'And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said
unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there
shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. 2. And
the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, 3. Get thee hence, and turn
thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before
Jordan. 4. And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I
have commanded the ravens to feed thee there. 5. So he went and did
according unto the word of the Lord, for he went and dwelt by the brook
Cherith, that is before Jordan. 6. And the ravens brought him bread and
flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank
of the brook. 7. And it came to pass after a while, that the brook
dried up, because there had been no rain in the land. 8. And the word
of the Lord came unto him, saying, 9. Arise, get thee to Zarephath,
which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a
widow woman there to sustain thee. 10. So he arose and went to
Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow
woman was there gathering of sticks: and he called to her, and said,
Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.
11. And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her, and said, Bring
me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand. 12. And she said, As
the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a
barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two
sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may
eat it, and die. 13. And Elijah said unto her, Fear not; go and do as
thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it
unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. 14. For thus saith
the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither
shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain
upon the earth. 15. And she went and did according to the saying of
Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days. 16. And the
barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according
to the word of the Lord, which He spake by Elijah.'-1 KINGS xvii. 1-16.
The worst times need the best men. The reign of Ahab brought a great
outburst of Baal worship, imported by his Phoenician wife, which
threatened to sweep away every trace of the worship of Jehovah. The
feeble king was absolutely ruled by the strongwilled Jezebel, and
everything seemed rushing down to ruin. One man arrests the downward
movement, and with no weapon but his word, and no support but his own
dauntless courage, which was the child of his faith, works a revolution
in Israel. 'Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a
greater than' Elijah the Tishbite. Bugged, stern, solitary, he has no
commission to reveal new truth. He is not a 'prophet,' like later ones
whose words were revelation.
Little is preserved of his sayings. His task was to reform and restore,
not to advance; and his endowments of 'spirit and power' corresponded
to his work. The striking peculiarities of this heroic figure will
appear as we go on with his history. For the present, we have to
consider the three points of this narrative.
I. The Prophet and the King.--The startling suddenness of Elijah's leap
into the arena, where he appears without preface or explanation, helps
the impression of extraordinary force which his whole career makes. He
crashes into the midst of Ahab's court like a thunderbolt. What did
Jezebel think of this wild man from the other side of Jordan, with his
long hair and his loose mantle, who thus fronted Ahab and her? Nothing
is told us of his descent; it is even questionable whether the reading
which calls him 'the Tishbite' is correct. We only know that he was of
Gilead, and therefore used to a ruder, freer, simpler life than that in
kings' palaces.
The natural conclusion from the narrative is that the prophet and the
king had never met before; and, if so, the stern brevity of the threat
is even more remarkable. In any case, the absence of explanation of
reasons for the drought, or of credentials of Elijah, or of offers of
mercy on condition of repentance, give a peculiarly grim aspect to the
message, and make it a dangerous one to carry to such a hearer as Ahab,
stirred up by Jezebel. When God commands us to speak, no thought of
peril must make us dumb. If the 'word of the Lord' is to sound from our
lips with power, it must first have absolute sway over ourselves. One
man with God at his back, who fears nothing, can work marvels.
God's servant is men's master. The vision of God's Presence paled the
splendour, and blunted the perils, of the court of Samaria. Ahab was
but a poor puppet in the sight of eyes that 'saw the Lord sitting on
His throne, high and lifted up.' So the very first words of Elijah lay
bare the secret spring of his fiery energy and courage. 'Before whom I
stand,'--that is the thought to put nerve, daring, and disregard of
earth into a man.
James's comment on this incident assumes that the declaration to Ahab
followed earnest prayer that it might not rain, and that the 'word'
which should end the drought was also prayer. The truest lover of his
country or of any men may sometimes have to wish for losses and
sorrows. Elijah did not open and shut the heavens, but his prayer had
power to move the Hand that 'openeth and no man shutteth.'
II. The Prophet and the Ravens.--One would like to know how Elijah made
his escape from Ahab; but the whole story is marked by sudden
appearances and disappearances. He flashes into sight and flames for a
moment, and then is swallowed up in the dark again. The exact position
of the brook Cherith is doubtful. It would seem most natural to look
for it across Jordan, as safer and more familiar ground to Elijah than
any of the tributaries on the western side. At all events, somewhere
among the savage rocks in some wady with a trickle of water down it,
and rank vegetation that would help to hide him, he lurked for an
indefinite period, alone with God.
Why did he flee? Not only for safety, but that the period of the
drought might be prolonged till it had done its work, and that the
prophet might learn more lessons for his calling. Good Obadiah would
have made a place for the chief of the prophets in his caves; but the
man who is to do work like Elijah's must live in solitude. Cherith was
part of the training for Carmel. The flight thither was as much an act
of obedient faith as was the appearance before the king. However the
necessity of flight was impressed on the prophet, it _was_ impressed on
him as manifestly not his own plan, but God's command; and though the
journey was a weary one, and the appointed place of refuge
inhospitable, the command was unhesitatingly obeyed. He was not left to
wonder how he was to be fed when he got there, but God gave him, what
He seldom gives--a previous assurance of miraculous provision, which
obviously met some unspoken thought. We do not usually know how we are
to be fed in the solitude till we get there; but if our doubting hearts
object, 'But, Lord, there is nothing at Cherith but a brook and some
ravens,' He sometimes gives us assurance that these will be enough.
