1 Kings 17

1Now Elijah the Tishbite, one of the settlers in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As Yahweh, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there will be neither dew nor rain in these years except at my word.”

2Then the word of Yahweh came to him:

3“Leave here, turn eastward, and hide yourself by the Cherith Brook, east of the Jordan.

4You will drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.”

5So he went and did as Yahweh had said. He went and stayed by the Cherith Brook, east of the Jordan.

6The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.

7After a while the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land.

8Then the word of Yahweh came to him:

9“Get up, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there. I have commanded a widow there to feed you.”

10So he got up and went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and said, “Please bring me a little water in a jar so that I may drink.”

11As she was going to get it, he called to her and said, “Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand.”

12She said, “As Yahweh your God lives, I have nothing baked—only a handful of flour in the jar and a little oil in the jug. I am gathering a couple of sticks so that I can go in and prepare it for myself and my son, so that we may eat it and die.”

13Elijah said to her, “Do not be afraid. Go and do as you have said. But first make me a small loaf from it and bring it out to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son.

14For this is what Yahweh, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up, and the jug of oil will not run dry, until the day Yahweh sends rain on the land.’”

15She went and did as Elijah had said, and she and he and her household ate for many days.

16The jar of flour was not used up, and the jug of oil did not run dry, according to the word of Yahweh that he had spoken through Elijah.

17Some time later, the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. His illness grew so severe that no breath was left in him.

18She said to Elijah, “What do you have against me, man of God? Have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to kill my son?”

19“Give me your son,” he said to her. He took him from her arms, carried him up to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his own bed.

20Then he cried out to Yahweh, “Yahweh my God, have you brought disaster even on this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?”

21Then he stretched himself out over the boy three times and cried out to Yahweh, “Yahweh my God, please let this boy’s life return to him!”

22Yahweh listened to Elijah’s voice, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived.

23Elijah took the boy, brought him down from the upper room into the house, and gave him to his mother. “Look, your son is alive!” Elijah said.

24Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of Yahweh in your mouth is truth.”