1 Kings 17.
Elijah now disappeared. What wisdom and what power is here shown, in regard for the faithful servant from whom nothing was asked but simple obedience! His place of hiding was of God’s choice; there he was safe, though Ahab’s searchers spared no effort to find him (chapter 18:10); Elijah’s thirst was met in the little mountain torrent, and the ravenous ravens, notorious for greedy appetite, twice every day brought him his food, reversing the laws of nature at the command of nature’s God.
But the stream became dried up. Did Elijah then take alarm as day by day he observed the volume of water decreasing? Perhaps, for he was a man of like disposition with ourselves, but God was his resource, the unfailing resource of the faithful in all ages and countries. Elijah, we may say, was to be taught longer in the school of God before he might reappear in public life, and Israel had only begun to feel the chastening hand of Him who sits in the heavens.
To Zarephath, near to Jezebel’s former home, must Elijah now go—outside of Israel’s dominions, and to a widow in the most straitened circumstances. There were many widows in Israel at this time, but it was not to an Israelite, but a stranger, that the prophet was directed. (See Luke 4:25, 2625But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; 26But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. (Luke 4:25‑26)). How humiliating it must have been to Elijah to be dependent on this poor woman! Yet she feared God, —she must have been one of those individuals who outside of the nation of Israel, appear from time to time in Israel’s history as true to God. Witness Methuselah, Job, Joel, Naaman, and others.
Faith had to be tested, even in the widow’s extremity, for she had gone out to gather fuel for what she believed to be her and her son’s last meal, but acting on God’s word spoken by the prophet, whose coming she was expecting (verse 9), she prepared first the food he asked for, as he was the representative of the true God. Never thereafter did the barrel fail to yield meal, nor the cruse fail to contain oil. Yet again must the widow’s heart be searched by our faithful and loving God her only child fell sick and grew worse till there was no breath left in him. Her conscience reached, she spoke to Elijah about sin she had committed. Elijah prayed; her boy was restored to life, and to his mother.
ML 08/14/1927