1 Kings 17 · a question people ask
Why was Elijah sent to a widow outside Israel?
1 Kings gives the LORD's command and no reason: "Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain you" (17:9). Jesus spoke of it himself, in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:16). He had just said, "no prophet is acceptable in his hometown" (Luke 4:24), and he went on: "But truly I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land" (Luke 4:25). "Elijah was sent to none of them, except to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow" (Luke 4:26). And he set a second case beside it: "There were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed, except Naaman, the Syrian" (Luke 4:27). Jesus names the fact: many widows in Israel, and Elijah sent to one outside it. Luke says how his hearers took it: "They were all filled with wrath in the synagogue as they heard these things" (Luke 4:28). 1 Kings adds one thing more, without drawing anything from it: Ahab's wife Jezebel was "the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians" (16:31), and the widow's town "belongs to Sidon" (17:9).
The verses
““Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain you.””
“He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. He entered, as was his custom, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.”
“He said, “Most certainly I tell you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But truly I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land. Elijah was sent to none of them, except to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. There were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed, except Naaman, the Syrian.” They were all filled with wrath in the synagogue as they heard these things.”
“As if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took as wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him.”