Scripture Daily

Context No. 228 of 4322 · 1 Kings

Context · Reflection

1 Kings 17:13-18: in context

13Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go and do as you have said; but make me a little cake from it first, and bring it out to me, and afterward make some for you and for your son. 14For the LORD, the God of Israel, says, ‘The jar of meal will not run out, and the jar of oil will not fail, until the day that the LORD sends rain on the earth.’” 15She went and did according to the saying of Elijah; and she, he, and her household ate many days. 16The jar of meal didn’t run out and the jar of oil didn’t fail, according to the LORD’s word, which he spoke by Elijah. 17After these things, 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. 18She said to Elijah, “What have I to do with you, you man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to memory, and to kill my son!”

There is a drought across Israel, and God has sent Elijah out of the country entirely, north to Zarephath in the territory of Sidon, which is the homeland of Queen Jezebel. He is lodging with a widow he met gathering sticks for what she believed would be the last meal for her and her son before they starved.

The passage opens in the middle of the rescue. Elijah tells her not to be afraid and to bake him a small loaf first, and promises that her jar of flour and jug of oil will not give out until the rains return. She trusts a stranger over her own arithmetic, and the promise holds. For many days the three of them eat, and the flour and the oil do not run out. It is a quiet daily miracle, the kind a person could get used to.

Then her son falls sick and stops breathing, and everything the miracle had built comes apart in one line. She turns on Elijah: what do you have against me, man of God? Have you come to bring my sin to mind and kill my son? The grief that broke her was not the famine she had braced for, but the loss that came after she had been carried through it, and she aims it straight at God's man. The passage stops there, before the boy is raised, sitting inside the accusation. After God has clearly provided for me, what fresh loss have I turned into an accusation against him?

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