A Widow’s Son Came Back to Life

During the drought, Jehovah told Elijah: ‘Go to Zarephath. A widow there will give you food.’ At the gates of the city, Elijah saw a poor widow gathering wood. He asked her for a cup of water. As she went to get it, Elijah called after her: ‘Please, bring me a piece of bread.’ But the widow said: ‘I don’t have any bread to give you. I have only enough flour and oil to make a little food for my son and myself.’ Elijah told her: ‘Jehovah has promised that if you make some bread for me, your flour and oil will not run out until it rains again.’

So the widow went home and made bread for Jehovah’s prophet. Just as Jehovah had promised, the widow and her son always had food to eat during the drought. Her jars of flour and oil remained full.

Then something terrible happened. The widow’s little boy became so sick that he died. She begged Elijah for help. Elijah took the boy from her arms and carried him to a room upstairs in her house. He laid him down on a bed and prayed: ‘Jehovah, please bring this child back to life.’ Do you know why that would be an amazing thing for Jehovah to do? Because as far as we know, no one had ever come back to life before. And this widow and her son were not even Israelites.

But the boy’s life came back into him, and he began to breathe! Elijah said to the widow: ‘See! Your son is alive.’ She was overjoyed and said to Elijah: ‘You really are a man of God. I know this because you speak only what Jehovah tells you to say.’