Douay-Rheims Bible: 3 Kings — Introduction, Chapter Summaries and Notes by Richard Challoner
Chapter 19
SummaryElias, fleeing from Jezabel, is fed by an angel in the desert; and by the strength of that food walketh forty days, till he cometh to Horeb, where he hath a vision of God.
[19:4] That he might die. . .Elias requested to die, not out of impatience or pusillanimity, but out of zeal against sin; and that he might no longer be witness of the miseries of his people; and the war they were waging against God and his servants. Seever. 10.
[19:8] In the strength of that food, etc. . . This bread, with which Elias was fed in the wilderness, was a figure of the bread of life which we receive in the blessed sacrament; by the strength of which we are to be supported in our journey through the wilderness of this world till we come to the true mountain of God, and his vision in a happy eternity.
[19:10] I alone am left. . . Viz., of the prophets in the kingdom of Israel, or of the ten tribes; for in the kingdom ofjuda religion was at that time in a very flourishing condition under the kings Asa and Josaphat. And even in Israel there remained several prophets, though not then known to Elias. See chap. 20.13,28,35.
[19:17] Shall be slain by Eliseus. . .Eliseus did not kill any of the idolaters with the material sword: but he is here joined with Hazaeland Jehu, the great instruments of God in punishing the idolatry of Israel, because he foretold to the former his exaltation to the kingdom of Syria, and the vengeance he would execute against Israel, and anointed the latter by one of his disciples to be king of Israel, with commission to extirpate the house ofAchab.