INDEX: When you are desirous to be blest, I'll blessing beg of you (Elijah/Elisha and widow tales)
It's good sometimes to pay special attention to things that we don't understand. This was the case for me with a statement that Hamlet makes to his mother Gertrude in her closet: "When you are desirous to be blest, I'll blessing beg of you." (3.4.192-3) It seems counter-intuitive, that Hamlet would tell his mother that when she is in need of blessing, he would beg one of her. But it occurred to me that a similar dynamic happens in the Bible, as when the disciples notice that the crowd to which Jesus is preaching is becoming hungry (the hungry desire to be blessed with food), and instead of creating a miracle, he first asks what food they do have: a few fish and loaves (he begs a blessing of them). Something similar and perhaps even more relevant happens in 1 and 2 Kings, in tales about Elijah (and later, his successor prophet, Elisha) and a widow or widows. In 1 Kings, a widow is hungry or in need, and 2 Kings, a widow's late husband left the family ...