Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Kings 19:9
And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the LORD [came] to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?
9 18. God’s revelation and direction to Elijah (Not in Chronicles)
9. unto a cave ] The Hebrew has the article, and this is represented in the LXX. by ‘the cave.’ It is very likely that by Elijah’s time tradition had fixed on a definite place as that ‘cleft of the rock’ in which Moses stood (Exo 33:22) when Jehovah passed by. If this were so the place would be deemed very sacred, and would be most appropriate to that divine explanation now to be given to Elijah. For to him was to be presented another Theophany. Some have suggested, as an explanation of the definite description, that the cave had already become a resort of pilgrims to Horeb, but for this there appears no evidence.
What doest thou here? ] An opportunity is given to Elijah to open his whole heart. The question here must have a different force from that which it bears after the manifestation of God’s presence in 1Ki 19:13. Here it must signify ‘Why art thou thus cast down?’ ‘Has thy knowledge of Jehovah gone no farther than to see Him only in works of vengeance?’
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
A cave – Rather, the cave. Some well-known cave must be intended – perhaps the cliff of the rock Exo 33:22. The traditional cave of Elijah which is shown in the secluded plain immediately below the highest summit of the Jebel Mousa, cannot, from its small size, be the real cavern.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
1Ki 19:9-12
And he came thither into a cave.
God manifesting Himself to man
We may learn three things from the passage before us.
I. God investigates the motives that govern human conduct. The word of the Lord came to him, and said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?
1. When God investigates the motives that governs human conduct He comes near to man. The word of the Lord came to Elijah.
2. When God investigates the motives that govern human conduct He interrogates man. What doest thou here, Elijah?
(1) Life is state of servitude. What doest thou? Man must serve.
(2) Life necessitates personal service. What doest thou?
(3) Life contains special spheres of service. What doest thou here?
II. Human conduct is affected by the religious life of the community. Three things affected the conduct of Elijah.
1. Gods covenant had been forsaken.
2. Gods altars had been destroyed.
3. Gods servants had been slain.
III. God controls human conduct by the most gentle agencies.
1. Great achievements are accomplished in nature by gentle agencies.
2. Great achievements are accomplished in grace by gentle agencies.
(1) God works upon the understanding by gentle agencies. The Gospel is a still small voice; but the power of God unto salvation to every one, etc.
(2) God subdues the restive will by gentle agencies. The life of Christ was a still small voice. And Christ said, And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will, etc.
(3) God renews the polluted heart by gentle agencies. The Holy Spirit is a still small voice. (Preachers Analyst.)
What doest thou here, Elijah?—
The responsibility of man as an agent
The master-thought contained in this question seems to be mans responsibility. What doest thou here? I am thy Lord and Master–thou hast no right here without consulting Me. I demand reason for thy conduct.
I. The fact that man has all the primary conditions of responsibility. Were the question put–What must any creature possess in order to render him accountable to God for his actions? Our answer would be, a threefold capability: a capability to understand, obey, and transgress the Divine will. If a creature has not the first–the power to understand what his Maker requires of him, he could not in equity be held responsible for not rendering it.
II. That man has a deep consciousness of his responsibility.
III. To the fact that society deals everywhere with men as responsible. A locomotive rolls its crushing weight over a man and kills him; a billow dashes against a frail barque and buries all on board in the mighty abyss; or a wild beast tears to pieces a human being; has society the same feelings towards that engine, that raging billow, or beast, as it has towards that man that has just murdered his brother? No, there are in the last case, as in none of the rest, popular denunciation and vengeance. It is felt that justice has been outraged, and that the destroyer is to be dealt with as a criminal. All the arrangements of society are based upon the principle that its members are responsible.
IV. To the fact that the Bible everywhere teaches it. It is implied in all its appeals to the undecided. Choose ye this day whom ye will serve. It is implied in its allegations against the sinner. Ye will not come unto Me, that ye might have life. It is implied in its representation of the judgment-day. God shall bring every idle word into judgment. Be not deceived, God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. Indeed, the very existence of the Bible implies it. (Homilist.)
A question from God
We may consider this question as addressed to the following cases:
I. To the deceiver in the cave of hypocrisy. God asks the deceiver in the cave of hypocrisy, What doest thou here? Deceiving, you say, deceiving and being deceived–deceiving whom? Not a devil; for every devil who knows the man who is a hypocrite, knows that he is a hypocrite. Whom? Not an angel; for every angel who knows the deceiver at all, knows that he is a deceiver. Not the Holy Spirit; for He strives with the man even in this his hypocrisy. Not the Saviour; for He searches the heart. Not the Father of spirits; for He has even foreknown the career of the hypocrite. Deceiving, you say, for how long? At longest only through a few brief years, and then the revelation! Deceiving, and for what? What profit is there of deception and hypocrisy? The man who openly saith, I am an atheist–I am a deist–I am a sceptic–I have no religion, is a far better man than he who, with unbelief at heart, makes a profession of Christianity. What doest thou here? saith God to the deceiver in the cave of hypocrisy.
II. God addresses this question to the notable sinner in the cave of supposed secrecy. Few notable transgressors sin openly. There is something mean about sin. You see men sneak into the haunts of vice. They go when they think that the darkness covers them. Here! God saith, here! And you a husband! Here! God saith, at the threshold of these places, and you a father! Here! God saith, and you betrothed to unpolluted virtue, and to unsuspecting love! Here! risking money that a diligent and careful father has provided for you! Here! spending the patrimony which has been left you by a devoted and loving mother! Here! Men and brethren, you talk of secrecy, there is no such thing as secrecy. It never has been; and it never can be. The notable sinner in the cave of his supposed secrecy is recognised by God, who calls to him, and speaks of him by name. What doest thou here, Elijah?
III. What doest thou here? God saith to the penitent sinner in the cave of despair. What art thou doing? Despair cannot secure pardon. Despair cannot bring peace. Despair cannot purify the heart. Despair will not pray. Despair can find no promise. And, what is more, despair, in the heart of a penitent sinner, hath neither warrant nor justification.
IV. What doest thou here? God saith to the converted man in the cave of non-confession. Here is a man walking in the counsel of the ungodly; a man standing in the way of sinners; a man sitting in the seat of the scornful. He becomes converted: but he is yoked with unbelievers; he is connected with unrighteousness–with unrighteousness in his business–unrighteousness in his recreations–unrighteousness in his connections and friendships. And God saith to him, Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing.
V. To the godly, in the cave of luxurious retirement and easy seclusion, God addresses the same question.
VI. He speaks also to the godly in the cave of misanthropy and disgust. There is a cave Adullam–an old resort for religious people, and it has been well kept up. There is such a cave near every Church of God; and thither the contented with themselves, and the discontented with everybody else, have constantly resorted. (S. Martin.)
A call to self-knowledge
Every wise master mariner wants to know at sea just where his ship is, just what his longitude and latitude are. Years ago, when I was crossing the Atlantic Ocean, we had a long spell of bad foggy weather. For several days and nights neither sun nor stars had been visible. We had been sailing by dead reckoning, and did not know where we were exactly. One night while I was on deck, there was a sudden rift in the clouds, and the North Star shone out. Word was sent ai; once to the captain, and I remember how the captain fairly laid himself across the compass, and took an observation of that star, because he wanted to know just where he was. Every wise man wants to know where he stands physically, whether he has a sound heart and sound lungs. He may find out his physical condition is not as good as he hoped, but if his physical condition is bad, he wants to know it, so that he can guard against the dangers he might plunge into. Many a man lies in the grave to-night because he had a weak heart and didnt know it. It is very important in all the affairs of this world, that we know just where we are, but it is infinitely more important that we know where we are in the affairs of eternity. (Thomas Spurgeon.)
Elijah in the cave
This strange narrative serves to illustrate the following things:–
I. The fallibility of an eminent saint. Elijah was undoubtedly an eminent saint. His teachings, miracles, prayers, and the testimony of Gods word show this. But he was not perfect, and the fact of his fleeing to the cave shows this. Why did he retire to solitude?
1. The want of success. We are not judges of success. Nor is success the right rule of life.
2. The corruptness of his times. The very reason why he of all men should be out in public life.
3. The fear of persecution.
II. The minuteness of gods providence. God knew where he was.
1. God knows everything about the individual man. Jacob at Bethel, Jonah on the sea, Moses at Midian, John in Patmos, and now Elijah in the cave.
2. God demands from individual man an account of himself. What doest thou here?
(1) Thou art a reasonable being, and must have reasons for thy conduct. What are they?
(2) Thou art a moral being, and art responsible to Me for thy conduct. Providence has to do with the most minute as well as the most vast.
