1 Kings 17:12

Elijah had told King Ahab that there would be neither dew nor rain, and God had hidden him by the brook Cherith, where ravens fed him until the brook dried up (1 Kings 17:1–7). The next thing that happens is that God speaks. Elijah’s ministry runs on God’s direction from start to finish, and each move he makes begins with a word from the LORD.

“The word of the LORD came unto him” is the regular way Scripture introduces a message given to a prophet, and the same words open the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Jeremiah 1:2, Ezekiel 1:3). The phrase marks what follows as God’s own message and sets it apart from human counsel or opinion. The Hebrew dâbâr means a word or a speech, and it can also mean a matter or a thing. In Scripture God’s word does things: by it he called light into being (Genesis 1:3), and it accomplishes what he sends it to do (Isaiah 55:11). The verb “saying”, ʼâmar, is the ordinary word for speaking, and here it leads into a clear instruction with a named town and a named kind of person.

The name is Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of God, printed “LORD” in the KJV. It names the Self-Existent and Eternal One, the God of Israel who binds himself to his people and stays faithful when the nation has turned from him. In Ahab’s Israel, where Baal’s prophets were many and their idols silent, the living God was still speaking to his servant.

The dried brook teaches something about how God provides. One means of supply came to an end, and God’s faithfulness went on by another means, with a new place and a new task attached.

God sent Elijah to Zarephath to show that he is LORD in Zidon as surely as in Israel. Ahab’s reign, described in 1 Kings 16, was one of the darkest in Israel’s history. His wife Jezebel was a princess of Zidon, and she and Ahab promoted the worship of Baal and Asherah. Baal was held to be the god of storm, rain and fertility, so the drought Elijah announced (1 Kings 17:1) was the LORD’s judgment on that worship and a direct exposure of Baal’s weakness. James tells us the drought lasted three and a half years (James 5:17). Famine was a catastrophe, as it had been in the days of Abraham, of Joseph and of David.

Zarephath “belongeth to Zidon”. It was a Phoenician town, in what is now Lebanon, in the very country Baal worship had come from. There, in Baal’s own territory, the LORD fed his prophet and kept a household alive while Baal could send no rain. This was also a rebuke to Ahab and Jezebel, whose land lay under judgment while God cared for his servant among Jezebel’s own people.

The two commands are plain. “Get thee” is yâlak, to walk or go, and it sets Elijah on a real journey into a foreign land. “Dwell” is yâshab, to sit down, remain or live in a place, so Elijah was to settle in Zarephath for a length of time God did not state.

Jesus himself explains this choice. Preaching in Nazareth, he said that there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, and that Elijah was sent to this widow of Zidon (Luke 4:25–26). God is free to show mercy to whom he will, and his grace reaches beyond Israel’s borders. A foreign woman received the prophet’s word in faith at a time when much of Israel had abandoned the LORD. Her story looks ahead to the day when Gentiles who were far off would be brought near by the blood of Christ, who has broken down the wall between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:13–14). Jesus showed the same mercy in the same region when he answered the faith of the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:21–28).

“So he arose and went to Zarephath.” Elijah’s obedience is immediate, though the road led into a pagan country and the provision promised was a poor widow. The gate of a city was its public place, busy with people, and God brought Elijah to the one person he had appointed at the moment she was there. “Behold” marks the meeting as God’s arrangement. She was gathering sticks, an everyday chore for fuel, and verse 12 tells us what this fire was for.

She answers with an oath, “As the LORD thy God liveth”, a common form of solemn oath in Scripture that vouches for the truth of what follows. “Liveth” is chay, alive or living. A woman of Zidon here names Elijah’s God as the living God, in a land that served lifeless idols. She says “thy God”. She speaks with respect of the prophet’s God, and her own confession of his word comes later, after her son is raised (1 Kings 17:24).

Then she tells the plain truth about her house. She has no cake, which is to say no prepared food at all. She has a handful of meal in a “barrel”, kad, an ordinary earthenware jar for storing meal or water, and a little oil in a cruse (tsappakhath), a small jug or flask. Two sticks are fuel enough for one small fire. To “dress” the meal is to prepare and cook it. Her plan covers herself and her son, bên, her male child and the only family she mentions, and it ends with the word “die”, mûwth. She is describing the last meal of two people who have nothing after it.

Her honesty matters. She hides nothing from the prophet and puts no brave face on her situation. And all the while God’s word of verse 9 stands over her words: the woman who expects to die has been appointed to sustain a prophet. God often lets a need reach its end before he acts, so that the help can only be his.

Elijah’s first words to her are “Fear not.” The verb is yârêʼ, to fear, and this command is one that God and his messengers often give to people in great trouble, usually just before a promise. Elijah then accepts her plan: “go and do as thou hast said.” He takes her need seriously and leaves the meal for her and her son in place.

He changes one thing, which is the order. “But make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son.” “First” is riʼshôwn, first in order. The prophet’s portion is to come out of the handful before hers, and the word “after” carries a promise inside it: there will be meal left when his cake is baked. Her son is named again, so the promise covers the child she feared for.

