Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Kings 18:40
And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.
40. Take the prophets of Baal ] Elijah avails himself of the newlykindled enthusiasm to put an end, as far as he may, to the false worship. Josephus explains ‘they seized and slew the prophets, Elijah exhorting them so to do.’ Although the text may be taken to signify that Elijah put the priests to death with his own hand, we can hardly suppose this to have been so. He is only said to do himself what he caused others to do.
the brook Kishon ] This is at the foot of Mount Carmel on the side towards the sea. It was the spot where Sisera was overthrown by Barak (Jdg 4:7) and the stream then was pictured as sweeping away the dead bodies of those who had been slain by the Israelite forces (Jdg 5:21).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Elijah required the people to show their conviction by acts – acts which might expose them to the anger of king or queen, but which once committed would cause them to break with Baal and his worshippers forever.
Elijah is said to have slain the prophets of Baal, because the people killed them by his orders. Why they were brought down to the torrent-bed of Kishon to be killed, is difficult to explain. Perhaps the object of Elijah was to leave the bodies in a place where they would not be found, since the coming rain would, he knew, send a flood down the Kishon ravine, and bear off the corpses to the sea. Elijahs act is to be justified by the express command of the Law, that idolatrous Israelites were to be put to death, and by the right of a prophet under the theocracy to step in and execute the Law when the king failed in his duty.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
1Ki 18:40
Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape.
The true narrowness
Elijah was intolerant–narrow, as some would call it. Dr. Cadman says that some things must be narrow in order to do their work. You want a narrow edge on your razor. About the broadest thing in the world is the Desert of Sahara. No Christian should attempt a compromise between wrong and right.
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 40. Let not one of them escape.] They had committed the highest crime against the state and the people by introducing idolatry, and bringing down God’s judgments upon the land; therefore their lives were forfeited to that law which had ordered every idolater to be slain. It seems also that Ahab, who was present, consented to this act of impartial justice.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Elijah said unto them; he takes the opportunity, whilst the peoples hearts were warm with the fresh sense of this great miracle.
Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, that their blood might be poured into that river, and thence conveyed into the sea, and might not defile the holy land.
Slew them there.
Quest. How could Elijah do this, seeing he was but a private person?
Answ. First, he had no doubt the consent of all the heads of the people, who were there assembled; and of the king too, who durst not resist the universal torrent, and could not deny that they were impostors, and worthy of death; and probably was by the prophet assured of rain when this was done.
Answ. Secondly, As these idolatrous priests were manifestly under a sentence of death, passed upon such by the sovereign Lord of life and death, Deu 13; Deu 17; so Elijah had sufficient authority to execute it, as being a prophet, and an extraordinary minister of Gods vengeance against sinners, now especially when the magistrate so grossly neglected his duty therein.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And Elijah said unto them, take the prophets of Baal,…. The four hundred and fifty that were upon the spot; for the number of the people of Israel, now gathered together, were equal to it; nor was it in Ahab’s power to hinder it, and he might himself be so far surprised and convicted as not in the least to object to it:
let not one of them escape: that there might be none of them left to seduce the people any more:
and they took them; laid hold on them, everyone of them:
and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon; which ran by the side, and at the bottom of Mount Carmel, into the sea;
[See comments on Jud 4:7] [See comments on Jud 5:21].