III. The order of Divine procedure. This terrible manifestation came first. Then came the still small voice.
1. This is a type of Gods dispensations with the race at large. First came the terrible, and then the more pacific. Judaism is the terrible–Christianity the mild. Ye are not come to the mount that might be touched, etc.
2. This is a type of Gods dealing with His people individually. There must first come the storm, earthquake, and fire of moral conviction; and then the still small voice, etc.
IV. The force of pacific agency.
1. The pacific is most manifestly Divine. The Lord was not in the wind, etc. But He was in the still small voice. God is a God of peace. Nature shows this. Storms are exceptions. The history of Christ shows this. He did not cause His voice to be heard, etc. The influence of His Gospel shows this.
2. The pacific is most morally effective. Neither the thunders of civil law, nor the fulminations of a heartless declaimer, can touch the soul. Nothing can travel to her seat but the gentle message of the truth in love. Thy gentleness hath made me great. (Homilist.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 9. He came thither unto a cave] Conjectured by some to be the same cave in which God put Moses that he might give him a glimpse of his glory. See Ex 33:22.
What doest thou here, Elijah?] Is this a reproach for having fled from the face of Jezebel, through what some call unbelieving fears, that God would abandon him to her rage?
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
A tacit reproof. This is not thy proper place, nor the station in which I set thee, which was in Israel, to turn that backsliding people, to which end I gave thee my help, and would have proceeded to assist thee further, if thou hadst continued there. Nor did I give thee those excellent gifts to lie idle in this wilderness, but to employ them for thy peoples good, whom now thou hast deserted, and art come hither, not by my command, but through thy own fear and cowardice.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there,…. This cave, some travellers say u, is to be seen at this day, not far from a church dedicated to the prophet Elijah, and that the cave itself has the appearance of a chapel; but a more particular account of it is given in a journal w lately published, which says, this cave exists to this very day, and is situated at the foot of Mount Sinai, and is now enclosed in a church built of red and white granite marble, the entrance into which is from the west; the dimensions of this cave are in length five feet, in depth four feet, and in height four and a half. The Jewish writers are of opinion that this was the cleft of the rock in which Moses was put, when the Lord passed before him; but, if so, there would have been no need of Elijah to have gone forth to and stand upon the mount when the Lord passed by, 1Ki 19:11,
and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him; an articulate voice was heard by him:
and he said unto him, what dost thou here, Elijah? this is not a proper place for a prophet to be in, in a wilderness, in a mountain, in a cave in it: what work could he do for God? or what service to his people? in the land of Israel he might bear his testimony against idolatry, and so be a means of reclaiming backsliders, and of establishing those that were in the true religion; but of what usefulness could he be here? Abarbinel takes it to be a reproof of Elijah, for going into a place so holy as it was, and in which Moses, the chief of the prophets, had been, and that it did not become such a man as he was to be in such a place.
u Egmont and Heyman’s Travels, vol. 2. p. 166. w Journal from Cairo to Mount Sinai in 1722, p. 26. Ed. 2.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Appearance of God at Horeb. – 1Ki 19:9. When Elijah arrived at Horeb, he went into the cave (the definite article in , with the obvious connection between the appearance of God, which follows here, and that described in Exo 33:12., points back to the cleft in the rock, ) in which Moses had stood while the glory of Jehovah passed by (see at Exo 33:22), and there he passed the night. And behold the word of the Lord came to him (in the night): “What doest thou here, Elijah?” This question did not involve a reproof, as though Elijah had nothing to do there, but was simply intended to lead him to give utterance to the thoughts and feelings of his heart.
1Ki 19:10 Elijah answered: “I have striven zealously for Jehovah the God of hosts, for the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, destroyed Thine altars, and killed Thy prophets with the sword; and I only am left, and they seek my life.” In these words there was not only the greatest despair expressed as to the existing condition of things, but also a carnal zeal which would gladly have called down the immediate vengeance of the Almighty upon all idolaters. The complaint contained, on the one hand, the tacit reproof that God had looked on quietly for so long a time at the conduct of the ungodly, and had suffered things to come to such an extremity, that he, His prophet, was the only one left of all the true worshippers of God, and, on the other hand, the indirect appeal that He would interpose at last with His penal judgments. Because Elijah had not seen the expected salutary fruits of his zeal for the Lord, he thought that all was lost, and in his gloomy state of mind overlooked what he had seen a short time before with his own eyes, that even in the neighbourhood of the king himself there lived a pious and faithful worshipper of Jehovah, viz., Obadiah, who had concealed a hundred prophets from the revenge of Jezebel, and that the whole of the people assembled upon Carmel had given glory to the Lord, and at his command had seized the prophets of Baal and put them to death, and therefore that the true worshippers of the Lord could not all have vanished out of Israel. recalls to mind the zeal of Phinehas (Num 25:11.), which put an end to the whoredom of the sons of Israel with the daughters of Moab. But whereas Phinehas received the promise of an everlasting priesthood for his zeal, Elijah had seen so little fruit from his zeal against the worshippers of Baal, that they actually sought his life. are altars, which pious Israelites in the kingdom of the ten tribes had built in different places for the worship of Jehovah (see at 1Ki 18:30).
1Ki 19:11 The Lord replied to the prophet’s complaint first of all by the manifestation of His control of the phenomena of nature (1Ki 19:11-13), and then by a verbal explanation of His design (1Ki 19:15-18).
In this divine revelation men have recognised from the very earliest times a repetition of the appearance of God which was granted to Moses upon Sinai. As God, in token of His grace, granted the prayer of Moses that he might see His glory, after he had striven zealously for the honour of the Lord when the people rebelled by worshipping the golden calf; so did He also display His glory upon Horeb to Elijah as a second Moses for the purpose of strengthening his faith, with this simple difference, that He made all His goodness pass by Moses, and declared His name in the words, “Jehovah, a gracious and merciful God,” etc. (Exo 34:6-7), whereas He caused Elijah first of all to behold the operation of His grace in certain phenomena of nature, and then afterwards made known to him His will with regard to Israel and to the work of His prophets. This difference in the form of the revelation, while the substance and design were essentially the same, may be explained from the difference not only in the historical circumstances, but also in the state of mind of the two servants to whom He manifested His glory. In the case of Moses it was burning love for the welfare of his people which impelled him to offer the prayer that the Lord would let him see His glory, as a sign that He would not forsake His people; and this prayer was granted him, so far as a man is ever able to see the glory of God, to strengthen him for the further discharge of the duties of his office. Hidden in the cleft of the rock and shielded by the hand of God, he saw the Lord pass by him, and heard Him utter in words His inmost being. Elijah, on the other hand, in his zeal for the honour of God, which was not quite free from human passion, had been led by the want of any visible fruit from his own labour to overlook the work of the Lord in the midst of His people; so that he had fled into the desert and wished to be released from this world by death, and had not been brought out of his despair by the strengthening with meat and drink which he had received from the angel, and which enabled him to travel for forty days to the mount of God without suffering from want, a fact which was intended to remind him of the ancient God of the fathers, to whose omnipotence and goodness there is no end; so that it was in a most gloomy state of mind that he reached Horeb at last. And now the Lord designed not only to manifest His glory as the love in which grace and righteousness are united, but also to show him that his zeal for the honour of the Lord was not in harmony with the love and grace and long-suffering of God. “The design of the vision was to show to the fiery zeal of the prophet, who wanted to reform everything by means of the tempest, the gentle way which God pursues, and to proclaim the long-suffering and mildness of His nature, as the voice had already done to Moses on that very spot; hence the beautiful change in the divine appearance” (Herder, Geist der hebr. Poesie, 1788, ii. p. 52).
1Ki 19:12 After God had commanded him to come out of the cave and stand upon the mountain (that part of the mountain which was in front of the cave) before Him, “behold Jehovah went by (the participle is used to give a more vivid representation of the scene); and a great and strong tempest, rending mountains and breaking rocks in pieces, before Jehovah – it was not in the tempest that Jehovah was; and after the tempest an earthquake – it was not in the earthquake that Jehovah was; and after the earthquake fire – it was not in the fire that Jehovah was; and after the fire a still, gentle rustling.” , literally the tone of a gentle blowing. On the change of gender in , see Ewald, 174 , e. – Tempest, earthquake, and fire, which are even more terrible in the awful solitude of the Horeb mountains than in an inhabited land, are signs of the coming of the Lord to judgment (cf. Psa 18:8.). It was in the midst of such terrible phenomena that the Lord had once come down upon Sinai, to inspire the people who were assembled at the foot of the mountain with a salutary dread of His terrible majesty, of the fiery zeal of His wrath and love, which consumes whatever opposes it (see at Exo 19:16.). but now the lord was not in these terrible phenomena; to signify to the prophet that He did not work in His earthly kingdom with the destroying zeal of wrath, or with the pitiless severity of judgment. It was in a soft, gentle rustling that He revealed Himself to him.
