Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

⁸ Then this word of Adonai came to him: ⁹ “Get up; go to Tzarfat, a village in Tzidon; and live there. I have ordered a widow there to provide for you.” ¹⁰ So he set out and went to Tzarfat. On reaching the gate of the city, he saw a widow there gathering sticks. He called out to her, “Please bring a little water in a container for me to drink.” ¹¹ As she was going to get it, he called after her, “Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand.” ¹² She answered, “As Adonai your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a pot and a little oil in the jug. Here I am, gathering a couple sticks of wood, so that I can go and cook it for myself and my son. After we have eaten that, we will die.” ¹³ Eliyahu said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go; and do what you said; but first, use a little of it to make me a small loaf of bread; and bring it out to me. After that, make food for yourself and your son. ¹⁴ For this is what Adonai the God of Isra’el, says: ‘The pot of meal will not get used up, nor will there fail to be oil in the jug, until the day Adonai sends rain down on the land.’” ¹⁵ She went and acted according to what Eliyahu had said; and she, he and her household had food to eat for a long time. ¹⁶ The pot of meal did not get used up, nor did there fail to be oil in the jug, in fulfillment of the word of Adonai spoken through Eliyahu.

¹⁷ A while later, the son of the woman whose house it was fell ill; his illness grew increasingly serious until his breathing stopped. ¹⁸ She said to Eliyahu, “What do you have against me, you man of God? Did you come to me just to remind me how sinful I am by killing my son?” ¹⁹ “Give me your son,” he said to her. Taking him from her lap, he carried him into the room upstairs where he was staying and laid him on his own bed. ²⁰ Then he cried out to Adonai: “Adonai my God! Have you brought also this misery on the widow I’m staying with by killing her son?” ²¹ He stretched himself out on the child three times and cried out to Adonai: “Adonai my God, please! Let this child’s soul come back into him!” ²² Adonai heard Eliyahu’s cry, the child’s soul came back into him, and he revived. ²³ Eliyahu took the child, brought him down from the upstairs room into the house and gave him to his mother; and Eliyahu said, “See? Your son is alive.” ²⁴ The woman replied to Eliyahu, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of Adonai that you speak is the truth.”

¹¹ Furthermore, let me make clear to you, brothers, that the Good News as I proclaim it is not a human product; ¹² because neither did I receive it from someone else nor was I taught it — it came through a direct revelation from Yeshua the Messiah. ¹³ For you have heard about my former way of life in [traditional] Judaism — how I did my best to persecute God’s Messianic Community and destroy it; ¹⁴ and how, since I was more of a zealot for the traditions handed down by my forefathers than most Jews my age, I advanced in [traditional] Judaism more rapidly than they did.

¹⁵ But when God, who picked me out before I was born and called me by his grace, chose ¹⁶ to reveal his Son to me, so that I might announce him to the Gentiles, I did not consult anyone; ¹⁷ and I did not go up to Yerushalayim to see those who were emissaries before me. Instead, I immediately went off to Arabia and afterwards returned to Dammesek. ¹⁸ Not until three years later did I go up to Yerushalayim to make Kefa’s acquaintance, and I stayed with him for two weeks, ¹⁹ but I did not see any of the other emissaries except Ya‘akov the Lord’s brother. ²⁰ (Concerning these matters I am writing you about, I declare before God that I am not lying!) ²¹ Next I went to Syria and Cilicia; ²² but in Y’hudah, the Messianic congregations didn’t even know what I looked like — ²³ they were only hearing the report, “The one who used to persecute us now preaches the Good News of the faith he was formerly out to destroy”; ²⁴ and they praised God for me.

¹¹ The next day Yeshua, accompanied by his talmidim and a large crowd, went to a town called Na‘im. ¹² As he approached the town gate, a dead man was being carried out for burial. His mother was a widow, this had been her only son, and a sizeable crowd from the town was with her. ¹³ When the Lord saw her, he felt compassion for her and said to her, “Don’t cry.” ¹⁴ Then he came close and touched the coffin, and the pallbearers halted. He said, “Young man, I say to you: get up!” ¹⁵ The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Yeshua gave him to his mother.^{[a] 16} They were all filled with awe and gave glory to God, saying, “A great prophet has appeared among us,” and, “God has come to help his people.” ¹⁷ This report about him spread throughout all Y’hudah and the surrounding countryside.