Whether or no, the duty is the same,--to follow God's voice, whether it
take us face to face with Ahab and Jezebel or into the wild gorge.
Note that the same words are employed about the ravens and the widow:
'I have commanded the... to feed thee.' God has ways of reaching the
mysterious animal instinct and the mysterious human will, and each, in
its own way, obeys. It is needless to try to pare down the miracle by
saying that, of course, ravens would haunt the water-courses in
drought, and that the food which they brought might be for their young,
and so on. The daily regularity of the supply takes it out of the
natural category, to say nothing of the remarkable breed which the
ravens must have been of, if they brought their young ones' food within
reach and let the prophet take it.
People take offence at the abundance of miracles in the lives of Elijah
and Elisha, and assert that some of them, this among the rest, are for
unworthily trivial occasions. But the grave crisis in Israel is to be
taken into account, which involved the necessity for unusual
manifestations of divine power, and very evident credentials for the
prophets; and the preparation of Elijah for his tremendous struggle
was, even to our eyes, surely an adequate end for miracle. How could he
doubt that God had sent him and would care for him, with such memories
as those of his winged purveyors? How could he doubt future words which
should come to him, when he recalled how marvellously this one had been
fulfilled? The silence of the ravine, the long days and nights of
solitude, the punctual arrival of his food, would all tend to weld his
faith into yet more close-knit strength. If we may so say, it was worth
God's while to work miracles, to make Elijah. The highest end of
creation is the production of God-fearing men. All things serve the
soul that serves God.
III. The Prophet and the Widow.--The little stream that came down the
wady dried up 'after a while'; and Elijah, no doubt, would wonder what
was to be done next, as he saw it daily sending a thinner thread to
Jordan. But he was not told till the channel was dry, and the pebbles
in its bed bleaching in the sun. God makes us sometimes wait on beside
a diminishing rivulet, and keeps us ignorant of the next step, till it
is dry. Patience is an element in strength. It was a far cry from
Cherith to Zarephath, right across the kingdom of Ahab; and to run for
refuge to a dependency of Zidon, Jezebel's country, looked like putting
his head in the lion's mouth. But the same 'command' which the ravens
had obeyed had smoothed his way.
So he girded up his loins, and left, no doubt reluctantly, the brook
for a city. How his heart would bow in adoring thankfulness, when the
first person he saw outside the little 'city' was 'the widow'! He knew
her; did she know him? The natural interpretation of verse 9 is that,
at the time when God spoke to Elijah, he had already 'commanded' the
woman. But the despondent tone of her answer seems against that idea;
and perhaps we are to suppose that, just as the ravens were commanded
and knew not by whom, so this woman received the command, when she saw
the travel-stained and gaunt stranger, through her womanly impulses of
compassion, not knowing who moved them nor what she did when she
sheltered the man whose life was, at that moment, the most important in
the world. The motions of pity and charity are of God, and He commands
us to help when He sets before us those who need help.
The whole incident was a lesson to the prophet. He might well have
thought that God had sent him to a strange helper in this poor widow
with her empty cupboard; and it must have taken some faith on his part
to reassure her with his cheery 'Fear not!' The prediction of the
undiminishing stores demanded as much faith from its speaker as from
its hearer.
It was a lesson in faith for the woman too. Her use of the phrase 'the
Lord thy God' may imply some inclination to the worship of Jehovah, and
so there may have been a little glimmer of faith in her; but she was
full of sorrow and despair, and yet willing to help the stranger with
the 'little water in a vessel,' though the 'morsel of bread in thine
hand' was beyond her power. Elijah's apparently selfish demand that his
wants should be looked after first was a test of her faith. Sometimes
self-denying duty is made clearly imperative on us, before we hear the
promise which, believed, will make it easy. They who have ears to hear
the command, and hearts to obey, even if it seem to strip them of all,
will soon hear the assurance that secures abundance. The barrel would
have been empty by nightfall, if the meal in it had been used for the
woman and her son. The continuance of supply depended on her obedience,
which, in its turn, depended on faith in the prophet as a messenger of
God. 'There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth.' The use of earthly
goods for God's service may not be rewarded with the increase of them;
but, if the barrel is not kept full of meal, the heart will be kept
full of peace, which is better. No sacrifice for God is ever thrown
away. He remains in no man's debt.
The incident has a further bearing, as an instance of a divine
benediction resting on heathendom. The synagogue at Nazareth pointed
that lesson for us. Elijah and the widow both learned that the God of
Israel is the God of all the earth, and that His prophets have a
mission to every race. The woman rebuked, by her pity and self-denying
benevolence, the prejudices of Israel; the prophet foreshadowed, by his
familiar abode with one won from idolatry to the worship of God, the
universal aspect of the Jewish religion, and its destiny to overleap
the narrow bounds of the nation. Charity and pity have no geographical
limits. Much less can the love of God and the light of His revelation
be bounded by any narrower circle than the circumference of the world.