He arose, and went to Sarephta. And when he was come to the gate of the city, he saw the widow woman gathering sticks, and he called her, and said to her: Give me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.

“Let us further see where blessed Elijah found that widow, dearly beloved. She had gone out to get water and to pick up sticks of wood. Let us now consider what the water and the wood signify. We know that both are very pleasing and necessary for the church, as it is written: "He is like a tree planted near running water." In the wood is shown the mystery of the cross, in the water the sacrament of baptism. Therefore, she had gone out to gather two sticks of wood, for thus she replied to blessed Elijah when he asked her for food: "As the Lord lives, I have nothing but a handful of meal and a little oil in a cruse; and behold, I am going out to gather two sticks that I may make food for me and my son … and we will eat it and die." The widow typified the church, as I said above; the widow's son prefigured the Christian people. Thus, when Elijah came, the widow went out to gather two sticks of wood. Notice, brothers, that she did not say three or four, nor only one stick; but she wanted to gather two sticks. She was gathering two sticks of wood because she received Christ in the type of Elijah; she wanted to pick up those two pieces because she desired to recognize the mystery of the cross. Truly, the cross of our Lord and Savior was prepared from two pieces of wood, and so that widow was gathering two sticks because the church would believe in him who hung on two pieces of wood. For this reason that widow said, "I am gathering two sticks that I may make food for me and my son, and we will eat it and die." It is true, beloved; no one will merit to believe in Christ crucified unless he dies to this world. For if a person wishes to eat the body of Christ worthily, he must die to the past and live for the future.”

“So he arose, and went to Zarephath,.... Which, according to Bunting (f), was one hundred miles from the brook Cherith: and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow woman was there gathering sticks: perhaps out of an hedge just without the city this shows her to be a poor woman, who had no other way of coming at fuel but this, and no servant to fetch it for her: Bunting tells us, that now before the gate of the city there is showed a certain chapel, where they say Elias first spoke with the widow: and he called to her, and said, fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink; being thirsty through travelling, and supposing this to be the woman he was directed to, made trial of her this way; some render it, "in this vessel" (g), which he had with him, and made use of at the brook Cherith. (f) Ut supra, (Travels, &c.) p. 203. (g) "in hoc vase", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.”

“When Elijah arrived at the city gate, he met a widow engaged in gathering wood. To discover whether it was to her that the Lord had sent him, he asked her for something to drink and for a morsel of bread to eat; whereupon she assured him, with an oath by Jehovah, that she had nothing baked (מעוג = עגּה, ἐγκρυφίας, a cake baked in hot ashes), but only a handful of meal in the כּד (a pail or small vessel in which meal was kept) and a little oil in the pitcher, and that she was just gathering wood to dress this remnant for herself and her son, that they might eat it, and then die. From this statement of the widow it is evident, on the one hand, that the drought and famine had spread across the Phoenician frontier, as indeed Menander of Ephesus attests; (Note: Josephus gives this statement from his Phoenician history: ἀβροχία τε ἐπ ̓ αὐτοῦ (sc., Ἰθοβάλου) ἐγένετο ἀπὸ τοῦ Ὑπερβερεταίου μηνὸς ἕως τοῦ ἐρχομένου ἔτους Ὑπερβερεταίου (Ant. viii. 13, 2). Hyperberetaeus answers to Tishri of the Hebrews; cf. Benfey and Stern, die Monatsnamen, p. 18.) on the other hand, the widow showed by the oath, "as Jehovah thy God liveth," that she was a worshipper of the true God, who spoke of Jehovah as his God, because she recognised the prophet as an Israelite.”