Elisha and the Widow's Oil--Compassionate Provision

"How often I have excused myself from attempting something because I convinced myself that I did not have the resources to do so! Does our text not teach us that God expects us to use what little we have, trusting Him to provide for all of our needs?

A gem of a reflection by H. Macmillan via The Biblical Illustrator:

Elisha’s first question to her evinced a wonderful knowledge of the human heart, and of the best mode of dealing with poverty and suffering. Instead of volunteering to give her aid at once, as most persons would have done, carried away by an overpowering impulse of compassion at the recital of the tale of sorrow; like a wise and judicious friend, he inquires how far she herself has the power to avert the threatened calamity—“What hast thou in the house?” His assistance must be based upon her own assistance. He will help her to help herself.

Israelite Olive Oil Jar with Dipper Juglet Holder

Iron Age II, 900 B.C.E. - 700 B.C.E.

And this is the only true way to benefit the poor. By reckless and indiscriminate almsgiving, we run the risk of pauperising the objects of our charity. Our assistance should therefore be of such a nature as to call forth the resources which they themselves possess, and to make the most of them. However small these resources may be, they should be used as a fulcrum, by means of which our help may raise them to a better condition.

The first question which we too should ask the widow or the destitute is—“What hast thou in the house?” No help from without can benefit, unless there be a willingness of self-help within. The widow of Obadiah had nothing in the house save a pot of oil. Was this oil grown by Obadiah during his lifetime—the last of the produce of his olive-yard? In all likelihood it was all that remained of the once extensive property of Ahab’s steward. Out of this last pot of Oil—the sign of her uttermost poverty—Elisha furnished the source of her comfort and happiness.

In the fables of all nations we are told that a magician, by a mere wave of his wand, or by pronouncing a certain charm, produces at once wealth and luxuries that had no existence before. Aladdin rubs a ring, and immediately a genius appears, and at his command provides a rich feast for him out of nothing. He rubs an old lamp, and at once a gorgeous palace rises up before him in substantial reality, created out of the formless ether around. By putting on Fortunetus’s wishing-cap the lucky possessors of it can get anything they want, and create things unknown before.

But there is nothing like this in the miracles of the Bible. The Gospel miracle which most nearly resembles the multiplication of the widow’s oil by Elisha, is the miracle of the loaves and fishes. In both cases the properties of the articles remained the same, and their substance only was extended. In both cases the point of departure and the completed result of the miracle were articles in familiar use among the people. Elisha simply multiplied the common olive oil of the widow into the common olive oil of the country, neither better nor worse.

Olive Oil Press, Capernaum, Israel

Jesus simply multiplied the common barley loaves and fishes of the fisher-lad into the common barley loaves and fishes which formed the ordinary fare of the disciples. In both cases the miracle was based upon the ultimate result of man’s labour. The oil in the widow’s pot was the juice expressed, out of berries gathered, from trees planted, grafted, and tended by man’s toil and skill. The bread in the fisherman’s possession was baked by man’s hands, out of barley sown, reaped, gathered, threshed, and ground in the mill by man’s skill and labour; the fishes were equally the produce of human industry and special knowledge.


These examples show to us that even in miracles man must be a fellowworker with God in subduing the earth, and in removing the limitations and disabilities of the curse. In these actions men prepared themselves by the miracle wrought within them—the triumph over natural unbelief and the objections of reason—to believe in and to benefit by the miracle about to be wrought without. The widow of Obadiah might well be astonished at the command of Elisha. If she had stopped to reason about the procedure required of her, she might well hesitate to undertake it.

Taking a common-sense view of the matter, of what use would it be to borrow as many vessels as possible from her neighbours? What answer could she give them if they asked her what she meant to do with these vessels? Would they not laugh at her if she told the prophet’s message, and ridicule the utter folly of the whole story? And yet, in spite of all these apparent absurdities and impossibilities—in spite of all the objections of reason and common sense, the widow hastened to obey the prophet’s command. She stumbled not because of unbelief. Her faith triumphed over all difficulties.

detail of juglet dipper--clever and beautiful

It is a significant circumstance that the prophet should have commanded the widow to shut the door upon herself and her sons, when she poured out the oil into the vessels. There is a reason for, and a meaning in, every detail of the Bible miracles; and doubtless the design of this apparently trivial injunction was to secure to the widow the privacy and calmness of mind necessary for the performance of the miracle, and for its producing the full and proper impression upon her own soul. If she had left the door open, the neighbours doubtless, moved by curiosity to see what she would do with the vessels she had borrowed, would flock around her, and sadly discompose her mind by their laughter, their sneers, and their unsuitable remarks. Reverence, stillness, and solitude are needed for the miracle. But, besides being necessary in order to prepare the widow of Obadiah for receiving the benefits of the miracle, the solitude and secrecy which Elisha enjoined were significant of the mysterious character of the miracle itself. It was withdrawn from sight. It was silent and unimaginable.

The process by which the oil was multiplied we labour in vain to conceive. We cannot explain the phenomenon by the observation of any known laws; and yet in truth the miracle is not more strange, save in the rapidity with which it is effected, than that which is every day going forward in nature in those regions where the olive tree grows. You sow the seed of an olive tree; that seed contains a very small quantity of oil. It grows and becomes a tree and produces an immense quantity of fruit; so that from the little drop of oil in the small vessel of the seed, you have thousands of vessels in the shape of the berries, each filled with oil.

He who makes the olive seed in the course of a few years, or the olive tree every season, to prepare and extract oil from the scanty soil on the arid rocks, and the dry burning air in which the tree delights to grow, concentrated, in the miracle in the widow’s chamber, the slower processes of nature spread over months and years, into the act of a single moment. Of course the natural process does not explain the miracle, but it is a help to our faith. The one sheds light upon the other.

Old Olive Groves, California

"The miracle teaches us that the natural process is not the result of an impersonal law or of a dead course of things, but the working of our Father in heaven; while the natural process in its turn shows to us that God in the miracle is working in the line of the ordinary events and dispensations of His providence. The miracle blends with common life. How strikingly does this wonderful incident show to us that we must be fellow-workers with God throughout, from first to last, in our own deliverance and blessing. How wonderfully it illustrates the whole Divine economy of grace, under which we are enjoined to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, seeing that it is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure!

We are all in the condition of the poor widow; we are destitute of everything, and are ready to perish. But God is far more tender and considerate to us than Elisha was to the widow. If we have but the feeling of want, but the desire for God’s help, that very want or desire will be to us what the pot of oil was to the widow—the source of an abundant supply of all that we need." (H. Macmillan, D. D.)

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"How often I have excused myself from attempting something because I convinced myself that I did not have the resources to do so! Does our text not teach us that God expects us to use what little we have, trusting Him to provide for all of our needs?I see this theme repeated over and over in the Bible. Moses makes all sorts of excuses for why he should not go to Egypt, as God commanded. And God says to him, “What is that in your hand?” (Exodus 4:2). It was nothing special; it was just a staff—probably no more than a stick Moses found somewhere, which suited the task of tending sheep. But that staff was used of God in a powerful way to demonstrate that Moses spoke for God. Jesus made the five loaves and two fishes into a meal for thousands (John 6:1-14), and He turned water into wine (John 2:1-11). Paul says that God uses our weakness to demonstrate His power (2 Corinthians 12:7-11). God allows, and often requires, that we participate in His work."  -Bob Deffinbaugh