November 11

The Ravens

1 Kings 17:4-6

Well, Elijah, in his retreat by the brook Cherith, would have water enough so long as the lesser streams were not dried up. But how was be to be fed—seeing that the necessities of his seclusion would prevent him from seeking his subsistence? The Lord, who sent him thither, had also promised him food—“Behold, I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.” And accordingly it is stated that, during his stay by the brook Cherith, “the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening.” This is a very startling statement, particularly when the nature and habits of the bird are considered; and it well deserves our attentive consideration.

The first objection is, that the raven was a legally unclean bird. But its uncleanness only consisted in its being itself unfit to be eaten; and it imparted no uncleanness to that which it carried, any more than Abigail’s asses, although unclean animals in the same sense, imparted any defilement to the bread and roast mutton which, with other comestibles, they carried as that bountiful lady’s present to David.

At the outset it should be observed, that the statement in the text does not require us to suppose that the ravens with purpose and forethought brought victuals designedly for Elijah, and laid them before him, or presented them to him. This was not required for the object in view, and therefore was probably not done; for God does not work needless miracles. Yet it is hard to judge when or in what degree miracles are needless; and in this case the degree of miracle which might not have been necessary, so far as the mere subsistence of Elijah was concerned, may have been necessary to evince the miraculous nature of his subsistence, and to show that he was supported, not by a concatenation of fortunate accidents, but out of the special care and bounty of Him who will sooner root up the mountains, and rain bread from heaven, than suffer those who trust in Him to lack any good thing. Apart from this consideration, and supposing that the subsistence of Elijah was the only object sought, and that by the simplest and safest means, it may suffice to suppose that the place to which he had been directed to retreat, was the chosen resort of ravens, who had their nests among the trees that grew on the banks of the stream. That the ravens were commanded to feed him, implies no more than that constraint was laid upon them to become the unconscious instruments of the Divine will—as in Amos 9:3, “Though they be hid in the bottom of the sea, yet thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them.” These brought home, morning and evening, to their nests as much animal and vegetable food as sufficed not only for their own wants, but for those of Elijah, who secured what he required, and dressed it with the dry wood which abounds in such situations. The only objection to this is, that, except during the period of incubation, when the male brings food to the female, and subsequently, when both bring home food to the young until they are able to provide for themselves, ravens do not bring home food at all, but devour it on the spot where they find it. Well, we are content with this. Seeing that, with birds, the period of helplessness in the nest is proportioned to the duration of life—the longest-lived having the longest infancy—and seeing that the raven is one of the birds that lives the longest, it is not likely that the periods of incubation and of rearing the young occupy together less than six months, which, and not a year, as some imagine, we take to be the period that the prophet spent by the brook Cherith.

But the natural food of the raven was that which, least of all, an Israelite obedient to the law could touch. He could not eat that which died of itself; yet this is generally the case with the carrion, which forms the proper diet of the raven. There is great weight in this objection. Still, the food of the raven is not exclusively carrion. Among birds it is one of the most universal appetite. There is scarcely anything that comes amiss to it; and although its ordinary food be carrion, it does not scruple, especially in times of comparative scarcity, to attack ducks, chickens, and small quadrupeds, which its strong and powerful beak enables it to dispatch with a few strokes. It even assaults young lambs and sickly sheep; but it does not, of course, carry them away. It does not even kill them, but pecks out their eyes, and leaves them to a miserable lingering death—a fact alluded to in Proverbs 30:17. In addition to these, eggs, grains, grubs, reptiles, end shelled mollusks, are among the articles of its bill of fare.

This, at the first view, seems to relieve much of the difficulty, and appears to offer an ample range among which Elijah might obtain food proper for him as an Israelite. But we are to remember that, although the raven may slay animals of some size, it cannot carry them entire to its nest—though it may do so with small animals and birds, such as chickens, rats, mice, and the like; but such larger animals than these as it may be enabled to slay, it is obliged to rend, and carry portions to its nest, as neither its bill nor its claws are suited to the carriage of any heavy or bulky substance. Now this presents greater difficulties than any which have hitherto been suggested. An Israelite was not only unable to eat that which died of itself, but that from which the blood was not perfectly discharged by a mode of killing suited to that purpose. Hence he could not eat that which was “torn of beasts,” unless, before the animal so torn was dead, he could slay it in the proper manner. It is therefore difficult to see how the ravens could have brought any meat fit for Elijah to eat—if what they did provide was in accordance with their own instincts and habits. The meat would be a portion of some animal—a piece of flesh. But Elijah would have several questions to decide before he could eat it. Was it the flesh of an unclean animal—that is, of an animal unfit for food to an Israelite? Was it from an animal that had died of itself? Was it from one that the raven or some other ravenous creature had destroyed? It was almost certain to come under one of these three disqualifications, and therefore could not be eaten by the prophet. It was hardly possible for him to suppose that the meat brought by a raven was the flesh of a lawful animal killed in a proper manner. Then again, if small animals were brought entire, it could scarcely ever happen that they were of kinds fit for his food; and even if they were, they would in almost every case be dead, and therefore unlawful, as “torn of beasts,” without the opportunity of killing them by the knife being furnished.

