TEXT [Commentary]

2. The widow of Zarephath (17:8-24)

8 Then the LORD said to Elijah, 9 “Go and live in the village of Zarephath, near the city of Sidon. I have instructed a widow there to feed you.”

10 So he went to Zarephath. As he arrived at the gates of the village, he saw a widow gathering sticks, and he asked her, “Would you please bring me a little water in a cup?” 11 As she was going to get it, he called to her, “Bring me a bite of bread, too.”

12 But she said, “I swear by the LORD your God that I don’t have a single piece of bread in the house. And I have only a handful of flour left in the jar and a little cooking oil in the bottom of the jug. I was just gathering a few sticks to cook this last meal, and then my son and I will die.”

13 But Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid! Go ahead and do just what you’ve said, but make a little bread for me first. Then use what’s left to prepare a meal for yourself and your son. 14 For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: There will always be flour and olive oil left in your containers until the time when the LORD sends rain and the crops grow again!”

15 So she did as Elijah said, and she and Elijah and her family continued to eat for many days. 16 There was always enough flour and olive oil left in the containers, just as the LORD had promised through Elijah.

17 Some time later the woman’s son became sick. He grew worse and worse, and finally he died. 18 Then she said to Elijah, “O man of God, what have you done to me? Have you come here to point out my sins and kill my son?”

19 But Elijah replied, “Give me your son.” And he took the child’s body from her arms, carried him up the stairs to the room where he was staying, and laid the body on his bed. 20 Then Elijah cried out to the LORD, “O LORD my God, why have you brought tragedy to this widow who has opened her home to me, causing her son to die?”

21 And he stretched himself out over the child three times and cried out to the LORD, “O LORD my God, please let this child’s life return to him.” 22 The LORD heard Elijah’s prayer, and the life of the child returned, and he revived! 23 Then Elijah brought him down from the upper room and gave him to his mother. “Look!” he said. “Your son is alive!”

24 Then the woman told Elijah, “Now I know for sure that you are a man of God, and that the LORD truly speaks through you.”

NOTES

17:9 the village of Zarephath, near the city of Sidon. Zarephath lay on the Mediterranean seacoast 8 miles (13 km) south of Sidon. The irony of King Ahab’s wife Jezebel, whose ancestry was “Sidonian” (see note on 16:31), coming to the land of Israel, over against Elijah the Israelite prophet being sent to the region of Sidon should not be missed (Wiseman 1993:165).

I have instructed a widow there to feed you. Whether it be wild ravens (17:1-7) or a foreign widow, God’s methods of provision are often quite surprising. Sadly, in ancient (and still in contemporary) times, widows generally suffered disproportionate economic distress. Therefore, the Torah made special provisions for them (see Exod 22:22; Deut 10:18; 14:29; 24:17, 19, 21; 26:12-13). Cogan (2001:427) points out that widows often wore distinctive attire even long after the formal time for mourning had passed. They could easily be identified as such.

17:10-11 a little water . . . a bite of bread. These were modest requests (contrast the provisions of “bread and meat” twice a day in 17:6, MT) but still far beyond the widow’s ability to supply. Those perhaps dismayed by Elijah’s seeming selfishness here should be reminded that Yahweh had commanded Elijah to do this (17:9). Elijah, therefore, was to expect a miracle here (Cogan 2001:427, citing the medieval sage David Qimhi).

17:12 I swear by the LORD your God. This is a shorter version of the oath formula ­Elijah used in 17:1 (see note). If Jezebel (in chs 18–19) could force Israelites to worship the Phoenician god Baal Hadad (“Lord of the Storm”), the narrator here reminds us that Phoenicians could also acknowledge the power of Israel’s God, Yahweh. After all, the worship of such a “storm god” as Baal Hadad had proven to be totally ineffective during this time of drought, even in Phoenicia!

a handful of flour . . . a little cooking oil. This was presumably enough only for one “cake”—hardly enough for two people, let alone three.

to cook this last meal. The NLT is a bit paraphrastic; the Hebrew simply reads “that I may go in and prepare it [the handful of flour] for myself and for my son.” The widow’s response in the final part of this verse is actually quite grim and to the point: “I will prepare it . . . and we will eat it and (then) we will die.”

17:13 Don’t be afraid! Elijah directly responded to her fatalism with this comforting command. Elijah, in turn, is so comforted in 2 Kgs 1:15, as is Elisha’s anxious servant in 2 Kgs 6:16.

17:14 flour and olive oil. These are the identical commodities and containers mentioned back in 17:12 (cf. 17:16). Again, these represent modest but sufficient staples, until “the LORD sends rain and the crops grow again” (supposedly, the fundamental task of Baal in Phoenicia!).

17:17 Some time later. Elijah will apparently spend a considerable amount of time in this location, possibly a year or two (cf. 18:1).

17:18 man of God. See the note on 13:1 concerning this phrase as a synonym for “prophet” (cf. 17:24).

to point out my sins and kill my son? Interestingly, in the somewhat parallel story of Elisha and the Shunammite (see 2 Kgs 4:8-37), we find similar sentiments of anxiety and gloom (all the more ironic in the present story since Elijah and his God have already saved the son’s life; 17:12-16). In a gentle and healing way, the present text touches on the issue of the woman’s concern over her “sins” but then moves away—focusing in the rest of the story on the need for, and appropriateness of, the son’s resurrection (cf. 17:20). Thus, we may conclude that the widow should not fixate on how her “sins” were necessarily the source of tragedy.