Giving the first portion to God’s messenger is an act of trust in God himself. Scripture teaches the same order elsewhere: “Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase” (Proverbs 3:9–10), and Jesus tells us to seek first the kingdom of God, with the promise that food and clothing will be added (Matthew 6:33). Paul adds that God is able to make all grace abound to those who give, so that they have enough for every good work (2 Corinthians 9:6–8). In the widow’s house, giving away the last of the meal became the way the meal lasted.

Verse 14 gives the reason she can obey. “For thus saith the LORD God of Israel” marks the promise as God’s, spoken through his prophet. God had promised Israel prophets in whose mouth he would put his words (Deuteronomy 18:18), and Elijah speaks as one of them. The God of Israel makes this promise on Zidonian soil.

The promise has two matching halves. The barrel of meal shall not “waste”, kâlâh, a verb meaning to end, cease, be finished or be consumed. The cruse of oil shall not “fail”, châçêr, to lack or to run short. Meal and oil were the staples of a household, the oil serving for cooking and for light, so the promise covers the basic needs of life. It does so in a particular way. God did not fill a storehouse. He kept a jar and a jug from running out, which meant the widow met his faithfulness afresh at every meal.

The promise also has an end point: “until the day that the LORD sendeth rain upon the earth.” The same LORD who withheld the rain would send it again, and he did (1 Kings 18:1). The miracle lasted exactly as long as the need.

“And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah.” “Saying” is dâbâr, the word used in verse 8 for the word of the LORD. She treated the prophet’s word as a word to be acted on, and she acted before she saw any meal multiply. This is the faith that pleases God, which believes that he is and that he rewards those who seek him (Hebrews 11:6).

Three are named as eating: “she, and he, and her house”. “House” is bayith, a house and also the household or family that lives in it, so the blessing reached everyone under her roof, her son and any others who belonged to her home. One woman’s obedience fed her whole house and the prophet of God besides.

They ate “many days” (yamim). Yôwm means a day or a span of time, and the phrase tells us the supply went on through the long drought, perhaps two to three years of it. David’s testimony fits what happened in Zarephath: “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread” (Psalm 37:25).

Verse 16 repeats the terms of the promise almost word for word. The meal “wasted not” and the oil did not “fail”, with kâlâh and châçêr returning from verse 14, and then comes the reason: “according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by Elijah.” The miracle is credited to God’s word, and Elijah is shown to be a true prophet. In the land of the rain god, during a drought that god could do nothing about, the LORD kept a jar of meal from emptying.

The chapter goes on from here to a greater mercy in the same house, the raising of the widow’s son (1 Kings 17:17–24), and then to Mount Carmel, where the LORD answers by fire and sends the rain (1 Kings 18).

God, who spoke in time past by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2). The word that came to Elijah was a message. Jesus is the Word himself, who was in the beginning with God (John 1:1) and was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). The God who took the first step toward Elijah and toward the widow took the greatest step of all when he gave his only begotten Son (John 3:16). Christ now speaks with all power in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18), and his Spirit guides his people into all truth (John 16:13).

The meal and oil that lasted through the famine point to what Jesus gives for ever. He said, “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger” (John 6:35). He offered living water to a Samaritan woman (John 4:10) and promised that whoever drinks of it “shall never thirst” (John 4:14). He came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10).

Jesus also did openly what God did quietly in Zarephath. He fed five thousand (Matthew 14:13–21) and then four thousand (Matthew 15:32–39) from a few loaves and fishes. On the first occasion he took a boy’s five barley loaves and two small fishes (John 6:9), and twelve baskets of fragments were gathered afterwards (John 6:13). A small thing placed in his hands is enough.

The widow gave her last and found life. Jesus teaches that the one who loses his life for his sake will find it (Matthew 10:39), and he went further than any widow could. Though he was rich, for our sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). His body given and his blood shed, which he set before his disciples at the supper (Matthew 26:26–28), are the meal that leads to life, where the widow had expected a meal that led to death. He is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25–26). And as God sent Elijah to one particular woman in her need, the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10).

This passage gives us a God who had the answer in place before the need was spoken. The widow was appointed while Elijah was still at the brook, and Elijah was on the road while she still believed she would die. When a brook dries up in our own lives, the LORD’s care has reached the next stage, and his word will show us where it is.

It also shows us the kind of supply God often gives. The barrel stayed a barrel with a little meal in it, and there was enough each day. Jesus teaches us to live this way, trusting our Father for food and clothing one day at a time (Matthew 6:25–34), and Paul says with the same confidence, “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

The widow’s part was small and costly: a little cake, made first. God took her seriously, with her fear, her honesty and her handful of meal, and he made her house the place where his prophet lived and his power was seen. His strength is made perfect in weakness, and his grace is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9). If you have little to bring, this widow is your encouragement, because what the LORD asked of her was trust in his word, and he supplied everything else.