For Teaching

1 Kings 17: What the Passage Says

86 claims across 24 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 1 Kings 17 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Elijah the prophet tells King Ahab that no dew or rain will fall except at his word. God sends him to hide by the brook Cherith, where ravens bring him food, and then to a widow in Zarephath, whose small supply of flour and oil does not run out through the drought. When the widow's son stops breathing, Elijah carries him upstairs, stretches himself over the boy three times, calls out to the LORD, and the boy's life returns. The woman then says she knows Elijah is a man of God and that the LORD's word in his mouth is true.

Claim by Claim

17:1
- Elijah the Tishbite was among the settlers of Gilead.
- Elijah spoke to Ahab.
- Elijah swore by the life of the LORD, the God of Israel.
- Elijah said he stood before the LORD.
- Elijah declared there would be neither dew nor rain during these years.
- Elijah said the exception would be at his word.
17:2
- The word of the LORD came to Elijah.
- The word of the LORD spoke to him.
17:3
- The LORD told Elijah to leave that place.
- The LORD told Elijah to turn eastward.
- The LORD told Elijah to hide himself by the brook Cherith.
- The brook Cherith is east of the Jordan.
17:4
- The LORD said Elijah would drink from the brook.
- The LORD said he had commanded the ravens to feed Elijah there.
17:5
- Elijah went and did according to the word of the LORD.
- Elijah went and settled by the brook Cherith.
- The brook Cherith is east of the Jordan.
17:6
- The ravens brought Elijah bread and meat in the morning.
- The ravens brought Elijah bread and meat in the evening.
- Elijah drank from the brook.
17:7
- After a period of days the brook dried up.
- There had been no rain in the land.
17:8
- The word of the LORD came to Elijah.
- The word of the LORD spoke to him.
17:9
- The LORD told Elijah to get up and go to Zarephath.
- Zarephath belongs to Sidon.
- The LORD told Elijah to stay there.
- The LORD said he had commanded a widow woman there to provide for Elijah.
17:10
- Elijah got up and went to Zarephath.
- Elijah came to the entrance of the city.
- A widow woman was there gathering sticks.
- Elijah called to her.
- Elijah asked her to bring him a little water in a vessel so he could drink.
17:11
- She went to get the water.
- Elijah called to her again.
- Elijah asked her to bring him a piece of bread in her hand.
17:12
- The woman swore by the life of the LORD, Elijah's God.
- She said she had no baked bread.
- She said she had only a handful of flour in a jar.
- She said she had a little oil in a jug.
- She said she was gathering two sticks.
- She said she would go in and prepare it for herself and her son.
- She said they would eat it and then die.
17:13
- Elijah told her not to fear.
- Elijah told her to go and do as she had said.
- Elijah told her to make him a small cake from it first and bring it out to him.
- Elijah told her to make for herself and her son afterward.
17:14
- Elijah attributed the following words to the LORD, the God of Israel.
- The LORD said the jar of flour would not be used up.
- The LORD said the jug of oil would not run dry.
- The LORD said this would last until the day the LORD sends rain upon the face of the ground.
17:15
- The woman went and did according to the word of Elijah.
- She, Elijah, and her household ate for many days.
17:16
- The jar of flour was not used up.
- The jug of oil did not run dry.
- This happened according to the word of the LORD which he spoke by the hand of Elijah.
17:17
- After these things the son of the woman who owned the house fell sick.
- His sickness was very severe.
- No breath was left in him.
17:18
- The woman spoke to Elijah.
- She asked what there was between her and him.
- She called Elijah a man of God.
- She asked whether he had come to her to bring her iniquity to remembrance.
- She asked whether he had come to kill her son.
17:19
- Elijah told her to give him her son.
- Elijah took the boy from her bosom.
- Elijah carried him up to the upper room where Elijah was staying.
- Elijah laid him on his own bed.
17:20
- Elijah cried out to the LORD.
- Elijah addressed the LORD as his God.
- Elijah asked whether the LORD had also brought evil on the widow with whom he was staying.
- Elijah asked whether the LORD had done so by killing her son.
17:21
- Elijah stretched himself out over the child three times.
- Elijah cried out to the LORD.
- Elijah addressed the LORD as his God.
- Elijah asked that the child's life return into him.
17:22
- The LORD listened to the voice of Elijah.
- The child's life returned into him.
- The child lived.
17:23
- Elijah took the child.
- Elijah brought him down from the upper room into the house.
- Elijah gave him to his mother.
- Elijah told her to see that her son was alive.
17:24
- The woman spoke to Elijah.
- She said that now she knew he was a man of God.
- She said that the word of the LORD in his mouth is truth.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

