1 Kings 17:6

1Ki 17:6 And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook.

Ver. 6. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh.] Which he knew could not be done but by a miracle. This was to Elijah a sensible demonstration of the divine care and providence: and therefore must every bit needs be more pleasing to him, than a whole tableful of Ahab’s best cheer. Angeli autem hos panes et carnes apparabant, saith one; the angels made ready this bread and flesh. Luther saith, that at the continual feast of a good conscience angels are cooks and butlers; and the three persons in Trinity joyful guests. Elijah was ever at this feast, over and besides his food for the day, in the day, duly brought him in by the ravens; which are naturally ravenous, unnatural, malignant, and inanspicate creatures Who hath not heard how Rochelle, in a strait siege and sore famine, was likewise miraculously relieved by God, who made the tide their purveyor to bring them in an ocean of shell-fish: the like whereof was never known before, nor since. The patrons of monkery tell us of Paul the Hermit, of St Benedict - as they call him - and some other such fed by ravens in like manner. But so did Mohammed boast, and David George - those notorious impostors - that they had communication with wild beasts and birds in all languages, and that they brought them meat for their sustenance.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Ki_17:6

And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning.

Elijah led by ravens

I. A morally great man in great physical need. Elijah was a morally great man. Worldly greatness is but tinselled paper. He only is great who is great in thoughts and noble purposes. Elijah was such: a greater could not be found. Yet he was reduced to the greatest need.

II. The God of nature ministering to a lonely man. The Infinite Father knew His servants destitution, sympathised with it, and sent relief to him morning and evening by the ravens. Observe,

1. God makes the humblest things in nature serve His people.

2. God supplies His people as their wants return. (Homilist.)

Elijah fed by ravens

I. Irrational creatures divinely directed. All creatures, from the lowest up to the greatest, are under the Divine rule. Generally they are ruled by their own instincts. Here is an exception.

II. Lower creatures engaged in the service of man.

III. Gods attention to the affairs of the individual.

IV. Help coming from unlikely sources. (Homilist.)

The battle for bread

There is an incident in my text that baffles all the ornithological wonders of the world. The grain crop had been cut off. Famine was in the land. In a cave by the brook Cherith sat a minister of God, Elijah, waiting for something to eat. Why did he not go to the neighbours? There were no neighbours, it was a wilderness. Why did he not pick some of the berries? There were none. If there had been, they would have been dried up. Seated one morning at the mouth of his cave, the prophet looks into the dry and pitiless heavens, and he sees a flock of birds approaching.

1. Notice, in the first place, in the story of my text, that these winged creatures came to Elijah directly from God. I have commanded the ravens that they feed thee. They did not come out of some other cave. They did not just happen to alight there. God freighted them, God launched them, and God told them by what cave to swoop. That is the same God that is going to supply you. He is your Father. You would have to make an elaborate calculation before you could tell me how many pounds of food and how many yards of clothing would be necessary for you and your family; but God knows without any calculation. You have a plate at His table, and you are going to be waited on, unless you act like a naughty child, and kick, and scramble, and pound saucily the plate, and try to upset things. God has a vast family, and everything is methodised, and you are going to be served, if you will only wait your turn.

2. Notice, again, in this story, that the ravens did not allow Elijah to hoard up a surplus. They did not bring enough on Monday to last all the week. They did not bring enough one morning to last until the next morning. They came twice a day, and brought just enough for one time. You know as well as I that the great fret of the world is that we want a surplus--we want the ravens to bring enough for fifty years. You have more confidence in the Long Island Bank than you have in the royal bank of heaven. You say: All that is very poetic, but you may have the black ravens--give me the gold eagles. We had better be content with just enough. If, in the morning, your family eat up all the food there is in the house, do not sit down, and cry, and say: I dont know where the next meal is coming from. About five, or six, or seven oclock in the evening just look up, and you wilt see two black spots on the sky, and you will hear the flapping of wings, and, instead of Edgar A. Poes insane raven, alighting on the chamber-door, only this, and nothing more, you will find Elijahs two ravens, or the two ravens of the Lord, the one bringing bread and the other bringing meat--plumed butcher and baker. God is infinite in resource. When the city of Rochelle was besieged, and the inhabitants were dying of the famine, the tides washed up on the beach as never before, and as never since, enough shell-fish to feed the whole city. God is good. There is no mistake about that. History tell us that, in 1555, in England, there was a great drought. The crops failed, but in Essex, on the rocks, in a place where they had neither sown nor cultured, a great crop of peas grew, until they filled a hundred measures; and there were blossoming vines enough promising as much more.

