Place
Zarephath
Named in 4 verses across 3 books, first in 1 Kings 17:9.
In the Bible
All 4 verses, in Bible order. Text from the Berean Standard Bible; verse numbers follow the KJV.
1 Kings
- 1 Kings 17:9
“Get up and go to Zarephath of Sidon, and stay there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.”
- 1 Kings 17:10
So Elijah got up and went to Zarephath. When he arrived at the city gate, there was a widow gathering sticks. Elijah called to her and said, “Please bring me a little water in a cup, so that I may drink.”
Obadiah
- Obadiah 1:20
And the exiles of this host of the Israelites will possess the land of the Canaanites as far as Zarephath; and the exiles from Jerusalem who are in Sepharad will possess the cities of the Negev.
Luke
- Luke 4:26
Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to the widow of Zarephath in Sidon.
Dictionary
From Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897), as attached to this record by Theographic. Its geography and “modern” descriptions date from the 1890s. Easton wrote in 1897, and some of his views are now debated.
Read Easton’s entry
Smelting-shop, “a workshop for the refining and smelting of metals”, a small Phoenician town, now Surafend, about a mile from the coast, almost midway on the road between Tyre and Sidon. Here Elijah sojourned with a poor widow during the “great famine,” when the “heaven was shut up three years and six months” (Luke 4:26; 1 Kings 17:10). It is called Sarepta in the New Testament (Luke 4:26).