The spirit in Elisha's bones.

‎We follow Elisha to his grave for a last glimpse of the power that rested upon him in double measure during the days of his life as requested from Elijah, and which had not quite forsaken him in death. He had not been long in his last resting place when a funeral approached where he lay. Before the funeral was finished, an invasion of the land by the Moabites became visible from the spot. Seeing the marching bands, the people who had charge of the funeral got into a panic, and hastily threw the corpse into Elisha’s sepulchre, and made off. The result was wonderful. The dead man on coming into contact with the bones of Elisha, revived and stood upon his feet (2 Kings 13:21). No explanation is offered by the narrative of this remarkable incident. The fact simply is stated. But the variety of facts recorded in various places enable us to have a glimpse of the explanation. First, there is the fact just seen, that the power of God rested on Elisha in an intenser degree than even on Elijah. Second, there is the fact that this power is transmissible, and, therefore, storable, as shown by the luminosity of the face of Moses after a forty days’ association with angelic glory; by Elisha’s sending his staff to the dead child with the expectation that life would return; and as shown more particularly in the New Testament, where we read that virtue went out of Jesus, and healed them all (Luke 6:19; Mark 5:30); and that a woman was healed by but a touch of his garment (Luke 8:46–47); that “from the body of Paul were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them” (Acts 19:12). These facts suggest that the divine energy that brooded on Elisha during his prophetic ministry, so permeated his substance, that even his bones remained charged with it in death, in sufficient power to re-animate a dead body brought into contact with them. The Spirit of God has passive relations, in which its effects are irrespective of divine volition, and spring from what it is in its own nature. From such a conception, conventional theology may recoil in horror: but blindness only can fail to see that such a conception is yielded by the Scripture illustrations referred to—a conception, at the same time, which in no way interfered with that higher phase of the subject in which the Spirit of God is seen as the agent or power by which the volitional Eternal Father in the heavens accomplishes the designs of His wisdom, directly, or by the hand of His angels, as the case may be.

Roberts, R. (2002). The Visible Hand of God (292–293). Logos Publications.