1Ki 19:13-17 When Elijah heard this, he covered up his face in his cloak ( ; see at 2Ki 1:8) and went out to the entrance to the cave. And behold he heard the question a second time, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” and answered with a repetition of his complain (see 1Ki 19:9, 1Ki 19:10). – While the appearance of God, not in the tempest, the earthquake, and the fire, but in a gentle rustling, revealed the Lord to him as a merciful and gracious God, long-suffering, and of great goodness and truth (Exo 34:6), the answer to his complaint showed him that He did not leave guilt unpunished (Exo 34:7), since the Lord gave him the following command, 1Ki 19:15.: “Go back in thy way to the desert of Damascus, and anoint Hazael king over Aram (see 2Ki 8:12-13), and Jehu the son of Nimshi king over Israel (see 2Ki 9:2), and Elisha the son of Shaphat prophet in thy stead” (see 1Ki 19:19); and then added this promise, which must have quieted his zeal, that was praiseworthy in the feelings from which it sprang, although it had assumed too passionate a form, and have given him courage to continue his prophetic work: “And it will come to pass, that however escapeth the sword of Hazael, him will Jehu slay, and whoever escapeth the sword of Jehu, him will Elisha slay.”
1Ki 19:18 But in order that he might learn, to his shame, that the cause of the Lord in Israel appeared much more desperate to his eye, which was clouded by his own dissatisfaction, than it really was in the eye of the God who knows His own by number and by name, the Lord added: “I have seven thousand left in Israel, all knees that have not bent before Baal, and every mouth that hath not kissed him.” , into the desert of Damascus (with the He loc. with the construct state as in Deu 4:41; Jos 12:1, etc.; cf. Ewald, 216, b.), i.e., the desert lying to the south and east of the city of Damascus, which is situated on the river Barady; not per desertum in Damascum (Vulg., Luth., etc.); for although Elijah would necessarily pass through the Arabian desert to go from Horeb to Damascus, it was superfluous to tell him that he was to go that way, as there was no other road. The words “return by thy way … and anoint Hazael,” etc., are not to be understood as signifying that Elijah was to go at once to Damascus and anoint Hazael there, but simply that he was to do this at a time which the Spirit would more precisely indicate. According to what follows, all that Elijah accomplished immediately was to call Elisha to be his successor; whereas the other two commissions were fulfilled by Elisha after Elijah’s ascension to heaven (2 Kings 8 and 9). The opinion that Elijah also anointed Hazael and Jehu immediately, but that this anointing was kept secret, and was repeated by Elisha when the time for their public appearance arrived, has not only very little probability in itself, but is directly precluded by the account of the anointing of Jehu in 2 Kings 9. The anointing of Hazael and Jehu is mentioned first, because God had chosen these two kings to be the chief instruments of His judgments upon the royal family and people for their idolatry. It was only in the case of Jehu that a real anointing took place (2Ki 9:6); Hazael was merely told by Elisha that he would be king (2Ki 8:13), and Elisha was simply called by Elijah to the prophetic office by having the cloak of the latter thrown upon him. Moreover, the Messianic passage, Isa 61:1, is the only one in which there is any allusion to the anointing of a prophet. Consequently must be taken figuratively here as in Jdg 9:8, as denoting divine consecration to the regal and prophetic offices. And so, again, the statement that Elisha would slay those who escaped the sword of Jehu is not to be understood literally. Elisha slew by the word of the Lord, which brought judgments upon the ungodly, as we see from 2Ki 2:24 (cf. Jer 1:10; Jer 18:7). The “seven thousand,” who had not bowed the knee before Baal, are a round number for the of the godly, whom the Lord had preserved for Himself in the sinful kingdom, which was really very large in itself, however small it might be in comparison with the whole nation. The number seven is the stamp of the works of God, so that seven thousand is the number of the “remnant according to the election of grace” (Rom 11:5), which had then been preserved by God. Kissing Baal was the most usual form in which this idol was worshipped, and consisted not merely in throwing kisses with the hand (cf. Job 31:27, and Plin. h. n. 28, 8), but also in kissing the images of Baal, probably on the feet (cf. Cicero in Verr. 4, 43).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Elijah’s Converse with God. | B. C. 906. |
9 And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah? 10 And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away. 11 And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake: 12 And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. 13 And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah? 14 And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away. 15 And the LORD said unto him, Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus: and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be king over Syria: 16 And Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel: and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room. 17 And it shall come to pass, that him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay: and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay. 18 Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.
Here is, I. Elijah housed in a cave at Mount Horeb, which is called the mount of God, because on it God had formerly manifested his glory. And perhaps this was the same cave, or cleft of a rock, in which Moses was hidden when the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed his name, Exod. xxxiii. 22. What Elijah proposed to himself in coming to lodge here, I cannot conceive, unless it was to indulge his melancholy, or to satisfy his curiosity and assist his faith and devotion with the sight of that famous place where the law was given and where so many great things were done, and hoping to meet with God himself there, where Moses met with him, or in token of his abandoning his people Israel, who hated to be reformed (in the latter case, it agrees with Jeremiah’s wish, Jer. ix. 2, O that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people, and go from them, for they are all adulterers) and so it was a bad omen of God’s forsaking them; or it was because the thought he could not be safe any where else, and to this instance of the hardships this good man was reduced to the apostle refers, Heb. xi. 38. They wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
II. The visit God paid to him there and the enquiry he made concerning him: The word of the Lord came to him. We cannot go any where to be out of the reach of God’s eye, his arm, and his word. Whither can I flee from thy Spirit? Ps. cxxxix. 7, c. God will take care of his out-casts and those who, for his sake, are driven out from among men, he will find, and own, and gather with everlasting loving-kindnesses. John saw the visions of the Almighty when he was in banishment in the isle of Patmos, Rev. i. 9. The question God puts to the prophet it, What doest thou here, Elijah? v. 9, and again v. 13. This is a reproof, 1. For his fleeing hither. “What brings thee so far from home? Dost thou flee from Jezebel? Couldst thou not depend upon almighty power for thy protection?” Lay the emphasis upon the pronoun thou. “What thou! So great a man, so great a prophet, so famed for resolution–dost thou flee thy country, forsake thy colours thus?” This cowardice would have been more excusable in another, and not so bad an example. Should such a man as I flee? Neh. vi. 11. Howl, fir-trees, if the cedars be thus shaken. 2. For his fixing here. “What doest thou here, in this cave? Is this a place for a prophet of the Lord to lodge in? Is this a time for such men to retreat, when the public has such need of them?” In the retirement to which God sent Elijah (ch. xvii.) he was a blessing to a poor widow at Sarepta, but here he had no opportunity of doing good. Note, It concerns us often to enquire whether we be in our place and in the way of our duty. “Am I where I should be, whither God calls me, where my business lies, and where I may be useful?”
III. The account he gives of himself, in answer to the question put to him (v. 10), and repeated, in answer to the same question, v. 14.
1. He excuses his retreat, and desires it may not be imputed to his want of zeal for reformation, but to his despair of success. For God knew, and his own conscience witnessed for him, that as long as there was any hope of doing good he had been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts; but now that he had laboured in vain, and all his endeavours were to no purpose, he thought it was time to give up the cause, and mourn for what he could not mend. Abi in cellam, et dic, Miserere mei–“Away to thy cell, and cry, Have compassion on me.“
2. He complains of the people, their obstinacy in sin, and the height of impiety to which they had arrived: “The children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, and that is the reason I have forsaken them; who can stay among them, to see every thing that is sacred ruined and run down?” This the apostle calls his making intercession against Israel,Rom 11:2; Rom 11:3. He had often been, of choice, their advocate, but now he is necessitated to be their accuser, before God. Thus John v. 45, There is one that accuseth you, even Moses, whom you trust. Those are truly miserable that have the testimony and prayers of God’s prophets against them. (1.) He charges them with having forsaken God’s covenant; though they retained circumcision, that sign and seal of it, yet they had quitted his worship and service, which was the intention of it. Those who neglect God’s ordinances, and let fall their communion with him, do really forsake his covenant, and break their league with him. (2.) With having thrown down his altars, not only deserted them and suffered them to go to decay, but, in their zeal for the worship of Baal, wilfully demolished them. This alludes to the private altars which the prophets of the Lord had, and which good people attended, who could not go up to Jerusalem and would not worship the calves nor Baal. These separate altars, though breaking in upon the unity of the church, yet, being erected and attended by those that sincerely aimed at the glory of God and served him faithfully, the seeming schism was excused. God owned them for his altars, as well as that at Jerusalem, and the putting of them down is charged upon Israel as a crying sin. But this was not all. (3.) They have slain thy prophets with the sword, who, it is probable, ministered at those altars. Jezebel, a foreigner, slew them (ch. xviii. 4), but the crime is charged upon the body of the people because the generality of them were consenting to their death, and pleased with it.
