Elijah and the Widow at Zarephath
7 Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. 8 Then the word of the LORD came to him: 9 “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” 10 So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” 11 As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.”
Elijah’s little hideaway might have been quickly discovered and overrun if the Lord had kept his water supply going while he turned off the faucet throughout the rest of the land. But there was another way of helping the prophet. God sent him away to Sidon.
Do you know about the irony surrounding the killings of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy? All sorts of coincidences occur as you explore those events. Lincoln’s staff member Miss Kennedy told him not to go to the theater; Kennedy’s staff member Miss Lincoln told him not to go to Dallas. Both men were succeeded in office by men named Johnson. Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater, Kennedy was shot in a Ford (and his assailant hid in a theater). The list goes on and on. Here in the Elijah-Ahab story, there are some details that I would not call coincidences at all, but God chose to employ a certain amount of irony. This irony was to his glory. Remember that Ahab was married to Jezebel, a woman from Sidon, from the very place Elijah was now sent. But Jezebel seemed to have everything; she was a princess who was married to a king. In fact, an outside source, Josephus, tells us that Jezebel’s father Ethbaaal was also a high priest of Baal. She had direct religious ties to the very heart of the Baal cult. Contrast her with this widow, who had no support but was under old Ethbaal’s dominion. She had no ties, no connections; nothing. It is to here that God sent his faithful prophet.
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven. (Luke 6:20)
12 “As surely as the LORD your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”
A widow in these times was a woman with no support system and no protection. Without a grown son or father, she was absolutely on her own in a society where women did not work for money except as prostitutes, unless exceptional circumstances permitted it. But there were no exceptional circumstances here. The widow told the prophet that the meal she was preparing was going to be her last. After that, she and her little son would starve to death. She isn’t complaining as she tells these things to the prophet. She’s telling him that he’s knocked on the wrong door. How else could we say it? She has no food left, no money; nothing at all. He’s trying to drink, you might say, from a brook that’s dried up.
13 Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. 14 For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD sends rain on the land.’”
Do Elijah’s words sound hard, almost cruel? Your last meal? First make me some, I’m hungry, too. But those weren’t the prophet’s first words. The first thing he said was God’s usual introduction for something wonderful: “Don’t be afraid.” The wonderful Hebrew phrase ’al tirah, “Don’t be afraid,” resounds throughout the Bible like one of Wagner’s leitmotifs running throughout the Ring operas. Every time we hear it we know that God’s grace is about to explode onto the scene like an ambulance arriving in the nick of time at an terrible accident. Here the Hebrew is feminine: ’al tira’i; Elijah isn’t speaking God’s comfort to the whole country of Sidon or even to the city of Zarephath, but he is speaking to, and only to, this widow. This is God’s grace given personally, as it was given to you at your baptism; as it is given to you personally when the pastor lifts up his hands and uses the singular pronoun at the end of the service: “The Lord bless you and keep you....” What could be a more personal blessing and assurance of God’s forgiveness and grace than the personal act of eating his sacrificed flesh and drinking his shed blood for your own, individual and personal forgiveness? It’s wonderful that God loves us all, but he tells me personally that he loves me. He tells you yourself that he loves you.
The message to the widow was: Your supplies won’t wear out; God’s love won’t wear out, either, even though there’s a drought and a famine and you have no income and no welfare. God will be your welfare.
15 She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. 16 For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the LORD spoken by Elijah. (NIV)
Another miracle, another twist of the laws of nature. The bottomless flour and oil were truly a fantastic wonder. The drought lasted three and a half years. If the widow and her son and their guest ate three meals a day, that would come to more than 5,000 meals (Elijah was fed by ravens for some of that time). It seems almost trivial—a little flour, a little oil. It was a miracle that happened again and again every day. But it’s just as significant as daily bread of manna in the Old Testament and the Feeding of the 5,000 in the New Testament. The Lord was with his prophet, and while he stayed with this family of outsiders, outside of Israel, God sustained them and blessed them.
Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. (Luke 6:21)
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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