2 Kings 4:35
“Then he returned, and walked in the house to and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon him: and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →Elisha rises and paces, then stretches on the child again, and the boy sneezes seven times and opens his eyes.
Context
The pattern of Elisha's acts, stretch, rise, walk, stretch again, is deliberate and repeated. The seven sneezes may signify full completion (seven being the number of wholeness in Scripture). The child awakens fully.
What Does 2 Kings 4:35 Mean?
Once, twice, the man of God repeats his act of laying down upon the child. He rises and walks through the house, then returns. On the second stretching, the boy's body convulses in sneezes, seven times, the number of fullness and restoration. His eyes open. Not a flutter or a flicker, but a return to full consciousness, to the wakefulness of living. The dead is alive.
We do not understand the mechanics of resurrection, and Scripture does not explain them. But we see that resurrection is not a vague spiritual metaphor but a bodily, concrete reality. The boy sneezes and sees and lives. In Christ's resurrection, his disciples touched him, ate with him, saw his wounds. Death is reversed not in some ethereal realm but in the flesh, in time, in the reality we know.
Application
Our hope is not for a disembodied afterlife but for a resurrection of the whole person, body and spirit, into God's renewed creation.