1 Kings 17:17

ELIJAH RESTORED THE WIDOW'S SON TO LIFE

"And it came to pass after these things,' that the son of the mistress of the house fell sick; and his sickness was so sore, that there was no breath left in him. And she said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? thou art come unto me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son! And he said unto her, Give me thy son. And he took him out of her bosom, and carried him up into the chamber, where he abode, and laid him upon his own bed. And he cried unto Jehovah, and said, O Jehovah my God, hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son? And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto Jehovah, and said, O Jehovah my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul come into him again. And Jehovah hearkened unto the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived. And Elijah took the child, and brought him down out of the chamber into the house, and delivered him unto his mother; and Elijah said, See, thy son liveth. And the woman said to Elijah, Now I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of Jehovah in thy mouth is truth."

"There was no breath left in him" (1 Kings 17:18). Anyone who has stopped breathing is, to all intents and purposes, dead. Although the text does not declare in that terminology that the child was dead, "It is presumed from the woman's use of the words `slay my son' (1 Kings 17:18),"[19] and by Elijah's use of similar words in 1 Kings 17:20.

"Thou art come ... to bring my sin to remembrance" (1 Kings 17:18). This thought of the child's mother was due to the ancient error of supposing that any kind of hardship or disaster was due to the sin of the person afflicted, an error that persisted in Israel until Jesus himself exposed it as a false view (John 9:3). We may believe that the death of this woman's son was also for the reason mentioned by Jesus, in the same verse, "That the works of God might be manifest in him."

"And he ... carried him up into the chamber, where he abode" (1 Kings 17:19). "This woman was a person of property, a householder, with a dwelling strong enough to have an upper chamber."[20] "The upper chamber was on the roof, accessible by an outside stairway."[21]

"And the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived" (1 Kings 17:22). The word "revived" here is an intransitive verb, the first definition of which is, "to come back to life again, to return to consciousness."[22]

"The word of Jehovah in thy mouth is truth" (1 Kings 17:24). "This last word, from which Amittai is formed (Jonah 1:1), perhaps gave rise to the tradition that this boy was afterward known as the prophet Jonah. Amittai is held to have been this woman's husband."[23]