Translations
F.O.G.MPrimary
F.O.G MessageElisha left his oxen and ran after Elijah. "Let me go kiss my father and mother goodbye," he said, "and then I will follow you." Elijah replied, "Go back then — what have I done to you?"
F.O.GSecondary
The F.O.GHe left the oxen and ran after Eliyahu and said, "Let me kiss my father and my mother, then I will follow you." He said to him, "Go, return — for what have I done to you?"
KJV
King James VersionAnd he left the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said, Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee. And he said unto him, Go back again: for what have I done to thee?
BSB
Berean Standard BibleSo Elisha left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said, “Please let me kiss my father and mother goodbye, and then I will follow you.” “Go on back,” Elijah replied, “for what have I done to you?”
Footnotes
Eliyahu's cryptic reply — "What have I done to you?" (מֶה עָשִׂיתִי לָךְ, *meh asiti lakh*) — is deliberately ambiguous: it can be read as gentle release ("I haven't compelled you — go if you must") or as quietly ironic pressure ("Do you not feel the weight of what I've just done?"). Yeshua's response to a would-be disciple in Luke 9:61-62 — "Let me first say goodbye to those at home" — is almost certainly read against this very scene, and is deliberately sharpened, signalling that the eschatological moment demands even greater urgency than Elisha's call required.
