[616] Not "by," as in the A.V. Cherith means "cut off" (1 Kings xvii. 3). "The Lord hid him" (Jer. xxxvi. 26). "In famine he shall redeem thee from death.... At famine and destruction thou shalt laugh" (Job v. 20-22). [617] Robinson. [618] Benjamin of Tudela. [619] Marinus Sanutus (1321). [620] The ravens were unclean birds (Deut. xiv. 14), and this naturally startled and offended the Rabbis. [621] Prov. xxx. 17. [622] Orbo was a small town near the Jordan and Bethshan. [623] On the other side, Bunsen (_Bibelwerk_, v. 2, 540) speaks too strongly when he says that "nothing but boundless ignorance, or, where historical criticism has not died out, an hierarchical dilettanti reaction, foolhardy hypocrisy, and weak-hearted fanaticism would wish to demand the faith of a Christian community in the historic truths of these miracles as if they had actually taken place." He regards the whole narrative as a "popular epic--the fruit of an inspiration, which he, as it were some superhuman being, awakened in his disciples." [624] I append the remarks of Professor Milligan, a theologian of unimpeachable orthodoxy. "The miracle," he says, "is so remarkable, so much out of keeping with most of the other miracles of Scripture, that even pious and devout minds may well be perplexed by it, and we can feel no surprise at the attempts made to explain it. Such attempts are not inconsistent with the most devout reverence for the word of God. They are rather, not unfrequently, the result of a just persuasion that the Eastern mind did not express itself in forms similar to those of the West" (_Elijah_, p. 22). He proceeds to protest against the harsh condemnation of those who thus only try to interpret the real ideas present in the mind of the writer. He regards it as perhaps a highly poetic and figurative representation of the truth that the God of Nature was with Elijah. "The value of the Prophet's experience is neither heightened by a literal, nor diminished by a figurative, interpretation of what passed" (p. 24). CHAPTER XXXV. _ELIJAH AT SAREPTA._ 1 KINGS xvii. 7, xviii. 19. "The rain is God's compassion."--MOHAMMED. The fierce drought continued, and "at the end of days"[625] even the thin trickling of the stream in the clefts of Cherith was dried up. In the language of Job it felt the glare and vanished.[626] No miracle was wrought to supply the Prophet with water, but once more the providence of God intervened to save his life for the mighty work which still awaited him. He was sent to the region where, nearly a millennium later, the feet of his Lord followed him on a mission of mercy to those other sheep of His flock who were not of the Judæan fold.