I noticed something that I hadn’t before in the history of Elijah, when a bit of it was read out in church. I’ve mentioned scones here before as the name of the flatbread that the widow of Zarephath, or Sarepta as I think of it, baked for him. Bread was the turning point in his life more than once.

When he sat down under a juniper tree in the wilderness and asked God to let him die, an angel brought him a jug of water and some bread, or “a cake baken on the coals” as King James’ translation committee charmingly called it.

But on meeting the widow, before her scone-making, Elijah asked her: “Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand.” The phrase “in thine hand” may be idiomatic for all I know, but it is there in the Hebrew, and I don’t know why some translations omit it.