Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents

17:1 neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word. In Canaanite religion, Baal had authority over rain and fertility. The absence of rain meant the absence of Baal, who must periodically submit to the god of death Mot (during the dry season), only to be revived at a later date and once again water the earth (during the rainy season). This cyclical and polytheistic view of reality is the focus of Elijah's challenges. Elijah worships a single God who lives and yet, while living, can deny both dew and rain to the land. The Lord, not Baal, brings fertility; and the Lord's presence in judgment, not his absence in death, leads to infertility.

17:5 east of the Jordan. Elijah hides in an inhospitable area where there is no normal food supply. God is nevertheless able to provide for him, for God controls not just the rain but the whole natural order, including the ravens (v. 6).

17:6 bread and meat in the morning . . . in the evening. As the Israelites had once been the beneficiaries of God's provision of bread and meat in the wilderness (Exodus 16, esp. vv. 8, 12-13), now Elijah eats even more generous amounts (twice daily) of the same.

17:9 Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon. The heartland of Baal worship in Sidon might have been thought by many to be a region over which Israel's God could have no authority. Yet one discovers as the story unfolds that it is nevertheless an area also badly affected by the drought announced in v. 1 (cf. v. 12). The Lord is God of all lands and can bring drought to all lands. He can even "command" a widow in this northern region to feed Elijah--although since the widow herself shows no awareness of having been directly commanded by God, it may be best to understand the verb here and in v. 4 in a more indirect way (i.e., "I have ordained that . . .").

17:13 first make me a little cake. Against all parental instinct, the woman is asked to give Elijah something to eat first, before feeding herself and her son. This is to ask for a great step of faith.

17:15 she and he and her household ate for many days. God looks after people not only in Israel but also on the Phoenician coast.

17:18-20 You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son! The widow appears to have been convinced of the truth of Elijah's religion by the demonstration of God's power in vv. 8-16. When death does eventually catch up with the family, she knows that it must be the Lord's doing; she blames God's prophet for reminding God of her sin. Elijah concurs with her view about who is the ultimate cause (have you brought calamity . . . by killing her son?), but in his prayer he makes no comment on whether the widow's sin was the human cause. In a world where there is only one true God, everything must in the end lie in his power.

17:21 he stretched himself upon the child three times. The purpose of this action is not made clear. Biblical prophets are often found "acting out" as well as speaking (e.g., Ezekiel 4), and Elijah's actions here appear to be part of his prayer that the child's life should come into him again. This is the final illustration that the Lord is the only true God because it demonstrates that when faced with the "god of death," the Lord, unlike Baal, does not need to submit to him. He can cross the border from Israel in Sidon to bring life out of death. The Lord cannot be barred even from a place such as the underworld (Ps. 139:7-12).