17:20 why have you brought tragedy to this widow? Lit., “Will you bring harm even to this widow . . . by killing her son?” The ancient Israelites attributed both blessing and tragedy directly to their God (see Deut 32:39; 1 Sam 2:6-7; and ironically in 2 Kgs 5:7). This raises the age-old question concerning the unfairness of life that we will explore at length in the commentary on 19:9b-18.

17:21 stretched himself. This is a unique form of the verb madad [TH4058, ZH4499], meaning “to measure, measure off.” The exact procedure here is unclear, but it is probably akin to what Elisha does in 2 Kgs 4:34-35, bringing the Shunammite’s son back to life by lying down on the child’s body, “placing his mouth on the child’s mouth, his eyes on the child’s eyes, and his hands on the child’s hands.”

17:22 The LORD heard. The verb used in this phrase, wayyishma‘ [TH8085, ZH9048] yhwh beqol (Yahweh listened to the voice [of Elijah]) often means “to obey,” when used of human subjects; hence Yahweh “hearkened unto” or, as it were, “obeyed” Elijah’s plea for the child’s resurrection.

17:23 upper room. The same term ‘aliyyah [TH5944, ZH6608] is used in 17:19 (NLT, “up the stairs to the room where he was staying”); here we find another parallel to the story about the Shunammite and Elisha in 2 Kgs 4, where Elisha stays in an ‘aliyyah (2 Kgs 4:10-11; cf. 2 Kgs 1:2; 23:12). Cogan (2001:429) translates the term ‘aliyyah in the present passage as “roof chamber”; Sweeney (2007:213) prefers “upper level,” and he points out that many houses in ancient Israel and Phoenicia would have two levels; the lower one was used for the housing of livestock, as well as for storage and cooking, while the upper level would be used for the living and sleeping quarters. I have been told that one advantage of this living arrangement would be the warming of the upper level in winter by the cooking fires and the heat given off by the animals stabled below.

17:24 Now I know. As Cogan (2001:430) notes, “The gift of life aroused greater awe than the gift of food.” Wiseman (1993:166) appropriately compares the testimony of another foreigner in Exod 18:11. I would, however, note the sobering contrast found in Matt 28:17 that some among the crowd of witnesses who saw the resurrected Christ still doubted the reality of his resurrection. Miracles are great sources of encouragement, but only to those who already have a predisposition to believe (cf. Luke 16:31).

COMMENTARY [Text]

As noted in the commentary on 17:1-7, Seow’s apt characterization of the beginning of the present text (17:8-16) is “Elijah is fed by a Sidonian widow.” But all too soon the tables are turned, and it will be Elijah and his God who will be the ones feeding the widow and her child. And as it so often does, personal tragedy strikes: The widow’s son becomes sick and eventually dies (note the significant passage of time this represents). Elijah was still residing in his upper room or roof chamber (cf. 17:19, 23). The woman cried out to him in a guilty fashion (17:18), so he cried out in turn to his God, “Why have you brought tragedy to this widow who has opened her home to me?” Note that any mention of Baal, the patron deity of Phoenicia (and certainly of Jezebel, the Phoenician wife of King Ahab of Israel) is out of the question here: It is only Yahweh who “gives both death and life” (1 Sam 2:6)—even in the land of Baal.

One of the great mysteries of faith is that when tragedy strikes, God sometimes heals and sometimes seemingly does not. Texts such as the present one are not meant to give formulas or recipes on how to bring about healing (still less, resurrections!). But divine healings did and do occur; and from time to time there are, even today, resurrections. So it is here, and so it will be in the parallel Elisha story (2 Kgs 4). Here, a foreign widow, destitute, understandably reluctant to share her last meal with a prophet from Israel whom she has just met, is brought to genuine faith in Israel’s God. She and her child were eventually fed for quite some time directly by that God; and so was Elijah, who brought blessings. Yahweh can and will bring the rain and the dew to bless the land in his own good timing, but now he brings food and (literally) renewed life to his chosen people (at least two of them) who happen to reside in a seaport village in the land of Phoenicia, far from Israel, and who have surely suffered already more than their share of life’s heartaches. “Now I know for sure that you are a man of God, and that the LORD truly speaks through you,” are the final words we hear from this unnamed widow (17:24).

What a testimony of faith, so appropriately recalled by Jesus (in Luke 4:25-26) to his hometown audience in the synagogue of Nazareth. Unfortunately, this hometown audience was provoked by the fact that Elijah was sent to a foreign widow in Zarephath, although there were surely many needy widows in Israel during his time. It was a reminder of how “hometown folk” may be bypassed by a sovereign God; and it was teaching that God would bring his kindness to Gentiles. Again in John 4 Jesus is pictured ministering to another “outsider,” the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. He brought life and hope to another ethnic group (the Samaritans) whom God’s people at that time considered outside of the law and the covenant, and therefore to be despised and rejected. God’s ways are not our ways, and God’s ways of ministering are often unexpected. What a great God we serve!