3. Again, this story of the text impresses me that relief came to this prophet with the most unexpected, and with seemingly impossible conveyance. If it had been a robin redbreast, or a musical meadow lark, or a meek turtle-dove, or a sublime albatross that had brought the food to Elijah, it would not have been so surprising. But no. It was a bird so fierce and inauspicate that we have fashioned one of our most forceful and repulsive words out of it--ravenous. That bird has a passion for picking out the eyes of men and animals. It loves to maul the sick and the dying. It swallows, with vulturous guggle, everything it can put its beak on; and yet all the food Elijah gets for six months or a year, is from the ravens. So your supply is going to come from an unexpected source. You think some great-hearted, generous man will come along and give you his name on the back of your note, or he will go security for you in some great enterprise. No, he will not. God will open the heart of some Shylock toward you. Your relief will come from the most unexpected quarter. The providence that seemed ominous will be to you more than that which seemed auspicious. It will not be a chaffinch with breast and wing dashed with white, and brown, and chestnut, it will be a black raven. Children of God, get up out of your despondency. The Lord never had so many ravens as He has this morning. Fling your fret and worry to the winds. (T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Ki 17:6. The ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, &c. — “We need not inquire where they procured the bread and flesh, or how the food was prepared; he who commanded them to feed his servant had ten thousand ways of enabling them to fulfil his word: thus Elijah was sufficiently provided for, when numbers were starving; and the consolations of the Lord would render him contented with his solitude and sustenance.” — Scott.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

the ravens brought him bread--The idea of such unclean and voracious birds being employed to feed the prophet has appeared to many so strange that they have labored to make out the Orebim, which in our version has been rendered "ravens," to be as the word is used (in Eze 27:27) "merchants"; or Arabians (Ch2 21:16; Neh 4:7); or, the citizens of Arabah, near Beth-shan (Jos 15:6; Jos 18:18). But the common rendering is, in our opinion, preferable to these conjectures. And, if Elijah was miraculously fed by ravens, it is idle to inquire where they found the bread and the flesh, for God would direct them. After the lapse of a year, the brook dried up, and this was a new trial to Elijah's faith.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 6. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh] The Septuagint, in the Codex Vaticanus, and some ancient fathers, read the passage thus: - Και οἱ κορακες εφερον αυτῳ αρτους το πρωΐ, και κρεα το δειλης, And the crows brought him bread in the morning, and flesh in the evening: but all the other versions agree with the Hebrew text. This is the first account we have of flesh-meat breakfasts and flesh-meat suppers; and as this was the food appointed by the Lord for the sustenance of the prophet, we may naturally conjecture that it was the food of the people at large.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

6. And the ravens brought, &c.] According to the LXX., the ravens brought him ‘bread in the morning, and flesh in the evening.’ Jerome in his life of Paul the hermit (§ 10) relates that a raven thus supplied the hermit’s wants, “suspiciunt alitem corvum in ramo arboris consedisse, qui inde leniter subvolabat, et integrum panem ante ora mirantium deposuit.’ Those who have watched the habits of large birds like the raven can bear witness to the large supply which they bring home under ordinary circumstances, and for Elijah’s sustenance their natural energy was quickened.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening,.... For his breakfast and supper, the two principal meals then in use; and as there were several employed, they could bring a sufficiency in a short time for each meal; and these provisions were ready prepared, the bread made and baked, and the flesh boiled, broiled, or roasted; from whence they had it need not be inquired after; the Jews say (w) they were fetched from Ahab's table, and others from Jehoshaphat's, and others, as probable as any, from the tables of the 7000 who had not bowed the knee to Baal:

and he drank of the brook; at his meals.