3. He gives the reasons why he retired into this desert and took up his residence in this cave. (1.) It was because he could not appear to any purpose: “I only am left, and have none to second or support me in any good design. They all said, The Lord he is God, but none of them would stand by me nor offer to shelter me. That point then gained was presently lost again, and Jezebel can do more to debauch them than I can to reform them. What can one do against thousands?” Despair of success hinders many a good enterprise. No one is willing to venture alone, forgetting that those are not alone who have God with them. (2.) It was because he could not appear with any safety: “They seek my life to take it away; and I had better spend my life in a useless solitude than lose my life in a fruitless endeavour to reform those that hate to be reformed.”
IV. God’s manifestation of himself to him. Did he come hither to meet with God? He shall find that God will not fail to give him the meeting. Moses was put into the cave when God’s glory passed before him; but Elijah was called out of it: Stand upon the mount before the Lord, v. 11. He saw no manner of similitude, any more than Israel did when God talked to them in Horeb. But, 1. He heard a strong wind, and saw the terrible effects of it, for it rent the mountains and tore the rocks. Thus was the trumpet sounded before the Judge of heaven and earth, by his angels, whom he makes spirits, or winds (Ps. civ. 4), sounded so loud that the earth not only rang, but rent again. 2. He felt the shock of an earthquake. 3. He saw an eruption of fire, v. 12. These were to usher in the designed manifestation of the divine glory, angels being employed in them, whom he maketh a flame of fire, and who, as his ministers, march before him, to prepare in this desert a highway for our God. But, 4. At last he perceived a still small voice, in which the Lord was, that is, by which he spoke to him, and not out of the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire. Those struck an awe upon him, awakened his attention, and inspired humility and reverence; but God chose to make known his mind to him in whispers soft, not in those dreadful sounds. When he perceived this, (1.) He wrapped hi face in his mantle, as one afraid to look upon the glory of God, and apprehensive that it would dazzle his eyes and overcome him. The angels cover their faces before God in token of reverence, Isa. vi. 2. Elijah hid his face in token of shame for having been such a coward as to flee from his duty when he had such a God of power to stand by him in it. The wind, and earthquake, and fire, did not make him cover his face, but the still voice did. Gracious souls are more affected by the tender mercies of the Lord than by his terrors. (2.) He stood at the entrance of the cave, ready to hear what God had to say to him. This method of God’s manifesting himself here at Mount Horeb seems to refer to the discoveries God formerly made of himself at this place to Moses. [1.] Then there was a tempest, an earthquake, and fire (Heb. xii. 18); but, when God would show Moses his glory, he proclaimed his goodness; and so here: He was, the Word was, in the still small voice. [2.] Then the law was thus given to Israel, with the appearances of terror first and then with a voice of words; and Elijah being now called to revive that law, especially the first two commandments of it, is here taught how to manage it; he must not only awaken and terrify the people with amazing signs, like the earthquake and fire, but he must endeavour, with a still small voice, to convince and persuade them, and not forsake them when he should be addressing them. Faith comes by hearing the word of God; miracles do but make way for it. [3.] Then God spoke to his people with terror; but in the gospel of Christ, which was to be introduced by the spirit and power of Elias, he would speak by a still small voice, the dread of which should not make us afraid; see Heb. xii. 18, c.
V. The orders God gives him to execute. He repeats the question he had put to him before, “What doest thou here? This is not a place for thee now.” Elijah gives the same answer (<i>v. 14), complaining of Israel’s apostasy from God and the ruin of religion among them. To this God gives him a reply. When he wished he might die (v. 4) God answered him not according to his folly, but was so far from letting him die that he not only kept him alive then but provided that he should never die, but be translated. But when he complained of his discouragement (and whither should God’s prophets go with their complaints of that kind but to their Master?) God gave him an answer. He sends him back with directions to appoint Hazael king of Syria (v. 15), Jehu king of Israel, and Elisha his successor in the eminency of the prophetical office (v. 16), which is intended as a prediction that by these God would chastise the degenerate Israelites, plead his own cause among them, and avenge the quarrel of his covenant, v. 17. Elijah complained that the wickedness of Israel was unpunished. The judgment of famine was too gentle, and had not reclaimed them; it was removed before they were reformed: “I have been jealous,” says he, “for God’s name, but he himself has not appeared jealous for it.” “Well,” says God, “be content; it is all in good time; judgments are prepared for those scorners, though they are not yet inflicted; the persons are pitched upon, and shall now be nominated, for they are now in being, who shall do the business.” 1. “When Hazael comes to be king of Syria, he shall make bloody work among the people (2 Kings viii. 12) and so correct them for their idolatry.” 2. “When Jehu comes to be king of Israel he shall make bloody work with the royal family, and shall utterly destroy the house of Ahab, that set up and maintained idolatry.” 3. “Elisha, while thou art on earth, shall strengthen thy hands; and, when thou art gone, shall carry on thy work, and be a remaining witness against the apostasy of Israel, and even he shall slay the children of Bethel, that idolatrous city.” Note, The wicked are reserved to judgment. Evil pursues sinners, and there is no escaping it; to attempt an escape is but to run from one sword’s point upon another. See Jer. xlviii. 44, He that flees from the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that gets up out of the pit shall be taken in the snare. Elisha, with the sword of the Spirit, shall terrify and wound the consciences of those who escape Hazael’s sword of war and Jehu’s sword of justice. With the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked,Isa 11:4; 2Th 2:8; Hos 6:5. It is a great comfort to good men and good ministers to think that God will never want instruments to do his work in his time, but, when they are gone, others shall be raised up to carry it on.
VI. The comfortable information God gives him of the number of Israelites who retained their integrity, though he thought he was left alone (v. 18): I have left 7000 in Israel (besides Judea) who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Note, 1. In times of the greatest degeneracy and apostasy God has always had, and will have, a remnant faithful to him, some that keep their integrity and do not go down the stream. The apostle mentions this answer of God to Elijah (Rom. xi. 4) and applies it to his own day, when the Jews generally rejected the gospel. Yet, says he, at this time also there is a remnant, v. 5. 2. It is God’s work to preserve that remnant, and distinguish them from the rest, for without his grace they could not have distinguished themselves: I have left me; it is therefore said to be a remnant according to the election of grace. 3. It is but a little remnant, in comparison with the degenerate race; what are 7000 to the thousands of Israel? Yet, when those of every age come together, they will be found many more, 12,000 sealed out of each tribe, Rev. vii. 4. 4. God’s faithful ones are often his hidden ones (Ps. lxxxiii. 3), and the visible church is scarcely visible, the wheat lost in the chaff and the gold in the dross, till the sifting, refining, separating day comes. 5. The Lord knows those that are his, though we do not; he sees in secret. 6. There are more good people in the world than some wise and holy men think there are. Their jealousy of themselves, and for God, makes them think the corruption is universal; but God sees not as they do. When we come to heaven, as we shall miss a great many whom we thought to meet there, so we shall meet a great many whom we little thought to find there. God’s love often proves larger than man’s charity and more extensive.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
God Speaks, Verse 9-18
When Elijah had arrived at Horeb he found a cave and lived in it. It seems that he wished to be alone with his thoughts, perhaps to commune with the Lord. He felt justified in running away from his troubles, from his ministry in the land of Israel. How like many ministers of the gospel who find it hard to cope, when multiple trials come upon them. There come times when it seems impossible to persevere and men seek to justify their resignation from responsibility (Job 17:9).
The Lord soon called Elijah to an accounting, however, and he was compelled to evaluate his feeling further. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” he asked. And Elijah appears to have prepared answer, giving it in three steps: first, he had been most jealous for the Lord God of hosts in the land of Israel, and had contended for Him in jeopardy of his life; second, Israel had forsaken the covenant of the Lord, demonstrating it by destruction of the Lord’s altars and slaughter of His prophets; third, only Elijah stood as the lone representative of the Lord in all the northern kingdom of Israel, and Jezebel was seeking for him to put him to death.
The Lord sent Elijah outside the cave, where he could observe the mountain and learn a lesson from the Lord. There the Lord passed by Elijah, followed by a mighty storm on the mountain, which rent the mountain and broke the rocks and scattered them. Yet the Lord was not in the storm and wind. After this there came an earthquake which shook the ground where Elijah stood, but it was obvious that the Lord was not in the earthquake. Finally, there was a fire which ravaged the mountain, but the Lord was not in the fire. The Lord had passed by and had permitted these things, but they were not of Him. The prince of the world, the prince of the power of the air, had stirred up the elements and caused a great tumult and turmoil on the mountain. It was not the Lord who had done these things.
