The Widow’s Olive Oil

4 The wife of a man from the company^(A) of the prophets cried out to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that he revered the Lord. But now his creditor^(B) is coming to take my two boys as his slaves.”

² Elisha replied to her, “How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?”

“Your servant has nothing there at all,” she said, “except a small jar of olive oil.”^(C)

³ Elisha said, “Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don’t ask for just a few. ⁴ Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side.”

⁵ She left him and shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. ⁶ When all the jars were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another one.”

But he replied, “There is not a jar left.” Then the oil stopped flowing.

⁷ She went and told the man of God,^(D) and he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left.”

³ Others were saying, “We are mortgaging our fields,^(A) our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine.”^(B)

⁴ Still others were saying, “We have had to borrow money to pay the king’s tax^(C) on our fields and vineyards. ⁵ Although we are of the same flesh and blood^(D) as our fellow Jews and though our children are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery.^(E) Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless, because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.”^(F)

²³ “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like^(A) a king who wanted to settle accounts^(B) with his servants. ²⁴ As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold^[a] was brought to him. ²⁵ Since he was not able to pay,^(C) the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold^(D) to repay the debt.

²⁶ “At this the servant fell on his knees before him.^(E) ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ ²⁷ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

²⁸ “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.^[b] He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

²⁹ “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

³⁰ “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. ³¹ When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

³² “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. ³³ Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’