BIBLE RECORDS | 124 MIRACLES (54)

1. What are "Miracles"?

a) Miracles are those acts that only God can perform; usually superseding natural laws. Baker’s Dictionary of the Bible defines a miracle as “an event in the external world brought about by the immediate agency or the simple volition of God.” It goes on to add that a miracle occurs to show that the power behind it is not limited to the laws of matter or mind as it interrupts fixed natural laws. So the term supernatural applies quite accurately.

b) Miracles are also known as Signs and Wonders.

c) Here we have one of the 124 miracles recorded in the Bible.

2. Miracle 54: RAVENS DELIVER FOOD—prophet Elijah fed by ravens (1 Kings 17-1-7). 

 a) Ravens deliver food to Elijah.

1 Kings 17:1-7 New King James Version (NKJV)

17 And Elijah the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, except at my word.”

² Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ³ “Get away from here and turn eastward, and hide by the Brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan. ⁴ And it will be that you shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.”

⁵ So he went and did according to the word of the Lord, for he went and stayed by the Brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan. ⁶ The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the brook. ⁷ And it happened after a while that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land. 

b) Raven.

i) Hebrew: 'orebh, from a root meaning “to be black” (compare Song of Songs 5:11).

ii) First mentioned as “sent forth” by Noah from the ark (Genesis 8:7).

iii) “Every raven after his kind” was forbidden as food (Leviticus 11:15; Deuteronomy 14:14). Ravens feed mostly on carrion, and hence their food is procured with difficulty (Job 38:41; Psalms 147:9). When they attack kids or lambs or weak animals, it is said that they first pick out the eyes of their victims (Proverbs 30:17).

iv) When Elijah was concealed by the brook Cherith, God commanded the ravens to bring him “bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening” (1 Kings 17:3-6). 

v) There are eight species of ravens in Israel, and they are everywhere very numerous in that land.