(5) And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat. (6) And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again. (7) And the angel of the LORD came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee. (8) And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God.
Oh! Reader! do pray observe the tender mercy of a gracious God. Had the Lord taken Elijah at his word, what a sad event! instead of which we find the angel of the Lord feeding him. I cannot suffer the Reader to go on without pausing to remark with me, in what a variety of gracious ways the Lord fed his servant. By ravens at one time; by a widow woman at another. Now by an angel; and now for forty days without food he is preserved. And was he not here a type of his adored Lord and master? Can I look at Elijah from the wilderness of Judah, strengthened for a forty days abstinence in Horeb, without calling to mind thine unequalled abstinence, dearest Jesus, when added to the hunger of the body, and the conflicts of the soul, Satan was permitted to spend all the fiery darts of his temptations upon thee?