It is therefore impossible to suppose that the prophet was supplied from the ordinary sources and operations of the ravens. If we admit that ravens were the agents through whom subsistence was given to him, we must hold this agency to have been miraculous in all its circumstances; and that suitable and adequate food was daily presented by miracle twice to the notice of the ravens, which they were impelled to bear away to Elijah’s hiding-place, and to drop it there. If so, where did they get it so regularly? Some say they stole it from Ahab’s kitchen; others, that it was from the provision made by the good Obadiah for the persecuted prophets whom he hid by fifties in caves. Or again, Elijah, as a prophet, may have been enabled to discern what of al: the matters brought to their common retreat by the ravens was suited to be his food. Or, further, under the circumstances, it was made lawful for him to eat whatever food he could obtain, or that the ravens brought within his reach—being instructed, like Peter in a later age, that what the Lord had cleansed had ceased to be “common or unclean.”

We have made this statement on the hypothesis most generally received, that ravens are really intended. On this point there are warrantable differences of opinion, seeing that the word translated “ravens” may have other meanings. We must try to make this a little plainer. We beg even such of our readers as do not know Hebrew, to look closely at the words noted below, Note: Look at the different words raven might be: ‏עִֶָָֹרב‎ ‏עֲרָב‎ ‏עֵרֶב‎ ‏עָרֶב‎ ‏עֹרֵב‎ and take notice of any differences they find between them. They will see that there is no difference but in the little points above and below the words. These points express the vowel sounds, the letters themselves being only the consonants. Originally, all Hebrew was written, as it still is very frequently, without these vowel marks, as is the case also in Arabic, and other oriental languages. Men, when the Hebrew was a living tongue, supplied the vowels orally, in reading that which was written without them. Usage made this easy to those to whom Hebrew was a native tongue. The differences between words of like consonants was of course brought out by the interposed vowels, just as to the common consonants grn the sense of grain, groan, or grin is fixed by the vowels added. After the Hebrew text had for many ages remained without the vowel marks, or indeed without such marks being known, they were at length, in the seventh century after Christ, invented, and inserted throughout by the Jewish doctors to fix the pronunciation, and with it the sense—thus insuring uniformity of interpretation, as it was feared that diversities might otherwise arise, and the true transmitted signification might be in many cases lost, through the dispersion of the people and the neglect of the language. They fixed the vowels, which determined, as it were, whether in particular places the consonants grn should mean grain, groan, or grin—bestowing thus a permanent written form to much which had hitherto rested in the memories of men, and had been distinguished only by vocal usage. This was a great and noble work, and was for the most part executed with great integrity and sound judgment. But Christian scholars do not conceive that they are in every case bound to the decisions of the Masoretes (as they are called); while some (fewer now than formerly) reject their authority altogether, and feel at liberty in every case to take the sense which agrees best with the context. This agreement both parties allow that the present vowel points do not always afford; and the text before us is one of those on which that question is raised. Look at the Hebrew words again. The consonants of all are the same as of the word which means “raven,” and may be made plural by the usual masculine termination im. But the vowels make these differences between them—The first word (left to right) is ârob, a gad-fly; the others are ărâb, Arabian (Gentile—Arabi, an Arabian—plural Ar’bim, Arabians); çrĕb, the woof; ĕrĕb, evening; orçb, raven. Now the Masoretes fixed the sense of “raven” to the word in this case, by affixing the points which it bears, in preference to any other senses. But this, perhaps, is the last of all the senses which would occur to any one reading the Bible without the points, and without a previous knowledge of this interpretation; while, recollecting that these vowel points were added in an age when the Hebrew mind had gone astray after prodigies, and after it had given birth to the monstrous creations of the Talmud, we might expect that in such a case as this the most marvellous interpretation would be adopted in preference to any of the others.

Going again over the list of alternatives, that of “Arabs,” instead of “ravens,” is probably the one that persons free from any previous bias would spontaneously select as the most probable. For ourselves, although we should not hesitate at the ravens, if quite sure that those birds are really intended, yet, when the alternative is thus open, we rather incline to the Arabs—influenced, perhaps, by such a knowledge of the habits and character of that people as enables us to perceive their entire fitness to be the agents of this providential dispensation in favor of Elijah. To us nothing seems more likely than that encampments of Arabs, who still intrude their tents, at certain times of the year, upon the borders or into the unappropriated pastures of settled countries—would at this season of drought have been forced within reach of the brook Cherith; and, knowing the increasing scarcity of water, would have remained there as long as its stream afforded any to them—that is, as long as Elijah himself remained, which was until the stream was dried up. They were also, from their condition and habits of life, the very persons to whom the secret of his retreat might be most safely entrusted—far more so than it would have been to any townsmen, subjects of Ahab, whom some conceive to have been the parties in question. Note: Some conceive there was a place in the neighborhood called Oreb, and that the Orebim (according to the present vowels), who ministered to the wants of Elijah, were the inhabitants thereof. They were the least likely to know his person, or that he was sought after by the king; or, if they did know this, they were less than any other persons open to any inducements to betray him which the king could offer, or any fears he could impose. Besides, when he had once eaten of their bread and meat, the great law of Arabian honor made him secure of continued support, and safe from betrayal. Nothing they could afterwards learn concerning him—no temptation that might afterwards be presented—could have any force against the solemn obligation thus incurred, and the breach of which would cover the tribe with scorn and shame for many generations. Under these views, it seems to us that “I have commanded the Arabs to feed thee there,” is, under all the circumstances, a more probable and natural interpretation than “I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.”