Ahab Admonitions Part II: The Widow of Zarephath
In
my last post, I started a conversation revolving around Ahab, Israel’s worst
king. Because he was so bad, God sent
Elijah to proclaim a drought. This was a
divine slap in the face to Ahab, because Baal was the god of the weather. Israel was an agrarian society and dependent
on rain for their crops – drought meant famine, famine meant death. The true God meant to show Ahab and all
Israel who was really in charge.
As
things begin to dry up in the land of Israel and food becomes scarce, God tells
Elijah to do a strange thing.
Then the word of the Lord came to him,
saying,
“Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to
Sidon, and stay there; behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for
you,”(1 Kings 17:8-9).
Sidon
is Jezebel’s home country. It is under the
control of her dad, Ethbaal. These are
the folks that Ahab wants to emulate. It
is Baal territory – and it is also suffering from a drought. This widow is a Sidonian, just like Jezabel. She's a foreigner, a
Gentile, yet God commands her to provide for Elijah. Weren’t there any widows in Israel or even
Judah that could have done the job?
Jesus tells us:
But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the
days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a
great famine came over all the land; and yet Elijah was sent to none of them,
but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow (Luke
4:25-26).
Only this
woman, we don’t even know her name, but God commanded her to provide for Elijah. I wonder what that command sounded like? Did she hear a voice? Did He show her some sign? Did she doubt? Did she recognize the voice of a God she had
not been serving?
And Elijah –
did he blink when God told him to go to a widow in Zarephath of Sidon? Were there no faithful in Israel? Why Jezebel territory? How does a widow provide for anyone during a
famine – and a pagan widow at that? He
just obeys, but that’s a topic for another blog post.
So he arose and went to Zarephath, and when he came to the gate of
the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks; and he called to her and
said, “Please get me a little water in a jar, that I may drink.”
As she was going to get it, he called to her and said, “Please
bring me a piece of bread in your hand.”
But she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have no bread, only a
handful of flour in the bowl and a little oil in the jar; and behold, I am
gathering a few sticks that I may go in and prepare for me and my son, that we
may eat it and die,”(1 Kings 17:10-12).
This is a
remarkable meeting. Elijah goes to the
gate of Zarephath and requests help from just the right lady. This lady addresses him like she knows him – “As
the Lord your God lives.” Maybe the
widows in Sidon wore black. Maybe God
told Elijah she’d be at the gate gathering firewood. We know the Lord had commanded the widow to
provide for Elijah, his servant. However
the Lord communicated to the widow, she knew the living God spoke to her. Not some statue in a temple, but the living
God concerned with the sustenance of his prophet. I get the feeling refusal didn’t seem like an
option to her.
She must’ve
looked in her flour bowl and looked up to heaven, and wondered how she could
possibly provide for anyone. God's command was impossible for to fulfill. Was she
afraid?
Then Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go, do as you have said,
but make me a little bread cake from it first and bring it out to me, and
afterward you may make one for yourself and for your son. For thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘The
bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty, until
the day that the Lord sends rain on the face of the earth,’”(1 Kings
17:13-14).
It is a
serious thing to be commanded by God to do something. I think it is easy in our time to take for
granted our relationship with the Lord, to be nonchalant in prayer and Bible
reading. If we know He wants us to do
something, do we make sure to do it? If
we think it isn’t in our power to do, do we trust Him?
Elijah
wouldn’t have told her to not be afraid if she appeared confident. She saw an impossible situation, but God had
a plan to care for His prophet and save this nameless woman who He knew
as only He can know.
This widow
went home and did what Elijah said. Did
she believe him? Did she figure she was
going to die anyway? What did she think
when she saw there was still flour in the bowl after making that little cake?
So she went and did according to the word of Elijah, and she and
he and her household ate for many days.
The bowl of flour was not exhausted nor did the jar of oil become empty,
according to the word of the Lord which He spoke through Elijah (1 Kings 17:15-16).
God
performed quite a miracle here. They ate for many days. Not only
was Elijah provided for, but this woman and her son, and her household. This gives me the idea that she probably had
servants and may have once been a woman of means before becoming a widow and
enduring a famine.
The Lord
sent Elijah to this widow to be provided for while He taught Ahab a lesson, but
that wasn’t the only thing He had in mind.
Now it came about after these things that the son of the woman,
the mistress of the house, became sick; and his sickness was so severe that
there was no breath left in him. So she
said to Elijah, “What do I have to do with you, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my iniquity to
remembrance and to put my son to death!” (1 Kings 17:17-18).
She didn’t
seek God out. He had sought her. She was prepared to starve and die. She wasn’t looking to be saved. There’s a funny thing about spending time
with the Lord and being in His presence.
The closer we get to seeing how good and holy He is, the more we realize
how unworthy we are.
If we spend too
much time thinking about ourselves and relying on our own strength, we can miss His mercy.
Her son is dead, and she thinks she is being
punished.
He said to her, “Give me your son.” Then he took him from her bosom and carried
him up to the upper room where he was living, and laid him on his own bed. He called to the Lord and said, “O Lord my
God, have You also brought calamity to the widow with whom I am staying, by
causing her son to die?” (1 Kings 17:19-20).
Whatever God
is doing here, He hasn’t shared the plan with Elijah. This widow’s home is the Lord’s designated
haven for Elijah. What is He doing? Elijah is feeling the weight of
responsibility – a famine, people suffering, a nation’s soul, and now this
widow’s son. The responsibility is not
Elijah’s to bear, but he feels the burden all the same.
Often we can take responsibility for things that
are not in our control. Things the Lord
never intended for us to bear.
Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and called
to the Lord and said, “O Lord my God, I pray You, let this child’s life return
to him.” The Lord heard the voice of
Elijah, and the life of the child returned to him and he revived. Elijah took the child and brought him down
from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother; and Elijah said,
“See, your son is alive.” Then the woman
said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the
Lord in your mouth is truth.” (1 Kings 17:21-24).
This is the
first time in Scripture that God raises someone from the dead. It seems to me the Lord goes to great lengths to reveal Himself to some insignificant woman – a foreign widow, who
remains nameless in the Scriptures, but who can say with confidence that the
Word of the Lord is truth.
I have no
doubt that He knows her name.
God is good whether we see it or feel it. He is sovereign and true. This is a rich and encouraging account that came at a perfect time.
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