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I don’t know when I first read his poem The Raven, but it might have been in Mrs. Graves’ ninth-grade English class. All I remember about the poem is the spooky refrain, “Quoth the raven, ’Nevermore.’” And until I read about Elijah and ravens, I hadn’t given those strange black bird another thought in almost forty years. When I planned out my series on Elijah, I didn’t intend to spend a whole week on the ravens, but for some reason I couldn’t get those birds out of my mind. I thought about it and thought it and decided there must be something important here that we need to know.
So let’s take a trip into the avian world and think about the ravens that fed Elijah. We begin with a few simple facts. Ravens are large black birds closely related to crows, the main difference being that ravens are bigger, with a wingspan that reaches 50 inches. They can be found from the arctic to the deserts of North Africa to the islands of the Pacific. During flight they perform complicated aerial acrobatics. Biologists consider them to be extremely intelligent birds. But that is not their most notable characteristic. Ravens are scavengers. They eat berries, fruit, insects, bread and carrion (the flesh of dead animals). They sometimes kill small birds and mammals such as rabbits and rats. They are capable of a wide range of noises, including the ability to mimic human speech. Given their black coloration, their enormous wingspan, and their reputation as scavengers, it is no surprise that ravens have gained a mythic reputation. They have even given us a word that describes a person so hungry that he will eat anything. Such a person is said to be ravenous.Ravens appear in the Bible in only a few places. Genesis 8:6-7 says that when the floodwaters began to recede, Noah sent out a raven in search of dry land. Although the earth was still covered with water, the male raven (1/2 of the entire raven population at the time) had no trouble staying alive by scavenging off all the material floating on the surface of the water. If you are raven-haired, your hair is dark black. In Song of Solomon 5:11, the woman describes her beloved as having hair “as dark as a raven.” The scavenging side of the raven appears in Proverbs 30:17 where a rebellious child will be thrown in a valley and the ravens will pick out his eyes. Instead of an honorable burial, the rebellious child becomes food for the ravens. Isaiah prophesied that after God judged Edom, it would be so deserted that only the owl and the raven would live there (Isaiah 34:11). Despite their negative image, God cares for the ravens and he feeds them (Psalm 147:9). When Jesus wanted to impress this truth upon his disciples, he told them to “consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them”
What should we learn from the story of Elijah and the ravens?
1) God commanded and the ravens came.
In 1 Kings 17:4 the Lord declares, “I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” I can imagine Elijah sitting alone by the brook when suddenly a flock of birds approaches him. They are ravens, unclean scavenger birds. It must have been a fearsome sight to see these enormous black birds swooping in with bread and meat in their beaks. But they did not come by chance nor did they fly from a nearby cave. God sent them, God commanded them, God directed them, and thus they came to the prophet’s aid.Let me pause to ask a question. How much food does it take to sustain your family each week? I confess that I don’t know the answer to that question, but my wife does. When all three of our boys lived at home, we went through an enormous amount of food every week. Some weeks we would go through 5-10 gallons of milk. No matter how often we went to the grocery store, we would have to go again a few days later. That’s how it is with growing boys. You have to keep feeding them because they never stop growing. And they are always hungry. Many nights we would hear some noise in the kitchen late at night. It was Josh or Mark or Nick foraging for food. It would take some detailed calculations to figure out how much we’ve spent on food over the years, but God knows the exact amount because he keeps track of what we need. He knows your name and he knows your address and he knows what you need today and he knows what you will need tomorrow. It’s all written on his heart because he watches over you even when you think he has forgotten you. God knows what you need, and he knows when you need it, and he will make sure you have it in time.