and slew them there; intimating, that it was owing to the idolatry they led the people into that rain had been withheld, and the brooks were dried up, as this might be; or, as Ben Gersom thinks, that the land might not be defiled with their blood, but be carried down the river after it: these he slew not with his own hand, but by others he gave orders to do it; and this not as a private person, but as an extraordinary minister of God, to execute justice according to his law, De 13:1 by which law such false prophets were to die; and the rather he was raised up and spirited for this service, as the supreme magistrate was addicted to idolatry himself.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(40) Slew them.This ruthless slaughter of Baals prophets, as a judgment on their idolatry and perversion of the people, belongs alike to the fierce righteousness of the character of Elijah, and to the spirit of the old Law. (See, for example, Deu. 13:6-18; Deu. 17:2-7.) The law was adapted (as in the terrible crucial example of the slaughter of the Canaanites) to the hardness of mens hearts. In the imperfect moral and religious education of those times, it did not recognise the difference between moral and political offences punishable by human law, and the religious sin or apostasy which we have been taught to leave to the judgment of God alone; and it enjoined an unrelenting severity in the execution of righteous vengeance, which would be morally impossible to us, who have been taught to hate the sin, and yet spare, as far as possible, the sinner. The frequent quotation of such examples by Christiansof which Luk. 9:54 is the first exampleis a spiritual anachronism. In this particular case, however, it is also to be remembered that those slain were no doubt implicated in the persecution headed by Jezebel, and that the Baal-worship was a licentious and perhaps bloody system. Elijah, presiding over the slaughter which dyed the waters of the Kishon with blood, felt himself the avenger of the slaughtered prophets, as well as the instrument of the judgment of God.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
40. Take the prophets of Baal Take them prisoners; lay hold upon them as criminals worthy of immediate death. The order was addressed to the obedient multitude, now all enthusiasm to vindicate Jehovah’s honour.
Down to the brook Kishon Which flows along the very base of Carmel. See note on 1Ki 18:35. “With regard to the place where the slaughter took place, there is general agreement. The path down the mountain, after passing the fountain, continues with no great windings almost directly towards Tell Kussis, a commanding hill on the opposite side of the Kishon, but very near it. It is a spur from the hills which bound the plain of Esdraelon on the north, close by where the plain contracts into the narrow valley which connects it with the plain of Akka. Its name, signifying hill of the priests, is not improbably derived from the fact of the slaughter of the prophets of Baal, which must have taken place near it.” PROF. MEAD, in Bibliotheca Sacra, 1873, p. 685.
Slew them there Here we may see some retaliation for Jezebel’s slaughter of the prophets of Jehovah. See 1Ki 18:4. But we must not judge this act of Elijah on the principles of Christian ethics, but by the spirit and letter of the Mosaic economy. The law commanded that the devotees of idolatry should be punished with death. See Deu 13:1-15; Deu 17:2-4; Deu 18:20. And so great was the passion with which the people, at the order of Elijah, helped to execute the law in this case, that Ahab, who was present, had no power or apparent disposition to interfere. On the moral principle involved in this slaughter of the Baal prophets, see notes on 1Ki 2:24; 2Sa 12:31.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1Ki 18:40. Elijah saidtake the prophets of Baal, &c. It appears from the course of the divine history of this people, that the Israelites had ever a violent propensity to mix with the neighbouring nations, and to devote themselves to the practices of idolatry. This would naturally, and did in fact, absorb large portions of them; and the sole human means which preserved the remainder, was the severity of their civil laws against idolatry. It will be necessary to remind the reader of that particularly which is recorded, Deu 17:2-5 which will throw great light upon this transaction, and vindicate the conduct of Elijah from objections. Such laws were necessary to support a separation of the Israelites from the idolatrous nations; but penal laws, enforced by the ordinary magistrate for matters of opinion, are manifestly unjust. Some way, therefore, was to be contrived to render these laws equitable; for we are not to suppose that God would ordain any thing which should violate the rule of natural justice. Now these penal laws are equitable only in a theocracy; and therefore a theocracy was necessary. It will be proper to observe, that God was pleased to stand in two arbitrary relations towards the Jewish people, besides that natural one in which he stands towards them and the rest of mankind in common. The first was, that of a tutelary deity, gentilitial and local, the God of Abraham, &c. who was to bring their posterity into the land of Canaan, and to protect them there, as his peculiar people. The second was, that of supreme magistrate and law-giver: and in both these relations, he was pleased to refer it to the people’s choice, whether they