What Does 1 Kings 17:20 Mean?
And he cried out to the LORD, and said, O LORD my God, have you also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And he cried unto the LORD, and said, O LORD my God, hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son?THE KEY
The cry shows that intimacy with God can contain the question of whether God has caused the harm.
THE MEANING
The speaker addresses the LORD as “my God” even while asking whether the LORD has harmed the widow by bringing her son’s death. The grief stays stark; the prayer offers no explanation that softens the loss. For the reader now, accusation and intimacy occupy the same address, and the question remains spoken before an answer appears.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that calling God “my God” requires hiding the accusation or pretending the death makes sense.
THE ROOT
הֲרֵעֹתָ
hă-rēʿōṯā
GROWS FROM
רָעַע
r-ʿ-ʿ
To act harmfully, do evil, or cause calamity.
“brought evil” in this verse is hă-rēʿōṯā. The verb asks whether the LORD has caused harm to come upon the widow. Elijah names her son’s death as an injury to her, leaving the accusation plain rather than softening it.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Badness or evil.
רַע
This branch shows that Elijah’s question grows from the same word-family as the harm he names.
raʿah: Harm or calamity.
רָעָה
This branch carries the word-family into the kind of calamity the widow is facing.
לְהָמִית
lə-hāmîṯ
GROWS FROM
מוּת
m-w-t
To die; in this causative form, to cause someone to die.
The verb for slaying belongs to the same root as “die” and “death,” but here it takes a causative form. That wording presses the question of agency as well as the reality of the loss.
ALSO GROWS
mûṯ: To die.
מוּת
The causative form in the verse grows from this verb, making the link between death and causing death explicit.
māveṯ: Death.
מָוֶת
This noun shares the root and keeps the focus on the death at the center of Elijah’s question.
וַיִּקְרָא
wayyiqrāʾ
GROWS FROM
קרא
q-r-ʾ
To call, summon, or proclaim; also to read aloud.
“cried” in this verse is wayyiqrāʾ. The Hebrew verb can mean “call” as well as “cry,” so Elijah’s grief is not only a sound of distress: it is a call directed to the LORD. The same root also appears in words for reading aloud and public assembly, where a voice calls something into presence.
ALSO GROWS
qārāʾ: To call, summon, or read aloud.
קָרָא
This is the root verb beneath Elijah’s “cried,” linking his grief to a direct call.
miqrāʾ: A reading or an assembly called together.
מִקְרָא
This branch carries the sense of calling into a gathered, audible event, echoing how Elijah speaks his anguish aloud.
THE PATTERN
Lament brings its accusation and unanswered question directly to God without concealing the wound.
I cry out to you, and you do not answer me; I stand, and you gaze at me.To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why do you leave me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my roaring.Around the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you left me behind?THE THREAD
In my narrow place I call out to the LORD, and I cry out to my God. From his temple he hears and answers my voice, and my cry comes into his ears.Elijah’s “cried” is וַיִּקְרָא (wayyiqrāʾ, called), from קרא (q-r-ʾ, call or summon). Psalm 18:6 uses the same root in “I called upon the LORD,” then says the voice is heard, showing the cry as a deliberate address while the grief and accusation remain intact.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us