Elijah the prophet has just come on the scene in 1 Kings 17, and his first prophetic act is to confront the apostate king Ahab and declare that God has ordained a drought over all the land of Israel. Ahab has entered into an alliance with the Sidonian kingdom by marrying the king’s daughter, Jezebel. The new queen is apparently a more devout practitioner of her religion than Ahab is of his, and before long, under her influence, Ahab has built a temple and set up a sacred pole for the worship of the fertility goddess Asherah and her consort, Baal. The writers of the book of Kings take such offense at these actions that they pronounce that Ahab “did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him” (1 Kgs 16:30).
Under the assumption that God shares their loathing of King Ahab, the writers enlist God in a religious war with Jezebel’s Canaanite deities. Because Baal and Asherah are fertility gods, the battleground of this war will be the arable land, and the weapons will be the giving and withholding of rain. As we will find out in chapter 18, the drought will last approximately three years. The victims of this war will include, as always, innocent victims the Orwellian military spokespeople of today have learned to call “collateral damage.”
We encounter one of those victims in this passage. Elijah has been living by a wadi east of the Jordan River—hiding from the wrath of Jezebel and Ahab and being fed by ravens sent by God. After a while, however, the wadi dries up and God tells Elijah to go west, back across Israel to the town of Zarephath in Sidon. There he will be taken care of again, this time by a widow whom God has commanded to feed him.
It seems the widow didn’t get this memo, because she is none too happy to see the prophet and be put upon to provide for him. Elijah doesn’t make things any easier as he shows up and, without so much as a how-do-you-do, orders—that’s right; he doesn’t ask, he orders—the woman to bring him a drink of water. Obeying the dictates of hospitality, she goes to fetch the water, but as she’s on her way, he calls after her and says, “While you’re at it, bring me a slice of bread, too.” He’s been traveling a while, and he’s thirsty and a bit peckish, the poor dear.
That tears it for the widow. She turns on Elijah, her eyes blazing, and says, “As the Lord your God lives—” which was a more polite way of saying, “Take a flying leap, you dirty so-and-so”—“As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die” (v. 12). Some less well-attested manuscripts add, “So buzz off, jerk!”
The widow and her young son did not choose their fate; it has been thrust upon them by the drought. They have done the best they could to survive, but now they have reached the end of their resources, and death is staring them down hard. Now along comes this prophet of the very God who is said to have caused the drought in the first place, demanding water and bread. If she thought she had the strength, she would punch him.
The passage goes on to tell how Elijah brings a miraculous deliverance from God for the widow. He says, “Thus says the Lord the God of Israel: the jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth” (v. 14). I guess we’re supposed to be impressed by this, but I can’t help thinking about all the other widows and orphans and other vulnerable people throughout the region who don’t have a prophet to come to their rescue, who face death without hope of deliverance. What of them? If we are to believe that God did indeed cause this drought, as part of some squabble with Baal and Asherah, what kind of God are we dealing with? Is that really how God works?
The answer, of course, is no. God does not work that way. God is on the side of life, not death—of justice, not corruption. When religious and political leaders in our day say that God brings natural calamities to punish “sinners,” we must raise our voices in protest. When they use fear tactics to sow division and nurture suspicion of those who are “not like us,” we must raise our voices in protest. When they parrot a distorted version of reality in order to keep the “wrong” people from voting, we must raise our voices in protest. When the spokespeople for our nation try to manipulate us by using God language to demand that we support their wars or demonize their enemies, we must raise our voices in protest.
God stands staunchly on the side of the widow—and the refugee, and the migrant farm worker, and the political prisoner, and the minimum-wage employee, and the victim of abuse, and every underdog everywhere. God stands on the side of life and justice and abundance and equity. We too must choose where we will stand.