But truly I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land.

He said to the vine dresser, 'Look, these three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and found none. Cut it down. Why does it waste the soil?'

Therefore watch, remembering that for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish everyone night and day with tears.

Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days.

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months.