Elijah hides in a wadi.

1 Kings 17.2-7.

After Elijah of Tishbe told King Ahab ben Omri the rain would stop until he said otherwise, I’ve no doubt he was tempted to stick around and see how Ahab reacted once his declaration came true—when there was no rain till he said otherwise.

But God told him otherwise. And you Christians will recall the דְבַר - יְהוָ֖ה/davár-YHWH, “the LORD’s word,” is actually Jesus, so feel free to read him into this story. The LORD’s word wisely tells Elijah it’s time to go.

1 Kings 17.2-7 KWL

2The LORD’s word

comes to Elijahᴾ to say,

3“Walk away from this.

Turn yourself¹ to the east.

Go be hidden in the Kheríth wadi,

which is at the face of the Jordan.

4Be there. Drink from the wadi.

I ordered the ravens to provide for you¹ there.”

5Elijah walked away;

he did as the LORD’s word said.

He walked, and sat down in the Kheríth wadi,

which is at the face of the Jordan.

6The ravens took him bread and meat in the morning,

and bread and meat in the evening.

He drank from the wadi.

7It happened in the end of days

the wadi became dry

for there wasn’t rain in the land.

I should point out the word for raven, עֹרֵב/orév, is spelled exactly the same as עֲרָב/aráv, “Arab.” The niqqúd, the vowel marks around the letters, are different; but the niqqúd were invented in the 700s CE, 12 centuries after the Deuteronomistic Historian wrote Kings. For all we know the Arabs who lived east of the Jordan, not ravens, fed Elijah.

Which is way better than ravens! Ravens would’ve had to steal the bread, ’cause you know they don’t make it; and as carrion birds I’d be mighty concerned about where they got the meat. Carrion meat is ritually unclean Dt 14.21 and for that matter so are ravens. Lv 11.15 I won’t even bring up all the raven saliva.

Whereas if Arabs brought Elijah his food, it would’ve been properly cooked. And if these are people the LORD talked to, and had a relationship with, the food would’ve been ritually clean. Way more sanitary; way better food than the sort of table scraps even the most well-meaning of ravens might bring you.

If you’re thinking, “Hey, you’re taking all the supernatural out of the story,” no I’m not. These Arabs heard from God! That ain’t nothing. And God actually got Arabs and Israelis to get along for once. Isn’t that actually more supernatural than birds feeding Elijah?

But okay, if you insist on interpreting the passage in the traditional way, with birds feeding Elijah, why not. Either way, Elijah got fed. And had water to drink till the wadi dried up.

Avoiding Ahab’s reaction.

If you’ve already read Kings and know from it Ahab was a loose cannon, you’d know the idea of sticking around to see Ahab’s reaction would not have been a wise move. But if this is your first experience with this book, you might not know that; the text hasn’t said that about him yet.

For that matter Ephraim, the northern Israeli nation which Kings still calls “Israel,” might not yet have known that about Ahab. The Ephraimites knew he was a pagan Baalist, but he’d only just become king and may not have murdered anyone yet. Nor shoved anyone into prison for being a follower or prophet of the LORD.

But it was only a matter of time before Elijah’s declaration came to pass. Before the wadis dried up. Then the brooks and creeks and irrigation canals. Then the cisterns. Then the wells. Then the snowpack on Mt. Hermon evaporated. Then the Jordan shrunk down to a trickle.

And once all that happened, people would be desperate, and it might not be the safest idea for Elijah to still be around. Ahab would call upon his Baalist priests to beg Baal-Hadad to overrule Elijah. Then, finding that didn’t work (’cause it wouldn’t, ’cause Baal-Hadad isn’t a real god anyway), Ahab would likely send a bunch of goons to smack Elijah around till he finally called down the rain. Any desperate person, even if he’s otherwise a good king, might do that. Ahab was a tyrant, so he’d have done that right away; it’s how tyrants are. Don’t give them their way, and they get murdery.

Already knowing all this, the LORD’s word told Elijah to walk away. Drop everything. Stop doing whatever ministry he currently did in Samaria, no matter how important. He had to leave, now, and go hide in a wadi.

“Wadi” is an Arabic word, not an American one, so you might not know it. The KJV used the word “brook,” and Americans often use the word “ravine,” but neither is accurate. A נַחַל/nakhál, “wadi,” is a brook that’s full in the rainy season, empty in the dry season. We have a creek in my town like this: Years ago, for flood control, the state decided to reroute the western side of the creek to a canal that goes right to the San Francisco Bay. This leaves the eastern side of the creek empty and dry till the rainy season. I’ve heard preachers, who thought כְּרִ֔ית/Kheríth (KJV “Cherith”) was a brook, not a wadi, try to emphasize how dire the drought must be if the brook dried up. Not so dire; wadis dry up every year.

The location of Kheríth is obscure. If it was just as obscure in Elijah’s day, this would’ve made it a pretty good hiding place. Some speculate it’s just east of Samaria, which seems unlikely because it’s “at the face of the Jordan,” 1Ki 17.3 and the Jordan was 40km away. Traditionally it’s been identified as the Wadi el-Kelt near Jericho, which is a really difficult wadi to get to. There’s also some speculation that Elijah made his declaration to Ahab while both of them were visiting the west bank, and Elijah could easily flee from there to Kheríth.

Elijah did as the LORD’s word told him, and whether the ravens or Arabs fed him (or, as one miracle-denying commentator speculated, Elijah swiped food from the ravens’ stashes hidden in the wadi cliffs—which, eww), everything worked out. Till the wadi ran out of water, but the LORD was ready for that, and had new instructions at that time. Which are in the next paragraph of Kings, which I’ll get to.

Like the Old Testament prophets, Christians can hear God; we have the very same Holy Spirit indwelling us as they did, so we’ve been empowered to be prophets just like them. Ac 2.17 So we have to learn to recognize God’s voice, and get used to following him. Much of the reason we must do that is because when the time comes where he has to give us instructions which might appear outrageous—“Go hide in a wadi; I’ll send food”—we’ll trust him and do it. Leaving your comfortable house in town to go hide in a wadi doesn’t strike me as reasonable behavior, but sometimes God needs us to do the unreasonable. But great things will happen once we trust him.