My impression on Elijah's training in Zarepath was simply to be a husband and father (in a dignified and strong way) to a strange gentile woman in their household. He was the only man of that house in the village and probably helped around the house when they needed his strength to carry stuff. Maybe he played with the boy. the scripture describing his praying for the boy and his resurrection is especially tender.
The woman was probably an outcast like him (whose discription has been rendered stranger of strangers in Tish in some hebrew versions) whose husband had died and son also had died. extreme poverty emotional berevement.
1) let him sleep on his bed - a dead body where the prophet lay, experiencing the presence of God in that spot in that house. in our own bed. compassion, sacrifice, hospitality, welcome.
2) head to head, eye to eye, hand to hand and feet to feet over the body - extending himself long in prayer for an outsider, stretching himself in prayer for an enemy of the sidonions the country -where baal was from! eye to eye, you see as I see, know as I know, you are not dead but alive. hand to hand is do as i Do, leg to leg - walk as I walk - in short to Father, to bring up a child.
3)sneezing 7 times. 7 - perfection, completeness, the world in 7 days a symbol of perfect work of faith, love and prayer. Love never fails and with faith is extremely powerful. a lovely picture, he has life, nothing more adorable than a child sneezing in those in series sneezes. (this is in Elisha's story)
The aim? to have compassion and faith of a father and husband for an outcast. before he was fully trained as a prophet.
There is a hint of this in the end - ELisha cries 'My father, my father' He completed the father heart of God and fathered the one with the double portion of everything.
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