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From: 1 Kings 17:17-24

The Son of the Widow of Zarephath Restored to Life

[17] After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; and
his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. [18] And she said
to Elijah, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to
bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” [19] And he
said to her, “Give me your son.” And he took him from her bosom, and carried
him up into the upper chamber, where he lodged, and laid him upon his own bed.
20] And he cried to the LORD, “O LORD my God, hast thou brought calamity
even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son?” [21] Then he
stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried to the LORD, “O LORD
my God, let this child’s soul come into him again.” [22] And the LORD hear-
kened to the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and
he revived. [23] And Elijah took the child, and brought him down from the upper
chamber into the house, and delivered him to his mother; and Elijah said, “See,
your son lives.” [24] And the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a
man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth.”

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Commentary:

1 Kings 17:1-2 – 2 Kings 1:18. The ample coverage given to the reign of Ahab is
not so much due to the actions of the king as to the fact that God raised up at
this time prophets who played a critical role in maintaining knowledge and wor-
ship of the God of Israel when they were under threat. The most outstanding of
these prophets is Elijah. It is quite likely that the narratives to do with Elijah
were lifted straight out of another text and inserted here, like other accounts of
prophets of the same time — an unnamed prophet (chap. 20) and Micaiah the
son of Imlah (chap. 22), both of whom speak to the king on God’s behalf during
the war against Syria.

17:1-19:21. The great drought, which is the backdrop of chapters 17-19, seems
to be a divine punishment for the king’s idolatry reported in the previous chapter;
but the main thing it does is to provide an opportunity to show the superiority of
the God of Israel over the Canaanite god Baal. Elijah, whose name means “my
God is the Lord”, is an itinerant prophet who, like the patriarchs, moves around
the country in obedience to the word of the Lord.

God makes himself known in a new way through the prophet Elijah. The same
God who manifested himself as friend and protector of the patriarchs, and who
gave the Law to Moses, now reveals himself as the Lord of creation and of na-
ture. To the Canaanites the god Baal was master of the forces of nature — rain,
storms, fertility etc. Through the prophet Elijah the true God reveals himself to
be distinct from and higher than all those forces, no matter what their power (cf.
19:11-13), as well as being their Lord (cf. 17:1). Elijah is the champion of the
rights of God and of the poor (cf. chap 21) and in this sense he is a model for
all the prophets that will come after him, the so-called writer prophets. “Elijah
is the ‘father’ of the prophets, ‘the generation of those who seek him, who seek
the face of the God of Jacob’ (Ps 24:6)” (Catechism of the Catholic Church,
2582).

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.