Elijah Fed by Ravens
2 Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: 3 “Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. 4 You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there.”
The first part of God’s message was simple and clear. Leave here. I’ll take care of you elsewhere.
The Kerith ravine was somewhere near Jordan, possibly (but not necessarily) near Elijah’s hometown of Tishbe. But did Elijah get out his handy Hebrew dictionary when God said that the ‘orebim would supply him with food?
The same letters with different vowels spell the word Arabs in Hebrew (you can even hear it without knowing the language: ‘oreb, Arab). The Arabs at this time were desert nomads, steppe-dwellers (1 Kings 10:15). Some people object to the translation “ravens” and insist that Arabs came from the desert, giving Elijah his food every evening and morning. However, the same consonants are also used (with different vowels) for the words “evening” (‘ereb, Genesis 1:5) and “swarm of insects” (‘arob, Exodus 8:20), and there are other examples (weaver’s woof, mixed-race people, something pleasant, etc.). In fact, the carefully considered “footnotes” (called masorah parva) of the Hebrew text don’t even comment about this word, and those notes comment on an awful lot of words. Although it’s an argument from silence, the lack of a head’s up from the masorah tells us that there’s nothing out of the ordinary here. A raven is a raven. And Elijah was going to be fed by ravens.
5 So he did what the LORD had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there. 6 The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. (NIV)
The trip from Samaria to the Kerith Ravine was probably a little more than twenty miles as the raven flies, but mostly downhill (from Samaria, almost everywhere is downhill). When Elijah got there, the brook was still running, and at supper time, there came the ravens, fluttering in with bread and meat (why do the pictures I remember in our Sunday Schools books show them with what looked like communion wafers?). The prophet didn’t ask where they got the meat, but I hope he cooked it. And it kept him alive.
God had told him about this ahead of time. An ‘oreb is the creature Noah sent flying from the ark to look for dry land—the raven was the one that didn’t come back (Genesis 8:7). That’s a detail that was significant. The raven didn’t wing its way back to Noah, because it’s a bird that can survive on carrion (dead animals), and after the floodwaters dried up, there was evidently enough death to sustain the life of the raven. That’s also what got the raven on God’s unclean “don’t eat” list (Leviticus 11:15; Deuteronomy 14:14). But God said that Elijah’s meals would be supplied by the birds; not that Elijah would be roasting raven drumsticks. Still, Elijah had the reassurance from God ahead of time that these huge, black, loudmouthed death-eating scavengers were really going to be delivering his meals of wheels (wings). Without God’s word, the prophet might have hesitated to pick up their scraps.
Drought, and now home delivery from ravens. Nature was not behaving naturally. But that’s not unusual for our God. When the path of faith was being deserted or lost by so many, should we be surprised when the Lord opened his hand to light up the path again with so many miraculous spotlights? God even sent Elijah out of Israel: “Go over by the Jordan, away from Ahab.” Elijah himself was becoming the sole place in Israel where the word of God could be found, and now he was being sent away. That’s a sermon in a change of address.
God dwells also in our hearts (Romans 8:11), but Ahab and his wife had evicted the Holy Spirit. How do we treat our heart-guest? Do we lavish him by changing our lives? Do we appreciate him by hanging on his every word? Do we offer him anything in our hearts to keep him there? We should; we must. His miracles might seem raveny or grungy sometimes, and what could be more offensive than the miracle of the cross? But God uses what he must for our sakes. God is with us. Don’t ever let go.
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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