There are a number of episodes in the Bible where a man meets a woman or women previously unknown to him in which a well, or at least the obtaining of water, is part of the narrative. These are also narratives that play a significant part in the history of redemption.
Those that readily come to mind can be briefly listed in terms of the order in which they come in Scripture. There is Genesis 24:12–27 where Abraham’s servant meets Rebekah at the well, where she habitually went to give drink to her father’s flock. Then there is Genesis 29:4–12 where a very similar encounter takes place between Jacob and Rachel, his future wife. Next, Exodus 2:16–20 recounts the meeting of Moses and the seven daughters of Reuel (or Jethro) where their father’s flock was to be watered. We omit the reference to the present passage where we find the meeting between Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. Finally, and most importantly, there is John 4:7–26 that tells us of the meeting between the Lord Jesus Christ and the woman of Samaria at the well of Sychar.
Are we to treat these episodes as mere coincidence, or was the Holy Spirit intending to regard the similarities to point us to consider our Lord’s encounter with an immoral woman to bring to her the water of life
? It would take us away from the purpose of this commentary to pursue this line of inquiry, but it is well to consider the possibility.
The writer recorded that Elijah obeyed the instruction of the Lord and went to the town of Zarephath. There he saw a widow gathering sticks in the vicinity of the gate, and he asked her to get him some water to drink in a vessel. As she was on her way to fulfill this request, Elijah made another request, this time for a morsel
of bread.” This request, she explained, she could not fulfill. She continued by explaining the desperate situation in which she and her son found themselves. They had just a handful of flour and a small quantity of oil. This was only enough to make a small cake of bread. Surely, it was not enough to feed another mouth. Elijah, she said, had come upon her in the act of gathering sticks for a fire that would bake the last bit of nourishment of which they would partake before starvation overtook them.
It is noteworthy that the woman swears to the veracity of her words by using the oath, As the Lord, your God lives.
This raises the question as to how the woman knew that Elijah was a worshipper of Yahweh. Even if his clothes and speech betrayed him as an Israelite, why did she assume that he would be faithful to the God of Israel? This, we ask, because so many in Israel had resorted to idolatry. This question raises the possibility that, Gentile though she might have been, she was herself a follower of the Lord. God’s dealing with her might have begun before the miraculous provision for her survival.
There are a number of other questions that might come to mind that the text does not answer. Did Elijah know that the woman he spoke to was the widow that the Lord had commanded
to feed him? If so, how did he know? The fact that he spoke to her with a request for her aid might mean that he knew this was the right woman, or it might have been a way of testing her willingness to deal with him, a foreigner, and by that showing that he had come upon the chosen instrument of his survival.
Another question that might arise concerns the ambiguity concerning the effect of the drought in Zarephath. On the one hand, apparently there was enough of a supply of water that the woman appeared to be able to satisfy Elijah’s request for water. On the other hand, there seems to have been such a shortage of food caused by the drought that it brought the woman and her son into a state of near starvation. We must confess an inability to answer this question to our own satisfaction.
10 Il se leva, et il alla à Sarepta. Comme il arrivait à l'entrée de la ville, voici, il y avait là une femme veuve qui ramassait du bois. Il l'appela, et dit: Va me chercher, je te prie, un peu d'eau dans un vase, afin que je boive.