elijah?
His words are "Please let a double portion of your spirit be on me" (2:9). Elijah answered, "You have asked a hard thing" (2:10), and made it hang on one thing: "If you see me when I am taken from you, it will be so for you" (2:10). "Elisha saw it" (2:12), the water divided for him (2:14), and the sons of the prophets said, "The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha" (2:15). In Hebrew, double portion is pi shenayim, the words the law uses for the firstborn's share: "a double portion of all that he has" (Deuteronomy 21:17) (tap portion). Christians agree on all of that. They read what Elisha asked for in two main ways, each resting on verses.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
The firstborn's share
Those who hold this view read the request with Deuteronomy 21:17, where the same Hebrew words are the share of the firstborn: "a double portion of all that he has; for he is the beginning of his strength. The right of the firstborn is his" (Deuteronomy 21:17). Elisha calls Elijah "My father, my father" (2:12), and the LORD had named Elisha "to be prophet in your place" (1 Kings 19:16). They read the request as asking to be Elijah's heir, and see it answered when the sons of the prophets say, "The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha" (2:15).
Deuteronomy 21:17 · 2 Kings 2:12 · 1 Kings 19:16 · 2 Kings 2:15
Twice as much
Those who hold this view read double portion as a request for twice the spirit that was on Elijah. They point to Elijah's answer, "You have asked a hard thing" (2:10), and read the wonders done through Elisha in the chapters that follow as the request granted: a son given back to his mother (4:32-37), Naaman made clean in the Jordan (5:14), and, after Elisha's death, a man who touched Elisha's bones and "revived, and stood up on his feet" (13:21).
2 Kings 2:10 · 2 Kings 4:32-37 · 2 Kings 5:14 · 2 Kings 13:21
The verses
“but he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the hated, by giving him a double portion of all that he has; for he is the beginning of his strength. The right of the firstborn is his.”