But, then there was a still small voice. Elijah recognized it as different, so he covered his face with his mantle and stood in the cave’s mouth to see what the voice would say to him. The same question was repeated, for Elijah had not properly considered it, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Was he not there out of a self-pity, despondency of the flesh, resisting the call of the Lord? But he gave his prepared answer again. He had worked hard for the Lord, but Israel had rejected the Lord altogether, and sought to exterminate him that there might be no testimony whatever for God in Israel. Elijah had weathered mighty storms in his ministry, in earth-shaking events he had remained steadfast, and he had withstood the fires of spiritual ravishment. But the Lord had not brought these on Israel. He was not in them. They had occurred because the Lord had been rejected, and Israel had brought their calamities upon themselves. All the while, however, God was in reach, and those who listened could hear His still small voice to comfort and guide them in every upheaval of Satan (1Co 10:13).
Elijah’s ministry was not over. There is much work yet for him before he departs the scene. The Lord sent him back into the storm, earthquake, and fire to prepare for the ultimate trial of Israel. Three men were to be anointed for the purpose. He was to depart by way of the wilderness of Damascus and there anoint Hazael, the king’s trusted counselor, to be king instead of his lord, Ben-hadad. From here he should proceed to Israel and anoint Jehu, the famous captain of Ahab’s chariots, to be the new king of Israel. Finally he should go to Abel-meholah and anoint the wealthy young farmer, Elisha, to be prophet in his own stead.
These three men God would use for the ultimate judgment of the house of Ahab All who escaped Hazael would be slain by Jehu, and those missed by Jehu would be answerable to Elisha. For the better feeling of the distraught Elijah the Lord also informed him that he was not alone in the worship of the Lord in the kingdom of Israel, for there were seven thousand souls who had never bowed to Baal, nor kissed his image. This last statement (verse 18) was quoted by Paul in Rom 11:4, where he uses the condition of Israel in Elijah’s day to illustrate Jewish unbelief in his own time. Yet as there was a small remnant who remained faithful then, so there would be a believing remnant in the last days, the Gentile age.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
B. ELIJAHS REASSURANCE FROM GOD 19:918
TRANSLATION
(9) And he came there unto the cave, and lodged there. And behold the word of the LORD came unto him, and He said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? (10) And he said, I am very zealous for the LORD God of hosts, for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant. Your altars they have overthrown, and Your prophets they have slain with the sword; and I alone am left, and they seek my life to take it. (11) And He said, Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, and behold the LORD will pass by. And a great and strong wind ripped the mountains and brake the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake. (12) And after the earthquake, a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire a still small voice. (13) And it came to pass when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold a voice came unto him and said, What are you doing here Elijah? (14) And he said, I am very zealous for the LORD God of hosts, for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant. Your altars they have torn down, and Your prophets they have slam with the sword; and I alone am left, and they seek my life to take it. (15) And the LORD said unto him, Go, return to your way, to the wilderness of Damascus; and you shall go and anoint Hazael king over Aram. (16) Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint king over Israel; and Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah you shall anoint to be prophet in your place. (17) And it shall come to pass that the one who escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall slay; and the one who escapes the sword of Hazael, Elisha shall slay. (18) And I have left in Israel seven thousand, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and whose mouths have not kissed him.
COMMENTS
At Horeb Elijah took up residence in a cave.[444] There the word of the Lord came to him in the form of a question designed at once to reprove Elijah and to make him analyze his situation. The prophet had been strengthened by Gods grace to be brought to this mountain to learn some very important spiritual lessons. At every other point in the ministry of this man, the Lord had been sending him to his destinations. But Elijah had left Jezreel without such a word, had left in fear and distrust of God, and thus the question, What are you doing here? implies that he had deserted the post of duty and had no right to be there.
[444] The Hebrew reads the cave. Montgomery (ICC, p. 317) takes this to be a generic article (i.e., the cave region). Gray (OTL, p. 409) feels the article points to a particular cave, possibly that from which Moses saw the back of Yahweh (Exo. 33:21 ff.).
Elijah did not accept censure without some self-justification. In the face of the terrible apostasy in Israel, Elijah had been very zealous[445] for the Lord God of hosts.[446] The children of Israel had broken the covenant with God, thrown down His altars (like the one repaired by Elijah on Carmel), and had slain His prophets. Yet Elijah had stood firm and, so it seemed to his despondent mind, had stood alone. Now Elijahs own life was in jeopardy even though he had won a mighty victory on Carmel. In the words of 1Ki. 19:10, there is tacit reproof of God. Why had God looked upon the deterioration in the Northern Kingdom for so long without divine intervention? Elijah resented the growing corruption of the age and the frustration of his efforts to reverse it. Here is the old cry found throughout the Old Testament, the complaint that God is silent and indifferent, that the righteous are persecuted while the wicked prosper.
[445] The Hebrew word qana is used of the enthusiasm of exclusive devotion; fanatical intolerance. See Gray, OTL, p. 409.
[446] This title for God, here used for the first time by Elijah, is very appropriate in view of the deification of the heavenly hosts in Canaanite religion.
If Elijah thought his depression and his desertion of the field of battle was justified, he was mistaken. He was about to experience a theophany, a manifestation of the power and presence of God, through which he would learn a very important lesson. The voice of God instructed the prophet to stand at the entrance of the cave. Though the text is not explicit at this point, it would appear that Elijah obeyed those instructions. As soon as he stepped from the cave, the prophet was confronted with a veritable tempest which ripped rocks loose from the mountain and sent them crashing down the side of the mountain. But the Lord was not in the wind. Then on the heels of the tempest came a fearsome earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake either (1Ki. 19:11). After the earthquake came fireperhaps a thunderstorm with bolts of lightning the likes of which the prophet never had seen before. But the Lord was not in the fire.[447] Then came the still small voice (lit., a sound of gentle silence), and the prophet knew he was standing in the presence of God (1Ki. 19:12). Wrapping his sheepskin mantle about his face lest he look upon God, Elijah stepped forth from his cave into which apparently he retreated during the manifestations of divine power.[448]
[447] Yahwehs spectacular and supernatural interventions into history are celebrated in many Psalms. These interventions were often accompanied by storm, earthquake and fire (e.g., Psa. 18:12; Psa. 68:8).
[448] Others think that Elijah did not obey the instructions to go forth from the cave (1Ki. 19:11) until he heard the still small voice. The tempest, earthquake and fire came immediately after the instruction to go forth and thus prevented Elijah from complying with that command.
What was the purpose of the succession of signs on Horeb? God was showing the prophet of deeds that while the spectacular and dramatic have their place in Gods order of things, most often the divine program is carried out through the still small voice which speaks to the hearts of men. While God is the God of judgment, He is also the God of mercy and grace. Elijah needed to be reminded of that fact. He needed to see that the time of fire, sword and slaughter had passed, and it was now time to proclaim the word of the Lord in gentle silence. The still small voice of protest would become in the course of time a powerful force; it must not be allowed to die! A successor must be chosen to carry on the work.
Again the prophet heard the voice of God raising the same embarrassing question which was asked in 1Ki. 19:9 : What are you doing here, Elijah? (1Ki. 19:13). Elijahs answer was the same at least as far as the words are concerned, for he repeated verbatim the answer he had given God in 1Ki. 19:10. But it is possible and indeed probable that the tone of his answer changed in 1Ki. 19:14. Formerly defiant, loud and belligerent, he now spoke with the still small voice, the voice of self-abasement. The facts had not changed. He knew of no other way to respond to the divine query. But perhaps now he had reservations about his course of conduct. Elijah had thought that he knew best how Gods work should be done. The theophany taught him that he had a faulty understanding of Gods goals and methods. That Elijah had indeed repented is indicated by the fact that he was given a new commission.
Gods commission for Elijah involved three actions. First, he was told to go to the desert region which stretches south and east of Damascus and there anoint Hazael king of Aram (1Ki. 19:15). Since Israel was at that time at war with Aram (chap. 20), the Syrian desert would serve as a refuge from hostilities. Also he would be near Hazael the Aramean officer he was instructed to anoint. Secondly, he was to anoint Jehu king of Israel. Finally, he was to anoint his own successor, Elisha[449] of Abel-meholah, a town of the Jordan valley a short distance from Beth-shean (1Ki. 19:16). The fact that Elishas hometown is mentioned suggests that Elijah had not heretofore known the man. Elijahs work had not been fruitless; nor had it come to an end, for here provision was being made for his successor.
[449] The name Elisha (God is salvation) has been found on a seal found in Amman dating from about the seventh century B.C. See Gray, OTL, p. 412.