would or would not receive him for their God and King. The people, therefore, thus solemnly accepting him, these necessary consequences followed from the Horeb contract. First, that, as the national God and civil magistrate of the Jews centered in one and the same object, their civil policy and religion must be intimately united and incorporated. Secondly, as the two societies were thoroughly incorporated, they could not be distinguished, but must stand or fall together: consequently, the direction of all their civil laws must be for the equal preservation of both, as the renouncing him for king was the throwing him off as God, and the renouncing him for God was the throwing him off as king. There was, however, this manifest difference in the two cases, as to the effects: the renouncing of God as civil magistrate might be remedied, without a total dissolution of the constitution; not so the renouncing him as tutelary God; because, though he might and did appoint a deputy in his office of king among the Jewish tribes, yet he would have no substitute, as God, among the pagan deities: therefore of necessity, as well as of right, idolatry was punishable by the civil laws of a theocracy, it being the greatest crime that could be committed against the state, as tending by consequence to dissolve the constitution; for the one God being the supreme magistrate, it subsisted in the worship of that God. Idolatry therefore, as the renunciation of one God alone, was, in a strict philosophical as well as legal sense, the crime of lese-majeste, or high treason. Thirdly, the punishment of idolatry by law had this farther circumstance of equity, that it was punishing the rebellion of those who had chosen the government under which they lived when freely proposed to them. Hence, in the law against idolatry, Deu 17:2 the crime is with great propriety called the transgression of the COVENANT. Thus we see the law in question stands clear of the cavils of infidels, and the abuse of intolerant believers. We see that the severity used by Elijah was as justifiable as that of Phinehas, which is spoken of with great commendation, Num 25:11. Psa 106:30. We may likewise infer from this exertion of the penal laws against idolatry, that the theocracy subsisted at this time, because such laws are absolutely unjust under any other form of government.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
(40) And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.
This sentence of Elijah’s was in conformity to the law; and Ahab could not dare to deny it. See Deu_13:1-2; Deu_13:5 . But it is evident by what follows in the next chapter, that had the sentence not have been executed in the moment, while all Israel were under the impression of this solemn scene, in all probability Baal’s prophets would have escaped.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
1Ki 18:40 And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.
Ver. 40. And they took them. ] The recent miracle had made them submissive.
To the brook Kishon.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Take = seize, lay hold of.
one = a man. Hebrew. ‘Ish. App-14.
Kishon. Compare Jdg 4:13; Jdg 5:21.
slew. Hebrew idiom, caused them to be slain.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Take: or, Apprehend, 2Ki 10:25
Kishon: Jdg 5:21
slew them there: Deu 13:5, Deu 18:20, Jer 48:10, Zec 13:2, Zec 13:3, Rev 19:20, Rev 20:10
Reciprocal: Num 25:5 – Slay ye Jdg 4:7 – Kishon Jdg 6:31 – let him be 1Sa 15:33 – hewed 2Sa 21:14 – God 1Ki 18:45 – there was 1Ki 19:1 – how he had slain 2Ki 10:11 – his priests 2Ki 10:18 – Ahab served Baal 2Ki 11:18 – slew Mattan 2Ki 23:4 – Baal 2Ki 23:20 – he slew 2Ch 6:27 – send rain 2Ch 15:13 – whosoever 2Ch 23:17 – slew Mattan Psa 94:16 – rise up Psa 106:30 – General Isa 44:11 – let them all Isa 46:7 – one shall cry Jer 2:8 – prophets Jer 23:13 – prophesied Jer 48:13 – ashamed Eze 9:5 – Go
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
1Ki 18:40. Elijah said, Take the prophets of Baal He takes the opportunity of ordering the execution of these idolaters, while the peoples hearts wore warm with the fresh sense of this great miracle. And they took them For the people, in that fit of zeal wherein they now were, readily obeyed Elijahs command, and executed the sentence he pronounced. And Ahab could make no opposition, being himself also, it is likely, astonished at the stupendous miracle. And Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon That their blood might be poured into that river, and thence conveyed into the sea, and might not defile the holy land. And slew them there Or, ordered them to be slain by the people. As these idolatrous priests were manifestly under a sentence of death, passed upon such by the sovereign Lord of life and death, so Elijah had authority to execute it, being a prophet, and an extraordinary minister of Gods vengeance. The four hundred prophets of the groves, it seems, did not attend, and so escaped, which perhaps Ahab rejoiced in: but it proved, they were reserved to be the instruments of his destruction, by encouraging him to go up to Ramoth-Gilead.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
18:40 And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not {o} one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.
(o) He commanded them that as they were truly persuaded to confess the only God: so they should serve him with all their power, and destroy the idolaters his enemies.