Luke 4:26

“But unto none of them was Elias sent, etc.] That is, to none of the poor widows in the land of Israel was the prophet sent, to supply them with food, and relieve them in their famishing circumstances, as might most reasonably have been expected: save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon; which in (<111710>1 Kings 17:10) is called “Zarephath”; and by the Septuagint there, “Sarepta of Sidon”, as here. Pliny f233 speaks of it by the same name, and reckons it to Sidon: unto a woman that was a widow: she is said by the Jews f234, to be the mother of Jonah the prophet. Our Lord meant to observe, by this instance, as by the following, that God bestows his favours on persons in a sovereign way, and…”

“save . . . saving--"but only." (Compare Mar 13:32, Greek.) Sarepta--"Zarephath" (Kg1 17:9), a heathen village between Tyre and Sidon. (See Mar 7:24.)”

“Save unto Sarepta - Sarepta was a town between Tyre and Sidon, near the Mediterranean Sea. It was not a “Jewish” city, but a Sidonian, and therefore a “Gentile” town. The word “save” in this verse does not express the meaning of the original. It would seem to imply that the city was Jewish. The meaning of the verse is this: “He was sent to none of the widows in Israel. He was not sent except to Sarepta, to a woman that was a “Sidonian.” Dr. Thomson (“The Land and the Book,” vol. i. p. 232-236) regards Sarepta as the modern Sarafend. He says that the ruins have been frequently dug over for stone to build the barracks at Beirut, and that the broken columns, marble slabs, sarcophagi, and other…”

“save: 1Kings 17:9-24, Zarephath, Oba 1:20 Sarepta: Sarepta, a city of Phoenicia, on the coast of the Mediterranean, is called Zarphand by the Arabian geographer Sherif Ibn Idris, who places it twenty miles n of Tyre, and ten s of Sidon; but its real distance from Tyre is about fifteen miles, the whole distance from that city to Sidon being only twenty-five miles. Maundrell states that the place shown him for this city, called Sarphan, consisted of only a few houses, on the tops of the mountains, within about half a mile of the sea; between which there were ruins of considerable extent. Luke 4:27”