The commission given to Elijah has long been a crux interpretum, for neither Hazael nor Jehu nor Elisha, so far as the records go, was ever anointed by Elijah. Elisha was called by Elijah, but the Scriptures are silent about any anointing. Jehu was anointed, but by one of the sons of the prophets under orders from Elisha. Hazael was called in an indirect way by Elisha (2Ki. 8:12-15), but again no anointing is mentioned. Two problems, then, exist in reference to the instructions given to Elijah: (1) In two cases no anointing, it would appear, took place; and (2) in only one case was Elijah personally involved.
In regard to the problem of the lack of anointing of Elisha and Hazael, the following might be said: The word anoint (mashach) may have in this passage the more general sense of appoint. That the basic idea of anointing was setting apart can be seen in the anointing of Aaron (Exo. 29:7) and the Tabernacle (Exo. 30:26 ff.).[450] Perhaps later, because of the association of anointing and coronation, the word came to signify any act which would lead directly or indirectly to the induction into office.[451] The term anoint in Elijahs commission may simply mean that he was to make the three individualsElisha, Jehu, Hazaelaware of their divinely appointed destiny so that they might take appropriate action to fulfill that destiny.
[450] Cf. Jdg. 9:8 and Isa. 61:1.
[451] Honor, JCBR, p. 277.
But why did Elijah himself fail to carry out the commission to anoint Jehu and Hazael? Two suggestions can be made. (1) Since Elisha was the official successor of Elijah, the you of the commission, though singular, might include both men. The work assigned to the one might legitimately be carried out by his official successor. (2) But it is also possible that the key to the problem is to be found in the repentance of Ahab recorded in 1Ki. 21:29. God honored the repentance of Ahab by temporarily postponing the judgment against his house (which would be executed by Jehu) and the judgment against Israel (which would be executed by Hazael). Elijah was translated before the divinely authorized grace period came to an end. Of necessity, then, the commission had to be carried out by Elisha.
Hazael, Jehu and Elisha would be Gods agents of judgment upon apostate Israel.[452] Jehu would slay those who escaped the sword of Hazael; Elisha, by the sword of the spirit, would slay those who escaped the physical judgment of Jehu (1Ki. 19:17). Hazael and Jehu were destined to create in Israel tumultuous upheavals not unlike that created by the tempest, earthquake and fire outside Elijahs Horeb hideaway. But it would be the preaching and teaching of Elishathe sword of the word of Godthat would constrain men to humble themselves before the Lord. Rightly understood, the commission to Elijah is a concrete application of the great spiritual lesson which he learned through the theophany at Horeb.
[452] The notion that God would use the armies of a foreign power, Aram, to chastise His people is a concept which characterizes all the later prophets of God.
In 1Ki. 19:15-18 God answers the complaint which Elijah had twice raised before Him (cf. 1Ki. 19:10; 1Ki. 19:14). The sword of Hazael would punish the children of Israel who had forsaken the covenant (cf. 2Ki. 8:12); the king and queen who had thrown down the altars and slain the prophets would be killed, one by Hazael on the field of battle, the other at the command of Jehu. Sword of Hazael, sword of Jehu, and shall Elisha slay are to be taken largely as symbolic expressions implying that bold action would be taken against the ruling house and the religion which it fostered. Civil war appears to be the only means by which Baalism could be obliterated in the North. Elijahs allegation that he alone had remained faithful to the Lord is partially countered by the command to anoint Elisha as his successor, and totally countered by the revelation that there were seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal. This figure is not only a round number, but a symbolic one as well. The still small voice had been at work in Israel; a faithful remnant was still to be found (cf. Rom. 11:5) which had not bowed the knee nor kissed the image of Baal[453] (cf. Job. 31:26-27; Hos. 13:2).
[453] Perhaps the reference is to kissing the hand toward the idol which was a widespread custom in the ancient world. See Honor, BCJR, p. 279.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(9) A cave.This is properly, the caveperhaps a reference to some cave already well known, as connected with the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, or perhaps only an anticipatory reference to the cave which Elijahs sojourn was to make famous.
The word of the Lord came to him.The connection suggests that this message came to him in vision or dream at night. The LXX. implies this distinctly by inserting in 1Ki. 19:11 the word to-morrow, which is also found in the rather vague and prosaic paraphrase of the passage in Josephus. What Elijah replies in imagination in the vision, he repeats next day in actual words.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
9. Unto a cave Hebrew, unto the cave. “There is nothing to confirm, but there is nothing to contradict, the belief [of the Arabs] that it may have been in that secluded basin which has long been pointed out as the spot, beneath the summit of what is called ‘the Mount of Moses.’ The granite rocks enclose it on every side, as though it were a natural sanctuary. No scene could have been more suitable for the vision which follows.” Stanley.
What doest thou here, Elijah Literally, What is to thee here?
That is, what is thy business here? Why hast thou left Israel, to whom I sent thee, and come to these mountains? How these words remind one of the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden of Eden and crying among the trees, “Adam, where art thou?” Gen 3:8-9. It is, wherever uttered, the voice of the Spirit that convinces and reproves the world of sin, and of the love that chastens to reform.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Elijah Receives the Lord’s Commission
v. 9. And he came thither, v. 10. And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts, v. 11. And He, v. 12. and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a. still, small voice. v. 13. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, v. 14. And he said, v. 15. And the Lord said unto him, v. 16. and Jehu, the son of Nimshl, shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel; and Elisha, the son of Shaphat, of Abel-meholah, shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room. v. 17. And it shall come to pass that him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay, and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay. v. 18. Yet I have left Me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him; v. 19. So he, v. 20. And he, v. 21. And he returned back from him, and took a yoke of oxen,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
1Ki 19:9-14. He came thither unto a cave, &c. Elijah being now come to the same place where God had delivered the law to his servant Moses, God was inclined to communicate the like favour to his prophet; namely, to unveil his glory to him, and to give him some signal of his actual presence. Various are the speculations which this appearance of the Deity has suggested to interpreters. The greater part have considered it as a figure of the Gospel dispensation, which came not in such a terrible manner as the law did, with thunders and lightnings and earthquakes, but with great lenity and sweetness; wherein he speaks to us by his Son, who makes use of no other than gentle arts and soft persuasions.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
(9) And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?
Some have thought that this was the very spot in which Moses was placed when the Lord showed him his glory. If so, how sweet a token of the presence of Jesus. For Jesus is all the goodness of Jehovah passing by, considered in redemption. So thought the church when she said: Oh! my dove, that art in the clefts of the rocks, in the secret places of the stairs; let me see thy countenance: let me hear thy voice. Son 2:14 . But the word of the Lord came to him also similar to the voice which spake to Adam in the garden; Adam! where art thou? What doest thou here, Elijah? However solemn and alarming to both, and though speaking in a way of demand, yet to both the words were alike full of grace and mercy. Reader! do remark from the enquiry that all communion and converse between God and sinners through Jesus, begins in a sense of our wrong conduct, and the Lord’s rich and free mercy.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
1Ki 19:9 And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the LORD [came] to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?
Ver. 9. And he came thither unto a cave. ] The same, saith R. Solomon, wherein was Moses when he first saw God’s backparts. Exo 34:6 Hence this cave was in no small esteem among the ancients, as Josephus testifieth. Certes, it could not but be a great confirmation of Elijah to renew the sight of those sensible monuments of God’s favour and protection to his faithful predecessor Moses.
What dost thou here, Elijah?
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
1 Samuel – 1 Kings
ELIJAH’S WEAKNESS, AND ITS CUBE
WHAT DOEST THOU HERE?
1Sa 29:3
I have put these two verses together, not only because of their identity in form, though that is striking, but because they bear upon one and the same subject, as will appear, if, in a word or two, I set each of them in its setting. David was almost at the lowest point of his fortunes when he fled into foreign territory, and for awhile took service under one of the kings of the Philistines. He served him faithfully, and so, when the last great fight, in which Saul lost his life, was about to be waged between Philistia and Israel, David and his men came as a contingent to the army of the former. The Philistine commanders, very naturally, were suspicious of these allies, just as Englishmen would have been if, on the night before Waterloo, a brigade of Frenchmen had deserted and offered their help to fight Napoleon. So the question ‘What do these Hebrews here?’-amongst our ranks-was an extremely natural one, and it was answered in the only possible way, by the subsequent departure of David and his men from the unnatural and ill-omened alliance.
