Sarepta

Sarepta (also Zarephath; Greek Sarepta) was a Phoenician town on the Mediterranean coast between Tyre and Sidon, approximately eight miles south of Sidon. It is famous as the place where the prophet Elijah was directed during the three-and-a-half-year drought, finding shelter and sustenance with a Gentile widow who shared her last flour and oil with him and was miraculously provided for throughout the famine (1 Kings 17:9–24). Elijah also raised her son from death at Zarephath. Jesus cited this episode in his synagogue sermon at Nazareth (Luke 4:26) to demonstrate that divine grace extended to Gentiles when Israel was faithless: though there were many widows in Israel during Elijah's time, he was sent to none of them but to this foreign woman in Sidon. The episode became a paradigm for the inclusion of Gentiles in God's redemptive purposes. The modern site is the village of Sarafand on the Lebanese coast.