ArticleBlog | From lament to hope: a lesson from Zarephath
From lament to hope: a lesson from Zarephath
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 24.06.23
There’s been a period of intense political rivalry in a changed national landscape. Despite the chaos, business is good. New trade deals have been struck, and the stock market is high. But under the surface all is not well. A chronic shortage of essential resources means that basic foodstuffs are increasingly expensive. Some continue to feast, while others struggle to get by. The nation is wealthy, but inequality is growing and there is a cost-of-living crisis.
It’s a characterisation of the twenty-first-century United Kingdom that few would fail to recognise. However, I’m describing – with a degree of poetic licence – the northern kingdom of Israel in the ninth century BC. This is the setting for I Kings 17:1–18:2. In narrating the story of a deep encounter between a mighty prophet and a poor widow, I want to bring out the revolutionary nature of how God chooses to change the world, and the profoundly personal basis of Christian political action.
Ahab is king. His father Omri came to power after a coup, and was famous in history for his military and economic expansion. He was infamous to the biblical authors for his wickedness, greater than any of the kings before him. Not to be outdone by his father, Ahab makes a formal alliance with the Sidonians by marrying Jezebel, the daughter of the king of Sidon, and instituting the formal worship of Baal, the Caananite storm god of rain and dew, alongside that of Asherah, Baal’s fertility goddess consort.
Sorrow and grief
Israel has become a nation of divided allegiances, trying to have its cake and eat it, worshipping both Yahweh and the Canaanite gods of the surrounding pagan nations. Their divided hearts have given rise to a deeply divided society.