Now, that suggests to us that Christian people are out of their places, even in the eyes of worldly people, when they are fighting shoulder to shoulder with them in certain causes; and it suggests the propriety of keeping apart. ‘Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord’ ‘What do these Hebrews here?’ is a question that Philistia often asks. But now turn to the other question. Elijah had fallen into the mood of depression which so often follows great nervous tension. He had just offered the sacrifice on Carmel, and brought all Israel back to the Lord, and Jezebel had flamed out and threatened his life. The usually undaunted prophet, in the reaction after his great effort, was fearful for his life and deserted his work, flung himself into solitude and shook the dust off his feet against Israel. Was that not just doing what I have been saying that Christian people ought to do-separating himself from the world? In a sense, yes, but the voice came, ‘What dost thou here, Elijah?’ ‘Go back to your work; to Ahab, to Jezebel. Go back to death if need be. Do not shirk your duty on the pretence of separating yourself from the world.’
So we put the two questions together. They limit one another, and they suggest the via media, the course between, and lead me to say one or two plain things about that duty of Christian separation from an evil world.
I. The first thing that I would suggest to you is the inevitable intermingling, which is the law of God, and therefore can never be broken with impunity.
Christ’s parable about the Kingdom of Heaven in the world being like a man that sowed good seed in his field, which sprung up intermingled with tares, contains the lesson, not so much of the purity or nonpurity of the Church as of the inseparable intertwining in the world of Christian people with others. The roots are matted together, and you cannot pull up a tare without danger of pulling up a wheat-stalk that has got interlaced with it. That is but to say that Society at present, and the earthly form of the Kingdom of God, are not organised on the basis of religious affinity, but upon a great many other things, such as family, kindred, business, a thousand ties of all sorts which mat men together, and make it undesirable, impossible, contrary to God’s intention, that the good people should club themselves together, and leave the bad ones to rot and stink. The two are meant to be in close contact. ‘Let both grow together till the harvest.’ If any Christian man were to do as the monks of old did, fly into solitude to look after his own soul, then the question which came to Elijah would be suitable to him, ‘What doest thou here?’ Is there not work enough for you out there, in that wicked world? Is that not the place for you? Where is the place for the ‘salt’? Where the meat is in danger of putrefaction. Rub it in! That is what it was meant for. ‘Ye are the light of the world.’ That suggests the picture of a lamp upon a pedestal that it may send out its rays, but itself remains apart. But the companion metaphor suggests the closest possible contact, and such contact is duty for us Christian people. Elijah ran away from his work. There are types of Christian life to-day unwholesomely self-engrossed, and too much occupied with their own spiritual condition, to realise and discharge the duty of witnessing in the world. Wherever you find a Christian man -whether he is a monk with bare foot, and a rope round his brown robe, and shaven head, or whether he is in the garb of modern Protestantism- that tries more to keep himself apart, in the enjoyment and cultivation of his own religious life, than to fling himself into the midst of the world’s worst evil, in order to fight and to cure it, you get a man who is sharing in Elijah’s transgression, and needs Elijah’s rebuke. The intermingling is inevitable in the present state of things; and family, kindred, business, social and political movements, all require that Christian people should work side by side with men who are not possessors of ‘like precious faith.’ If ever there have been individuals or communities that have tried to traverse that law, they have developed narrowness and bitterness and stunted growth, and a hundred evils that we all know.
II. And now let me say a word about the second thing, and that is-the imperative separation.
‘What do these Israelites here?’ is the question. Much of all our lives lies outside these necessary connections with the world, of which I have been speaking. And the question for each of us is, What do we do when we are left to do as we like? Where do we go? When the iron weight fastened by the bit of string is taken off the sapling, it starts back to its original uprightness. Is that what your Christianity does for you? When you are left to yourself, when you have done all the work that is required, and you are free, where do you turn naturally? It is of no use to lay down special regulations. There has been far too much regulation and red-tape in our Christianity all along. Do not let us put so much stress upon individual acts. Let us look at the spirit. Whither do I turn? What do I like to do? Who are my chosen companions? What are my recreations? Is my life of such a sort as that the world will point to me, and say, ‘What! you here I a professing Christian; what are you doing here?’
I remember that in the autobiography of Mr. Spurgeon, there is a story told about what he did when a child, and living with his grandfather, the pastor of a little country church. There was a very prominent member of that church who was in the habit of going into the public-house occasionally; and the small boy stepped into the sanded parlour where this inconsistent man was sitting, walked up to him, and said, ‘What doest thou here, Elijah?’ It was the turning-point of the man’s life. That is the question that I desire us all to ask ourselves-where do we go, and what sort of lives do we live in the moments when our own voluntary choice determines our action?
‘A man is known by the company he keeps,’ says an old Latin proverb, and I am bound to say that I do not think that it is a good sign of the depth of a Christian professor’s religion if he feels himself more at home in the company of people who do not share his religion than in the company of those that do. I do not wish to be strait-laced and narrow, but I do not wish, either, to be so broad as to obliterate altogether the distinction between Christian people and others. The fact of the case is this, dear friends; if we are Christ’s servants we have more in common with the most uncongenial Christians than we have with the most congenial man who is not a Christian. And if we were nearer our Master we should feel that it was so. ‘Being let go they went to their own company.’ Where do you go when you can make your choice?
I am not going to speak in detail about occupations or recreations. I can quite believe that the theatre might be made an instrument of morality. I can quite believe that a race-course might be a perfectly innocent place. I can quite believe that there may be no harm in a dance. All that I say is that there are two questions which every Christian professor ought to ask himself about such subjects. One is, Can I ask God to bless this thing, and my doing it? And the other is, Does this help or hinder my religion? If we will take these two questions with us as tests of conduct and companionship, I do not think that we shall go far wrong, either in the choice of our companions, or in the choice of our surroundings of any kind, or in the choice of our recreations and our occupations. But if we do not, then I am quite sure that we shall go wrong in them all. ‘What communion hath light with darkness?’ ‘What agreement hath the temple of God with idols? Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.’
The main question is, do I grasp the aim of life with clearness and decision as being to make myself by God’s help such a character as God has pleasure in? If I do I shall regulate all these things thereby.
III. Now there is one last suggestion that I wish to make, and that is the double questioning that we shall have to stand.
The lords of the Philistines said, ‘What do these Hebrews here?’ They saw the inconsistency, if David and his men did not. They were sharp to detect it, and David and his band did not rise in their opinion, but decidedly went down, when they saw them marching there, in such an unnatural place as ‘behind Achish,’ and ready to flesh their swords in the blood of their brethren. So let me tell you, you will neither recommend your religion nor yourselves to men of the world, by inconsistently trying to identify yourselves with them. There are a great many professing Christians nowadays whose mouths are full of the word ‘liberality,’ and who seem to try to show how absolutely identical with a godless man’s a God-fearing one’s life may be made. Do you think that the world respects that type of Christian, or regards his religion as the kind of thing to be admired? No; the question that they fling at such people is the question which David was humiliated by having pitched at his head-’What do these Hebrews here?’ ‘Let them go back to their mountains. This is no place for them .’ The world respects an out-and-out Christian; but neither God nor the world respects an inconsistent one.
But there is another question, and another Questioner-’What doest thou here, Elijah?’ God did not ask Elijah the question because he did not know the answer; but because he wished to make Elijah put his mood into words, since then Elijah would understand it a little better, and, when he found the tremendous difficulty of making a decent excuse, would begin to suspect that the conduct that wanted so much glozing was not exactly the conduct fit for a prophet. And so let us think that God is looking down upon us, in all our occupation of our free time, and that He is wishing us to put into words what we are about, and why we are where we are.
What do you think you would say if, in some of these moments of unnecessary intermingling with questionable things and doubtful people, you were brought suddenly to this, that you had to formulate into some kind of plausibility your reason for being there? I am afraid it would be a very lame and ragged set of reasons that many of us would have to give. Well! better that we should now have to answer the question ‘What doest thou here?’ than that we should have to fail in answering the future question, after we have done with the world: ‘What didst thou there?’
Dear brethren, let us cleave to Christ, and that will separate us from the world. If we cleave to the world, that will separate us from Christ. I do not insist on details of conduct, but I do beseech you, professing Christians, to recognise that you are set in the world in order to grow like your Master, and that their tendency to help you to that likeness is the one test of all occupations, recreations, and companionships, by which we may know whether we are in or out of the place that pleases Him. And if we are in it, that blessed hope which is held forth in the parable to which I have already referred, will come full of sweetness and of strength to us, that, yonder, men will be grouped according to their moral and religious character; that the tares will be taken away from the wheat, and, that as Christ says, ‘Then shall the righteous flame as the sun in their heavenly Father’s Kingdom.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
1 Kings
ELIJAH’S WEAKNESS, AND ITS CUBE
1Ki 19:1 – 1Ki 19:18
The miracle on Carmel cowed, if it did not convince, Ahab, so that he did not oppose the slaughter of the Baal prophets; but Jezebel was made of sterner stuff, and her passionate idolatry was proof against even a sign from heaven. Obstinacy in error is often a rebuke to tremulous faith in God. She fiercely puts her back to the wall, and defies Elijah and his God. Her threat to the prophet has a certain audacity of frankness almost approaching generosity. She will give her victim fair play. This woman is ‘magnificent in sin.’ The Septuagint prefixes to her oath, ‘As surely as thou art Elijah and I Jezebel,’ which adds force to it. It also reads, by a very slight change in the Hebrew, in 1Ki 19:3 , ‘he was afraid,’ for ‘he saw,’-which is possibly right, as giving his motive for escape more distinctly.
