But unto none of them was Elias sent
That is, to none of the poor widows in the land of Israel was the
prophet sent, to supply them with food, and relieve them in their
famishing circumstances, as might most reasonably have been
expected:
save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon;
which in ( 1 Kings
17:10 ) is called "Zarephath"; and by the Septuagint there,
"Sarepta of Sidon", as here. Pliny F18 speaks of it by the
same name, and reckons it to Sidon:
unto a woman that was a widow:
she is said by the Jews F19, to be the mother of Jonah the
prophet. Our Lord meant to observe, by this instance, as by the
following, that God bestows his favours on persons in a sovereign
way, and sometimes upon the most unlikely; as in a time of
famine, he overlooked the poor widows in Israel, his peculiar
people, and sent his prophet to a Gentile woman in one of the
cities of Sidon; and therefore they should cease to wonder if he
wrought his miracles in other places, and not in his own country;
since this was agreeable to the divine procedure in other cases,
especially since they were a cavilling and unbelieving people.
The Jews say F20, that in all that generation there
was not found any one that was worthy, as this woman.