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1 Kings:17.1
Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying, "Get away from here and turn eastward, and hide by the Brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan. "And it will be that you shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there."
The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the brook.

But according to Mosaic law, these birds are unclean ceremonially.

Leviticus:11.13 ' And these you shall regard as an abomination among the birds; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination...... 'every raven after its kind

These passages show that ravens would have been despised by law and tradition from the days of Moses. Why then should Elijah be fed using means that could affect his credibility.

user20490
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    Elijah did not eat the ravens. The only prohibition is to not eat them and not touch their carcasses. –  Nov 20 '17 at 17:30
  • @Boom But what about his credibility. That's why I've paraphrased the question. What was Yahweh trying to say by feeding him that way. – user20490 Nov 20 '17 at 17:40
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    Where does the law say that someone's credibility will be reduced if he eats food brought by a raven? I think you are adding requirements to the law that God did not. After all, God Himself commanded the ravens to feed Elijah. Ravens themselves were not despised by the law, only the eating of them was despised. –  Nov 20 '17 at 17:42
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    Also, ravens are actually a really good choice to "command to do stuff" because they are very intelligent birds. –  Nov 20 '17 at 17:44
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    With whom would Elijah's credibility be affected? It couldn't be God since He instructed him. Anyone else is of no account. – enegue Jul 11 '18 at 10:19
  • @enegue But God could have used Doves, Pigeons e.t.c why use ravens. The first bird mentioned in the Bible was mentioned after the flood and it was a raven! So I'm looking into divine motive here. Why the raven? – user20490 Jul 11 '18 at 18:29
  • I understand your question, which is interesting, but there is no "credibility problem" associated with it. Elijah was simply following the LORD's instructions, as was Ezekiel when the LORD instructed him to cook his food with human dung (Ezekiel 4:12-15). – enegue Jul 12 '18 at 01:26

8 Answers8

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If you read the Elijah cycle carefully, and without prior assumptions of who Elijah is, you will notice a consistent pattern of untoward incidents and behavior. In this particular example:

  1. God send Elijah to the Cherit gulch. In Hebrew, "cherit" means "cutting off", "excommunicated" or "divorced". The fact that no such geographical place exists hints that there is a subliminal, pejorative message in the verse regarding Elijah. He is told to drink the water of excommunication.
  2. The raven is an unclean bird that eats carrion, other unclean things, and the refuse of humanity. The verse hints heavily that Elijah is eating questionable food, probably refuse, but without actually saying it.
  3. Immediately afterwards, in 1 Kings 17:7-16 God commands Elijah to go to Sidon, the source of the Baal cult, and to live out of wedlock with an impoverished non-Israelite widow, from whom at the start he shamefully begs for food (it should have been the other way around), before performing a miracle with the cruse of oil while the drought drags on. That is Elijah can perform cheap tricks in a private setting with the oil and flour but he does nothing to stop the drought.

The author of I Kings includes the Elijah cycle of stories because of the popular following that Elijah had, but consistently undercuts and diminishes the prophet with unsavory and snide situations, but without explicit derogation.

This text is witness to an ongoing tension in Israelite, and later Jewish culture (e.g. Honi the Circle Drawer), between charismatic miracle workers with huge popular following and more educated religious leaders who saw these charismatics as a serious threat. This text is a prime example of the many hidden polemics in the Bible.

  • I don't fully agree with your answer based on my faith. But from a strictly academic standpoint it is a plausible concept that you introduced in this answer . The scribe and the prophet feud. A striking perspective. Thank you!!. – user20490 Nov 21 '17 at 15:42
  • I can understand what you're trying to say especially if disagreeable Pharisees were the ones who wrote a section in the story of Jesus. – user20490 Nov 21 '17 at 15:44
  • @user20490 It shouldn't challenge your faith to understand that there is controversy recorded in the Bible. Sometimes it is explicit, sometimes it is just below the surface. It defies a simple reading, but life isn't simple. –  Nov 21 '17 at 15:55
  • That is an interesting take on the Elijah story. You know perhaps that in the pseudo-Clementine "Homilies" Elijah is one of the series of false prophets. – fdb Nov 21 '17 at 19:20
  • @AbuMunirIbnIbrahim: Not impossible, but not necessary either; see Hosea. – Lucian Nov 22 '17 at 17:18
  • @AbuMunirIbnIbrahim,If Elijah was eating questionable food what's your take on that the ravens fed him bread & flesh in the morning & evening & he drank from the brook – collen ndhlovu Nov 23 '17 at 13:08
  • @collenndhlovu I added a to point 2 in the answer a note that ravens eat refuse, trash. There is more than a hint in this verse that Elijah was eating trash, from an unknowable source, possibly kosher, probably not, but definitely rendered "unclean" by contact with the ravens. HTH. Thanks. –  Nov 23 '17 at 15:00
  • @collenndhlovu I asked this question because I found the biblical principles behind the classification of animals as either clean or unclean. The first unclean animal was the serpent of Gen 3:14. It is unclean by reason of three changes God's judgment introduced. 1) Crawling on its belly. This makes all creatures that make direct bodily contact with earth or water unclean. For land or aquatic animals to be clean they must prevent direct bodily contact with earth and water through hooves or scales while they move. – user20490 Nov 23 '17 at 17:15
  • The serpent eats dust. This means that creatures are also classified as unclean by reason of what they eat. a) All creatures that eat blood are unclean. b) All herbivores that do not chew the cord are unclean.
    • – user20490 Nov 23 '17 at 17:18
  • The serpent has an enmity with the seed of the woman: This means that all creatures that have a natural enmity with man are unclean. In the case of insects, only those with ("legs beneath their feet with which they leap off the earth" Lev 11) are clean.
    • – user20490 Nov 23 '17 at 17:27
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    That's what makes it weird for Elijah to be fed by ravens. Their beaks are unclean. Their feet are unclean. God could have sent bread from heaven directly. He could have sent quails as meat. But the fact that the leaders that produced the rabbinic commentaries do not take issue with this is stunnning. – user20490 Nov 23 '17 at 17:30
  • Elijah going through a period of "cutting off" is interesting, but it's neither quite as definite as presented here (e.g. he didn't share a bed with the widow of Zarephath), nor does it necessarily tell us about what the scribe thought. Prophets sometimes had to bodily live out the fate of Israel, like Ezekiel, for God to get his message out. There's also an interesting paradox. Elijah delivered God's message, then was sent there and fed by ravens. Later, Elijah despairs after being threatened by Jezebel, and he runs away and is fed by angels. Our Lord works in mysterious ways... – Luke Sawczak Jul 11 '18 at 13:42