1 Kgs 17:8-24 · Read 10 min · think and write 15 min
The last lesson stopped beside the dry brook: “After a while, the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land” (1 Kgs 17:7).
In this lesson, the LORD’s word comes to Elijah again. God had said, “I have commanded the ravens to feed you there” (1 Kgs 17:4); this time, God speaks of a widow.
8The LORD’s word came to him, saying,
9“Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain you.”
10So he arose and went to Zarephath; and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and said, “Please get me a little water in a jar, that I may drink.”
11As she was going to get it, he called to her and said, “Please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”
12She said, “As the LORD your God lives, I don’t have anything baked, but only a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil in a jar. Behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and bake it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.”
13Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go and do as you have said; but make me a little cake from it first, and bring it out to me, and afterward make some for you and for your son.
14For the LORD, the God of Israel, says, ‘The jar of meal will not run out, and the jar of oil will not fail, until the day that the LORD sends rain on the earth.’”
15She went and did according to the saying of Elijah; and she, he, and her household ate many days.
16The jar of meal didn’t run out and the jar of oil didn’t fail, according to the LORD’s word, which he spoke by Elijah.
17After these things, the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became sick; and his sickness was so severe that there was no breath left in him.
18She said to Elijah, “What have I to do with you, you man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to memory, and to kill my son!”
19He said to her, “Give me your son.” He took him out of her bosom, and carried him up into the room where he stayed, and laid him on his own bed.
20He cried to the LORD and said, “LORD my God, have you also brought evil on the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?”
21He stretched himself on the child three times, and cried to the LORD and said, “LORD my God, please let this child’s soul come into him again.”
22The LORD listened to the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived.
23Elijah took the child and brought him down out of the room into the house, and delivered him to his mother; and Elijah said, “Behold, your son lives.”
24The woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the LORD’s word in your mouth is truth.”
A different provision. After the brook dried up, “The LORD’s word came to him” (v. 8): “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain you” (v. 9). By the brook Cherith, God used ravens; this time, God used a person.
Only a handful of meal. Elijah met her at the city gate, gathering sticks. She said she had “only a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil in a jar”; she was gathering sticks “that I may go in and bake it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die” (v. 12). The one God had commanded to sustain Elijah was a widow about to run out of food herself.
Make me a little cake first. Elijah said, “Don’t be afraid” (v. 13), and asked her to bake for him first, then for herself and her son. His ground was this: “For the LORD, the God of Israel, says, ‘The jar of meal will not run out, and the jar of oil will not fail, until the day that the LORD sends rain on the earth’” (v. 14). “She went and did according to the saying of Elijah” (v. 15). The passage then records: “The jar of meal didn’t run out and the jar of oil didn’t fail, according to the LORD’s word, which he spoke by Elijah” (v. 16). This is about how the LORD’s word came true; the passage does not make it a rule that ‘what you give first comes back more.’
Her son died. “After these things” (v. 17), the widow’s son became so sick that “there was no breath left in him” (v. 17). She said to Elijah, “You have come to me to bring my sin to memory, and to kill my son!” (v. 18). The passage records her words; it does not say she was right, and it does not say she was wrong.
Elijah’s question. Elijah carried the child upstairs and cried to the LORD: “LORD my God, have you also brought evil on the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” (v. 20). He did not explain things on God’s behalf, and he did not blame the widow; he brought the question straight to God. Then “He stretched himself on the child three times” and cried to the LORD (v. 21).
He revived. “The LORD listened to the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived” (v. 22). The passage records that the LORD listened; it is not a method to copy. Elijah gave the child back to his mother: “Behold, your son lives” (v. 23).
Now I know. The widow said, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the LORD’s word in your mouth is truth” (v. 24). The meal and oil had not run out, and her household “ate many days” (v. 15); yet it was when her son came back to life that she said, ‘Now I know.’
Zarephath is the town “which belongs to Sidon” (v. 9). Before Elijah appears, the passage says Ahab had married “Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians” (1 Kgs 16:31).
This widow lived in the land of Sidon, and when she swore, she said, “As the LORD your God lives” (v. 12). In the years of drought, the one God sent Elijah to depend on was a foreign widow living in the land of Sidon.
Perhaps you too are standing at the city gate gathering sticks, counting how many more days that last bit of meal and oil will last. Perhaps you too have asked God: why my household, of all people?
This lesson does not explain the why for you. It only lets you see that Elijah did not defend God; he brought the question straight to God. And at her hardest moment, that widow also saw that the LORD’s word was true.
This week: Write down a question you have never dared to ask God. Like Elijah, say it to God directly, in one sentence.
In the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus spoke of this: “But truly I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land. Elijah was sent to none of them, except to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow” (Luke 4:25–26).
The woman Jesus spoke of is the very widow of Zarephath in this lesson.
Scripture: World English Bible.