Ephrem the Syrian : "The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him and said, 'Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.' " Elijah was sleeping under a tree. Now an angel came to him and woke him up (sleep was weighing him down because of his fatigue, affliction and discouragement) and provided him with strength and comfort through the meal that he prepared for him. The nourishment of the prophet consisted of bread baked in the ashes and his drink of water. "And he said, 'The journey will be too much for you,' " that is, "you will not escape the affliction which you fear, through your death, as you believe, but through your flight. Therefore the journey is too long for you, and it is not like going to Cherith, a place close by. Rather, you are leaving for a distant location among foreign people where you will get peace and prosperity. That is why, until you are allowed to do so, you must eat and drink and prepare yourself to be strong enough for a long journey, because in a barren and desert land, you will not find any food."Allegorically the bread baked in the ashes, which the vigilant [the angel] offers to Elijah, has two different meanings: on the one side, it immediately shows the toils of penitence which the ashes symbolize perfectly, since they are a figure of mourning and of a contrite heart; the unleavened bread soaked in ashes and the water are also the food of the poor and the miserable. But we can say, with greater accuracy, that they are figures of all the righteous, for whom the providence of the Creator has established a course of life in the paths of privation. Therefore he leads them through much suffering, privation of food and a severe fast in order to purify them completely from all the filth of earthly things. Then he guides them to the mountain, which is the perfection and the accomplishment of the saints. — ON THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS 19:4 Origen of Alexandria : "And turning," it says, "he slept. And the angel of the Lord returned a second time and touched him." Perhaps they were symbols of powers ministering to the prophet food befitting one who withdraws from human affairs and is worthy of the teaching that comes from such powers, so that afterward he might be able to hear, "Arise and eat," and might find at his head ineffable mysteries, of which the cake baked in the ashes was a type. Does he not also a second time partake, according to the command of the angel who said, "Arise, eat, for the journey is far from you"? "Loaves," then, "the ravens brought to Elijah in the morning" (corresponding to the things spoken by the Lord to Moses, among which was, "In the morning you shall be filled with bread, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God"), and "flesh in the evening" (similarly, "Toward evening you shall eat flesh"). — FRAGMENTS ON KINGDOMS 20