What is the difference between Elijah and Elisha?

Two names, two men

The names look alike because they share a first syllable. El is Hebrew for God. Elijah is Eliyahu, “my God is Yahweh,” a one-word creed in a kingdom whose queen served Baal. Elisha is Elisha, “God saves.” Greek turned them into Elias and Elisaios, and the Quran knows them as Ilyas and Al-Yasa’.

They are not one prophet under two spellings. They walk side by side in the same scenes, and one hands his work to the other. Elijah’s story runs from 1 Kings 17 to 2 Kings 2; Elisha’s fills most of 2 Kings 2 to 13.

How the master found the disciple

On Mount Horeb, God tells Elijah to anoint “Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah to be prophet in your place” (1 Kings 19:16). Elijah finds him in a field.

So he departed from there and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he with the twelfth. Elijah went over to him and put his mantle on him.

Twelve yoke of oxen means a wealthy family. Elisha asks to kiss his parents goodbye, then slaughters his oxen, boils the meat on the wood of the plow gear and feeds the people. For years he is simply Elijah’s servant, remembered as the man “who poured water on the hands of Elijah” (2 Kings 3:11).

Two very different prophets

• Where they came from. Elijah walks in from Gilead, east of the Jordan, with no father named, “a hairy man” in a leather belt (2 Kings 1:8). Elisha has a father, a hometown and a farm.
• How they looked. Elijah was hairy. Elisha was bald: boys at Bethel jeered, “Go up, you baldy!” (2 Kings 2:23).
• How they lived. Elijah is a loner who appears, confronts a king and vanishes into the desert. Elisha lives among the bands of prophets, travels with a servant, Gehazi, and advises kings.
• What they did. Elijah’s wonders are few and huge: a drought, fire on Mount Carmel, a widow’s flour that never runs out, her son raised. Elisha’s are many, and some repeat his master’s, like a widow’s oil and a dead boy raised. Others are his own: a spring healed with salt, an axe head that floats, the Syrian general Naaman cured in the Jordan.
• How they ended. Elijah never dies; a whirlwind takes him (2 Kings 2:11). Elisha falls ill, dies and is buried, and a dead man thrown into his grave revives when he touches his bones (2 Kings 13:20–21).

The double portion

Across the Jordan, Elisha asks for one thing: “Please let a double portion of your spirit be on me” (2 Kings 2:9). That is not a request for twice the power. Under the law the firstborn son received a double portion of the inheritance (Deuteronomy 21:17). Elisha is asking to be the heir.

When Elijah is gone, Elisha picks up the fallen mantle, strikes the river and asks, “Where is Yahweh, the God of Elijah?” The water parts, and the prophets of Jericho say, “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha” (2:14–15). One cry ties the two endings together. As Elijah is taken, Elisha shouts, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” (2:12). Decades later King Joash weeps over the dying Elisha with the very same words (13:14).

Who is remembered where

Elijah became the bigger legend. Malachi promises his return, since he never died; he appears beside Moses at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:3), and Jewish families pour him a cup at Passover. Elisha is named only once in the New Testament. In Nazareth, Jesus sets the widow of Zarephath, fed by Elijah, beside “Naaman, the Syrian,” healed in Elisha’s time (Luke 4:25–27). Two prophets of Israel, both remembered for helping foreigners.