GOD'S EVERLASTING LOVE A famine is a dearth – a scarcity of food. Sometimes there is no food at all during a famine. In a famine, there is no harvest, no reaping, no replenishment of the food supply. Sometimes a famine is the result of hordes of devouring insects. Sometimes it is the result of a dearth, when there is no rain. A famine can also be the result of military action that razes the land and pillages all crops. Famines can even be a judgment sent from God. The word "famine" literally means "hunger." People have been know to eat their own children during a famine, pay a high price for a donkey's head, and even eat dove's dung. This is one of the most grievous of all calamities. – Tomorrow:
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: 'For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.' Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:35-39, NKJV)
FAMINE
The first famine of Scriptural record took place when Abraham first entered into Canaan – the land God had promised to him and his descendants. Not only was "the Canaanite in the land," but "there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land" (Gen 12:6,10). That is what Abraham confronted when he finally arrived in the promised land!
About the time Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, "there was a famine in the land." It is written, "And there was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham" (Gen 26:1). God directed Isaac to remain in Gerar, a Philistine city, rather than going down into Egypt.
Joseph was exalted to the throne of Egypt because God had revealed to him how the land could be sustained during a grievous famine that lasted seven long years (Gen 41:27-36). That particular famine "was over all the face of the earth" (Gen 41:56). People from "all countries" came to Joseph to buy grain, "because the famine was severe in all the world" (Gen 41:57, NIV). During that time. In the land of promise where Jacob and his sons resided while Joseph was in Egypt, "the famine was sore in the land" (Gen 43:1). After enduring the famine for two years, and with five years of the famine remaining, Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to buy food. Joseph received and fed them for the duration of the famine (Gen 45:11).
The record of Ruth is couched during the time of the Judges ruled – in a time when "there was a famine in the land" (Ruth 1:1). To escape the famine, the husband of Naomi, together with his family, fled to the country of Moab, "and continued there" (Ruth 1:2).
In the days of David, there was a famine that lasted for three consecutive years. The Scriptures record, "Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David inquired of the LORD. And the LORD answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites" (2 Sam 21:1). Here is the first record of a famine God caused – a judgment because of an injustice done by king Saul (1 Sam 22:17-19).
When Elijah confronted wicked Ahab, "there was a sore famine in Samaria" (1 Kgs 18:2). It was during this time that Jezebel killed several prophets (18:13). This was also the period when Elijah had his famous contest with the prophets of Baal (18:19-40).
Another famine occurred in the same country during the time of Elisha. During that time "Benhadad king of Syria gathered all his host, and went up, and besieged Samaria." The siege lasted so long, and the famine was so grievous "until a donkey's head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a fourth of a kab of dove's dung for five shekels of silver" (2 Kgs 6:24-25, NASB).
Elisha told the woman whose son he raised from the dead that God had called for a famine on the land that would last seven years. He urged the woman to go wherever she could sojourn and remain until the famine was over. The woman "sojourned in the land of the Philistines for seven years " (2 Kgs 8:1-2).
When Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, the city finally fell apart after four months of famine had prevailed in it, and the king of Babylon triumphed over it (2 Kgs 25:3-7).
Most of these famines touched the saints of God. Some had to seek means by which they could be sustained, while God miraculously supplied the needs of others, as when Elijah was fed by the ravens (1 Kgs 17:4-6), and miraculously sustained by a poor widow who only had a handful of flour and a small cruse of oil (1 Kgs 17:9-16).
One of the most severe of all post-Biblical famines occurred in A.D. 1064, and lasted for seven years, until 1071. This famine occurred in Egypt. I give the following historical record in order to accentuate the severity of circumstances that can occur during an extended famine.
"But the most remarkable famine was that of the reign of the Fatimi Khalifeh, El-Mustansir billah, which is the only instance on record of one of seven years' duration in Egypt since the time of Joseph (A.H. 457-464, A.D. 1064-1071). This famine exceeded in severity all others of modern
times, and was aggravated by the anarchy which then ravaged the country. Vehement drought and pestilence (says Es-Suyuti, in his Hosn el-Mohdarah, MS.) continued for seven consecutive years, so that they [the people] ate corpses, and animals that died of themselves; the cattle perished; a dog was sold for 5 dinars, and a cat for 3 dinars ... and an ardebb (about 5 bushels) of wheat for 100 dinars, and then it failed altogether. He adds that all the horses of the Khalifeh, save three, perished, and gives numerous instances of the straits to which the wretched inhabitants were driven, and of the organized bands of kidnappers who infested Cairo, and caught passengers in the streets by ropes furnished with hooks and let down from the houses. This account is confirmed by El-Makrizi (in his Khitat; Quatremere has translated the account of this famine in the life of El-Mustansir, contained in his Memoires Geographiques et Historiques sur 'Egypte), from whom we further learn that the family, and even the women of the Khalifeh fled, by the way of Syria on foot, to escape the peril that threatened all ranks of the population." (Taken from McClintock and Strong's Cyclopedia).
The question before us now is if "famine" – that kind of famine – can separate us from the love of Christ.
PRAYER POINT: Father, like many people in the United States, I have never had to endure a famine. Yet, I know many righteous people in Your Word have faced grievous famines. In the name of Jesus, help me to clearly see that even calamities of that magnitude cannot put me in a place Christ's love cannot reach and sustain me.