In chapter seventeen of the first book of Kings, Elijah, perhaps the greatest of God’s prophets in the Old Testament, is given an unpleasant task. He must go to King Ahab and announce that a terrible drought is about to visit the kingdom. After this, God instructs him to go and hide from the wrath of the king and the people by a little brook east of the Jordan River, Wadi Cherith. While Elijah is there, he drinks from the stream and is fed each morning and night by ravens.

Ravens?! Really?!

Ravens seem like an odd choice to nourish and give strength to God’s greatest prophet!

Angels would be better. Maybe doves. Manna. Lambs. Something, anything but Edgar Allen Poe’s harbingers of doom.

Before Noah sends out the dove to see if the flood has ended, he sends out a raven, which some ancient Biblical commentators thought was meant to symbolize vice in contrast to the dove’s virtue. We don’t necessarily think of ravens as a positive symbol. They are scavengers; they are intimidating; they hover around death and destruction. Leviticus says ravens belong on the list of unclean animals that the Jewish people are never to eat (along with rock badgers).

But… ravens also show extreme intelligence, even problem-solving intelligence. They appear a few more times throughout the scriptures, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes in the middle. Whatever their ultimate symbolic value, ravens were the animals that nourished the great prophet Elijah in his hour of need. And therein lies the meaning of Wadi Cherith for us:

It isn’t always an angel or a dove who brings you what you need; sometimes, it’s a raven. Wadi Cherith is the place you go to be fed and nourished by ravens, by the sometimes ambiguous and unexpected sources of wisdom and grace in God’s creation.