(w) T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 113. 1. Cholin, fol. 5. 1. Tanchuma apud Abarbinel in loc.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

And flesh. So the Hebrew, &c. But some copies of the Septuagint have, "bread in the morning, and flesh in the evening." (Theodoret, q. 52.) --- It is idle to inquire whence the ravens took this food. (Calmet) --- Some say from the kitchen of Achab. (Abulensis) --- The minister of angels undoubtedly intervened. (Tirinus) --- God provides his servant with what may support nature, without any wine or delicacies. (Haydock)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Bread and flesh; not raw, but boiled by the ministry of some angel or man, and left in some place or places till the ravens came for it, in all which there is nothing incredible, considering the power and providence of God.

In the morning and in the evening, i.e. for dinner and supper, according to the custom. See Gen 43:25; Rth 2:14; Luk 14:12; Act 10:9,10.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

6. Ravens brought him bread and flesh — Many attempts have been made to explain away the obvious import of this verse. J.D. Michaelis explains it on natural principles, supposing the brook Cherith was a place where ravens were wont to congregate, and that Elijah took from their nests, morning and evening, the young hares and other food which they brought to their young. Others have explained ערבים, orebim, to mean Arabians; others, the inhabitants of some place named Orbo, or Oreb; and some have thought the word might mean merchants, from ערב, to traffic. But these explanations have the versions and all tradition against them. The text plainly records a miracle; all the more impressive from the fact that ravens, the most voracious of birds, furnish the prophet his supplies. Since the raven is a carrion bird, and a devourer of all manner of dead flesh, some have wondered how Elijah could eat without scruple all that was brought to him; but they absurdly assume that ravens miraculously sent by Divine command would bring what was common or unclean. Alike idle is it to require whether they obtained the bread and flesh through Obadiah (compare 1Ki_18:4) or stole it from Ahab’s kitchen.

“When men disobey,” says Wordsworth, “God reproves them by the obedience of the inferior creatures. The old world disbelieved God’s warnings by Noah, would not go into the ark, and so perished in the flood; but the inferior animals went in and were fed there. Balaam was rebuked for his disobedience by the ass on which he rode. The disobedient prophet (1Ki_13:26) was slain by the lion which God sent from the forest, and which spared the ass and the carcass of the prophet. The disobedience of Ahab and Israel was rebuked by the obedience of the ravenous birds in bringing food to Elijah. Jonah fled from God, and God sent the whale to bring him back to prophesy against Nineveh. The lions spared Daniel when his colleagues would have slain him. Christ was with the wild beasts in peace, (Mar_1:13,) when he was about to be rejected by mankind.”

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And the ravens brought Heb. bringing him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening the Vat. LXX has" bread in the morning and flesh in the evening." It has been objected that this verse is fatal to the view advanced above that the were not birds but men that no men would have "come regularly twice a day,., thus giving themselves needless trouble and increasing the chance of detection, when they might easily have left him a supply for several days" (Rawlinson). But if we may believe that the prophet was, if not among kinsmen or friends, yet among the pastoral, semi-nomadic people of Gilead, a people, that is to say, like the Bedawin in their instincts and customs, it is easy to understand that having taken him under their protection, they would make a point of visiting him regularly, not only to show him all possible honour, as a person endued with supernatural powers, (1Ki_18:7, 1Ki_18:13) but to afford him some measure of sympathy and companionship. And we can then see a reason for the morning and evening being mentioned. Their visits would be made in the twilight, which is really longer in the East than is generally supposed; and he drank Hebrew drinks. The Heb. future often has the force of an imperfect, and expresses continued or repeated action of the brook.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And flesh - Not raw, but boiled by the ministry of some angel or man, and left in some place 'till the ravens came for it: in all which, there is nothing incredible, considering the power and providence of God.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.