During the three-year drought Elijah had prophesied, the Lord sent him to Zarephath, a Phoenician town on the coast between Tyre and Sidon. There he met a widow gathering sticks and asked her for water and bread. She replied: 'I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die' (1 Kings 17:12).
Elijah told her to make him a small cake first. 'The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the LORD sends rain on the earth.' She did as he said, and 'the jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by Elijah' (1 Kings 17:14–16).
Some time later, the widow's son fell ill and died. Elijah carried him to the upper room, stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried to the Lord. 'The life of the child came into him again, and he revived' (1 Kings 17:22) — the first explicit resurrection from the dead recorded in the Bible. Jesus would later cite this episode in His own first sermon at Nazareth (Luke 4:25–26).