And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. I am assuming the reader is familiar with the Matthew 4:1-11 text (the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness), but let me present the correlated 1 Kings 19:5-9 text:Īnd he lay down and slept under a broom tree. Although Jesus’ preparation for ministry and Elijah’s preparation to anoint Elisha differ greatly, the similarities are worth consideration. (1 Kings 19:1-9, 15-16 compared with Matthew 4:1-11)Įven events within the life of Yeshua appear to follow the Elijah/Elisha pattern. Parallels between Jesus’ ministry and that of Elijah/Elisha Yeshua may have used their example to set His own direction of ministry, or we may have merely found another example of how God works in patterns (divinely ordained parallelism that foreshadowed Yeshua’s ministry). But we can take things a step further and note how Jesus’ ministry resembled the ministry of Elijah and Elisha (on steroids) in some ways. Although my focus in these articles is midrash, we will spend some time elaborating upon important allusions and parallelism, the two other types of Old Testament “echoes” I have previously enumerated.įrom my previous post, you might recall the idea that Yeshua (like other rabbis) used the relationship between Elijah and Elisha as a model for the relationship of rabbi to disciple. Today we are going to look at Elijah and Elisha and note their potential influence upon the life and ministry of Jesus.
He is a central figure among devout Jews. And when Jews have visions, they typically have visions of Elijah. When Roman Catholics have visions, they often have visions of Mary. When Protestants have visions, they usually have visions of Jesus. (Discipleship in the Original Jewish Context, continued…) How the Elijah/Elisha Model Foreshadowed and Possibly Influenced Jesus’ Ministry