summarizes it, is that in the midst of a terrible famine Elijah was not sent to relieve the needs of any of the many widows in Israel, as was to be expected, but rather to a Gentile woman, living in Zarephath of Sidon, a Phoenician or Philistine city. The second example (Luke 4:27) reinforces the first. It is the story of Naaman, which appears in 2 Kings 5. Naaman was a general in the armies of Aram (Syria), Israel’s traditional enemy. Yet it was he whom Elisha healed, and not one of the many lepers