Recently, while reading the well-known tale of Elijah and the widow of Zarapeth found in I Kings 17, God showed me a new and interesting perspective on this story. Shortly after, He seemed to be prompting me to share that new view with a business associate via a letter. Done. Since then, it seems God is pressing on me to post it here. Okay, will do Lord. Happily. Thank you for the privilege.
In 1 Kings 17, Elijah the prophet is introduced by his pronouncement from the Lord that there will be “neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” Then the Lord told him to go away and hide by the brook Cherith.
“It shall be that you will drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to provide for you there.” (v. 4, NASB)
So trusting the Lord, Elijah went there, and drank from the brook, and ate the bread and meat the Lord provided through the ravens. Until the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land, as Elijah had prophesied for the Lord.
Though another might begin to question the Lord when the brook dried up after He had said He would provide, Elijah trusted God again when He spoke to him and sent Elijah to go get His next provision from the widow of Zarepath.
“Arise and go to Zarepath…I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.” (v.9, NASB)
What’s interesting about this is that God was sending Elijah to the lowest of lows, the poorest of poor to receive provision. In ancient times, widows and orphans were “throw away” people of pity, because they no longer had a name and one’s name was one’s value. A wife was someone because she had her husband’s name, a son or a daughter was someone because they had their father’s name. And whatever privilege that name carried was also theirs. A slave often had the same privilege, if granted by his master, according to the master’s name. The stamp of a signet ring, the family name, was the same as currency. But once widowed or orphaned, those individuals were no longer under the currency of a name and were without privilege. In other words, without a name, they were no one.
So first God tells Elijah to pronounce the land will be without rain, then He sends Him to a brook to be provided for by ravens, then that brook dries up because of the very prophecy Elijah spoke, and then God tells Elijah to go get provision from a widow, a nobody, likely in need herself, because she was regarded as nothing by the society she lived in.
But Elijah trusts again and goes to Zarepath, obeying what the Lord asked of him. When he arrives, Elijah asks the widow for a drink and some bread. But the widow tells him she only has enough for her and her son to have one more meal and then they will eat it and die.
I’m trying to imagine my reaction to this in the same situation. “Okay, Lord, you sent me here for my provision, but she has none.” And in my own human logic, because I couldn’t “see” the provision, I probably would have questioned whether I heard the Lord correctly and would have moved on, or maybe asked for confirmation or maybe even gone back to the river, the first place the Lord had provided for me. But instead, Elijah confidently says to the widow,
“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 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.” (v.13-14, NASB)
That same prophecy pronounced by Elijah at the beginning of 1 Kings 17, the one that dried up the very river God sent him to, is again being used in connection to another portion of God’s provision. And surprisingly, the widow went and did as Elijah said, trusting him, and indeed her flour and oil did not run out “and she and he and her household ate for many days“. (v.15 NASB) In fact, we know from the story that the land was dry until the rain came three years later. Her flour and oil did not run out in all that time! Given her circumstances, Elijah must have spoken with certain authority and confidence for her to risk her one “for sure” meal to possibly gain so many; confidence that could only have been built from experiencing God’s provision previously.
What I love about this story is that though Elijah was going to the widow to get his provision, God was using Elijah to make sure the widow got hers. If Elijah had questioned God and refused to go, instead perhaps waiting for the rain to come and the river to fill so he could drink – because Elijah knew the rain would come again, he just didn’t know when – maybe even thinking the ravens would come back, the widow and her son would have starved to death. To some, staying by the river would have seemed like more of sure thing than to go to a poor, lowly, nobody widow in another region and ask for food. Imagine the unquestioning humility required on Elijah’s part!
Elijah, having trusted and been provided for in the past (and not by normal human means either…ravens bringing meat and bread?), was now able to go against human reasoning, and journey to where the Lord was telling him to go for His next provision. God had taught him to trust. And in doing so, not only did the widow receive her provision, and Elijah his, but Elijah was also given shelter in the woman’s home. As a result, later, when the widow’s son got sick and stopped breathing, Elijah was there to stretch himself out on the child three times and call to the Lord in confidence to heal the child. And the Lord did. When Elijah brought the child back down to mother, she said
“Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” (v.24 NASB)
Elijah was obedient. The widow was obedient. Both got what they needed, and far more than either expected or what God had openly declared. In fact, there was a famine everywhere and it was very severe. But Elijah and the widow and her son were fed, housed and protected for three years under God’s provision. And best of all, God got the glory.
But, and I believe this is key…based on the story as told, neither would have received their provision from the Lord if the other had not listened, trusted and obeyed.
I like to believe that if Elijah had said no and not traveled to Zarepath, God would have still provided for the widow another way, perhaps through another He chose for obedience. The Bible tells us that God’s plans always come to pass. But Elijah would have missed out on the awesome provision of food as promised by God – AND the unexpected provision of shelter that God had not even declared to Elijah – had Elijah refused to go and instead, logically stayed by the river, the place that provision had come to him in the past. The place that had once been safe and maybe even felt safer in its dried out state, than traveling to a new region to ask a poor widow for food. And if the widow had been the one to say no, she would have missed out on an unending supply of flour and oil during a severe famine – AND seeing her son miraculously healed by direct prayer to God, something also not declared by God to her previously.
Of course, when we read the entire story of Elijah, we also learn that God used him to demonstrate His glory in some really powerful ways, including ending the very famine the prophetic word at the beginning of 1 Kings 17 had created. Yet it was through the widow, and her one act of obedience in sharing with Elijah what she believed was the last meal for herself and her son, that God prepared Elijah and fed and protected them all, until it was time for Elijah to declare the rain was coming and the famine to end.
Had either disobeyed, they would have missed out on seeing the glory of God at work so personally in their lives.
Sometimes God works things out in our lives by calling another to be obedient, and the reverse is true. He works things out in the life of another by asking us to be obedient. This new perspective on the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarapeth makes me take pause and consider what provision and blessing God may be bringing to another through my seemingly unrelated act of obedience. Just what benefit for others might be woven into my own obedience? Especially when that obedience looks to be for my own gain. For Elijah, he was being told to go get some food. But it turned out to be so much more!
We may not know what blessing will come, or how God will use us, when we obediently step into the request He is making of us. And indeed, just like with Elijah and the widow, that blessing may turn out to be multiple blessings that are “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.” (Eph 3:20 NASB) But one thing is certain, the Bible shows us over and over that God always blesses obedience. And based on the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarapeth, God may very well be requiring obedience of us to bring about the provision of another – and glory to Himself.
I pray you are blessed by whatever God is sharing with you through this story of Elijah and the widow of Zarepath. To God be all the glory.
Testimony Faith 