The bravest and most undaunted man in Israel, shielded and protected by God, was probably warned by the divine voice to make his escape, since his life was needful to the execution of Providential purposes.  He was the only one of all the prophets of his day who dared to give utterance to his convictions.  Some four or five hundred there were in the kingdom, all believers in Jehovah; but all sought to please the reigning power, or timidly concealed themselves.  They had been trained in the schools which Samuel had established, and were probably teachers of the people on theological subjects, and hence an antagonistic force to idolatrous kings.  Their great defect in the time of Ahab was timidity.  There was needed some one who under all circumstances would be undaunted, and would not hesitate to tell the truth even to the king and queen, however unpleasant it might be.  So this rough, fierce, unlettered man of few words was sent by God, armed with terrible powers.

It was now the rainy season, when rain was confidently expected by the people throughout Palestine.  Yet strangely no rain fell, though sixty inches were the usual quantity in the course of the year.  The streams from the mountains were dried up; the land, long parched by the summer sun, became like dust and ashes; the hills presented a blasted and dreary desolation; the very trees were withered and discolored.  At last even the sheltered brook failed from which Elijah drank, and it became necessary for the man of God to seek another retreat.  The Lord therefore sent him to the last place in which his enemies would naturally search for him, even to a city of Phoenicia, where the worship of Baal was the only religion of the land.  As in his tattered and strange apparel he approached Sarepta, or Zarephath, a town between Tyre and Sidon, worn out with fatigue, parched with thirst, and overcome with hunger,—­everything around him being depressed and forlorn, the rivers and brooks showing only beds of stone, the trees and grass withered, the sky lurid, and of unnatural brightness like that of brass, and the sun burning and scorching every remnant of vegetation,—­he beheld a woman issuing from the town to gather sticks, in order to cook what she supposed would be her last meal.  To this sad and discouraged woman, doubtless a worshipper of Baal, the prophet thus spoke:  “Fetch me, I pray you, a little water in a vessel that I may drink;” and as she turned sympathetically to look upon him, he added, “Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand.”

This was no small request to make of a woman who was herself on the borders of starvation, and of a pagan woman too.  But there was a mysterious affinity between these two suffering souls.  A common woman would not have appreciated the greatness of the beggar and vagrant before her.  Only a discerning and sympathetic woman would have seen in the tones of his voice, and in his lofty bearing, despite all his rags and dirt, an unusual and marked character.