17:1: Three things in this verse are shorthand an ancient reader would have caught at once. "The LORD" in small capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, which the Hebrew text writes but does not pronounce. "As the LORD liveth" was the standard form of a binding oath, roughly "I swear by the living God." And "before whom I stand" is court language: a servant or attendant stood in the presence of the king he served, so the phrase means "whose servant I am." Ahab was king of Israel, the northern kingdom, in the ninth century BC; Gilead was the highland country east of the Jordan River, rough grazing land well away from the capital. A Tishbite is a man from Tishbe, a village in that area. Rain in this region falls only in winter, and a failure of it meant no crops the following year.
17:2: "The word of the LORD came unto him" is a set formula used throughout the prophetic books for a message received from God. It is not a description of how the message arrived.
17:3: Cherith was a wadi, a streambed that runs with water during the rainy season and dries up when the rains stop. That is why it fails in verse 7. "Before Jordan" in the King James is an old use of "before" meaning "facing" or "on the east side of."
17:4: Ravens were on the list of birds Israelites were forbidden to eat (Leviticus 11:15), and they are scavengers that feed on carrion, an unlikely source of a man's daily food.
17:6: "Flesh" in the King James simply means meat.
17:7: "After a while" translates a Hebrew phrase literally reading "at the end of days," meaning after some unspecified stretch of time.
17:9: Zarephath lay on the Mediterranean coast between Tyre and Sidon, in Phoenician territory, foreign ground, outside Israel, in the homeland of Ahab's queen Jezebel. A widow in this world had no husband to provide for her and, unless a grown son or male relative took her in, no legal claim on land or income; widows are named again and again in Hebrew law as among the most exposed people in society. The instruction sends Elijah to be fed by someone with nothing.
17:10: The gate of a walled town was its public square, the place where business was done, cases were judged, and travelers arrived. Gathering sticks means gathering firewood by hand, a task for someone with no fuel stored.
17:12: She swears by "the LORD thy God", your God, not hers; she is a Phoenician, not an Israelite. "Meal" in the King James is flour, ground grain, not a mealtime. The "barrel" is a clay storage jar, not a wooden cask, and a "cruse" is a small jug or flask. "Dress it" means prepare or cook it. Her two sticks are enough fire for one small baking and no more.
17:13: A "cake" here is a plain flat loaf baked on hot stones or in ashes, not anything sweet. Asking for it "first" puts the guest's portion ahead of the household's, which was the normal claim of hospitality on a host, though not normally on a host with one meal left.
17:14: "Waste" in the King James means be used up or run out, and "fail" means run dry.
17:15: "Many days" is a Hebrew way of saying "for a long time" rather than a count of days. "Her house" means her household, the people living under her roof.
17:17: "Sore" in the King James means severe or grievous, not painful to the touch. "The mistress of the house" means the woman who owned and ran the household. "No breath left in him" is the ordinary Hebrew way of describing death.
17:18: "What have I to do with thee" is a Hebrew idiom (literally "what is there between me and you") used to protest an unwanted involvement: "why have you interfered with me?" Behind her words lies a common ancient assumption that disaster in a household exposed some hidden fault in it, and that the presence of a holy man brought such faults to notice.
17:19: The "loft" or "chamber" is a room built on the flat roof of the house, reached by an outside stair and often given to a guest. "Bosom" means her arms or lap, where she was holding the boy.
17:20: "Sojourn" means to live somewhere as a guest or resident foreigner rather than as a native. "Brought evil upon" translates a Hebrew word covering disaster, harm and misfortune generally, not moral wickedness.
17:21: "Soul" here translates the Hebrew nephesh, which means the life or breath in a living creature, what makes a body alive, rather than a spirit conceived of as separable from the body. Stretching himself over the child three times is a prophetic gesture; the text describes it without explaining it.
17:22: "Revived" in the King James means came back to life.
17:24: "Man of God" was a standard title for a prophet, someone recognized as speaking on God's behalf.

Read 1 Kings 17