I. We may note, first, the prophet’s flight 1Ki 19:3 – 1Ki 19:8. Beersheba, on the southern border of the kingdom of Judah, was eloquent of memories of the patriarchs, but though it was nearly a hundred miles from Jezreel, Jezebel’s arm was long enough to reach the fugitive there, and therefore he plunged deeper into the dreary southern desert. He left behind him his servant, his ‘young man,’ as the original has it, whom Rabbinical tradition identified with the miraculously resuscitated son of the widow of Zarephath, and supposed to become afterwards the prophet Jonah. Thus alone but for the company of his own gloomy thoughts, and wearied with toilsome travel in the sun-smitten waste, he took shelter under the shadow of a solitary shrub the Hebrew emphatically calls it ‘ one juniper,’ or rather ‘broom-plant’, and there the waves of depression went over him.
His complaint is not to be wondered at, though it was wrong. The very overstrain of the scene on Carmel brought reaction. The height of the crest of one wave measures the depth of the trough of the next, and no mortal spirit can keep itself at the sublime elevation reached by Elijah when alone he fronted and converted a nation. The supposed necessity for flight, coming so immediately after apparent victory, showed him how hollow the change in the people was. What had become of all the fervency of their shout, ‘The Lord, He is the God!’ if they could leave Jezebel the power to carry out her threat? Solitude and the awful desert increased his gloom. The strong man had become weak, and it was ebb-tide with him. His prayer was petulant, impatient, presumptuous. What right had he to settle what was ‘enough’? If he really wished to die, he could have found death at Jezreel, and had no need to travel a hundred miles to seek a grave. He was weary of his work, and profoundly disappointed by what he hastily concluded was its failure, and in a fit of faithless despondency he forgot reverence, submission, and obedience.
If Elijah can become weak, and his courage die out, and his zeal become torpid apathy and cowardly wish to shuffle off responsibility and shirk work, who shall stand? The lessons of self-distrust, of the nearness to one another of the most opposite emotions in our weak natures, of the depth of gloom into which the boldest and brightest servant of God may fall as soon as he loses hold of God’s hand, never had a more striking instance to point them than that mighty prophet, sitting huddled together in utter despondency below the solitary retem bush, praying his foolish prayer for death.
The meal to which an angel twice waked him was God’s answer to his prayer, telling him both that his life was still needful and that God cared for him. Perhaps one of Elijah’s reasons for taking to the desert was the thought that he might starve there, and so find death. At all events, God for the third time miraculously provides his food. The ravens, the widow of Zarephath, an angel, were his caterers; and, instead of taking away his life, God Himself sends the bread and water to preserve it. The revelation of a watchful, tender Providence often rebukes gloomy unbelief and shames us back to faith. We are not told whether the journey to Horeb was commanded, or, like the flight from Jezreel, was Elijah’s own doing; but, in any case, he must have wandered in the desert, to have taken forty days to reach it.
II. The second stage is the vision at Horeb 1Ki 19:9 – 1Ki 19:14. The history of Israel has never touched Horeb since Moses left it, and it is not without significance that we are once more on that sacred ground. The parallel between Moses and Elijah is very real. These two names stand out above all others in the history of the theocracy, the one as its founder, the other as its restorer; both distinguished by special revelations, both endowed with exceptional force of character and power of the Spirit; the one the lawgiver, the other the head of the prophetic order; both having something peculiar in their departure, and both standing together, in witness of their supremacy in the past, and of their inferiority in the future, by Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. The associations of the place are marked by the use of the definite article, which is missed in the Authorised Version,-’the cave,’ that same cleft in the rock where Moses had stood. Note, too, that the word rendered ‘lodged’ is literally ‘passed the night,’ and that therefore we may suppose that the vision came to Elijah in the darkness.
That question, ‘What doest thou here?’ can scarcely be freed from a tone of rebuke; but, like Christ’s to the travellers to Emmaus, and many another interrogation from God, it is also put in order to allow of the loaded heart’s relieving itself by pouring out all its griefs. God’s questions are the assurance of His listening ear and sympathising heart. This one is like a little key which opens a great sluice. Out gushes a full stream. His forty days’ solitude have done little for him. A true answer would have been, ‘I was afraid of Jezebel.’ He takes credit for zeal, and seems to insinuate that he had been more zealous for God than God had been for Himself. He forgets the national acknowledgment of Jehovah at Carmel, and the hundred prophets protected by good Obadiah. Despondency has the knack of picking its facts. It is colour-blind, and can only see dark tints. He accuses his countrymen, as if he would stir up God to take vengeance.
How different this weak and sinful wail over his solitude from the heroic mention of it on Carmel, when it only nerved his courage I verse 22. The divine manifestation which followed is evidently meant to recall that granted to Moses on the same spot. ‘The Lord passed by’ is all but verbally quoted from Exo 34:6 , and the truth that had been proclaimed in words to Moses was enforced by symbol to Elijah. If the vision was in the night, as 1Ki 19:9 suggests, it becomes still more impressive. The fierce wind that roared among the savage peaks, the shock that made the mountains reel, and the flashing flames that lighted up the wild landscape, were all phenomena of one kind, and at once expressed God’s lordship over all destructive agencies of nature, and symbolised the more vehement and disturbing forms of energy, used by Him for the furtherance of His purposes in the field of history or of revelation. Elijah’s ministry was of such a sort, and he had now to learn the limitations of his work, and the superiority of another type, represented by the ‘sound of gentle stillness.’
It is the same lesson which Moses learned there, when he heard that the Lord is ‘a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth.’ It was exemplified in the gentle Elisha, the successor of Elijah. It reached far beyond the time then present, and was indeed a Messianic prophecy, declaring the inmost character of Him in whom ‘the Lord is,’ in an altogether special sense. Elijah as a prophet brought no new knowledge, and uttered no far-reaching predictions; but he received one of the deepest and clearest prophecies of the gentleness of God’s highest Messenger, and on Horeb saw afar off what he saw fulfilled on the Mountain of Transfiguration. Nor is his vision exhausted by its Messianic reference. It contains an eternal truth for all God’s servants. Storm, earthquake, and fire may be God’s precursors, and needed sometimes to prepare His way; but gentleness is ‘the habitation of His throne,’ and they serve Him best, and are nearest Him whom they serve, who are meek in heart and gentle among enemies, ‘as a nurse cherisheth her children.’ Love is the victor, and the sharpest weapons of the Christian are love and lowliness.
The lesson was not at first grasped by Elijah, as his repetition of his complaint, word for word, with almost dogged obstinacy, shows. The best of us are slow to learn God’s lessons, and a habit of faithless gloom is not soon overcome. It is much easier to get down into the pit than to struggle out of it.
III. The commission for further service , which closes the scene, is a further rebuke to the prophet. He is bidden to retrace his way and to take refuge in the desert lying to the south and east of Damascus, where he would be safe from Jezebel, and still not far from the scene of his activity. The instructions given to anoint a king of Syria and one of Israel were not fulfilled by Elijah, but by his successor; and we have to suppose that further commands were given to him on that subject. The third injunction, to anoint his successor, was obeyed at once on his journey, though Ahelmeholah, on Gilboa, was dangerously near Jezreel. The designation of these future instruments of God’s purpose was at once a sign to Elijah that his own task was drawing to a close having reached its climax on Carmel, and that God had great designs beyond him and his service. The true conception of our work is that we sire only links in a chain, and that we can be done without. ‘God removes the workers and carries on the work.’ To anoint our successor is often a bitter pill; but self-importance needs to be taken down, and it is blessed to lose ourselves in gazing into the future of God’s work, when we are gone from the field.
Further, the commissions met Elijah’s despondency in another way; for they assured him of the divine judgments on the house of Ahab, and of the use of the Syrian king as a rod to chastise Israel. He had thought God too slow in avenging His dishonoured name, and had been taught the might of gentleness; but now he also learns the certainty of punishment, while the enigmatical promise that Elisha should ‘slay’ those who escaped the swords of Hazael and Jehu dimly points to the merciful energy of that prophet’s word, his only sword, which shall slay but to revive, and wound to heal. ‘I have hewed them by the . . . words of my mouth.’
Finally, the revelation of the seven thousand-a round number, which expresses the sacredness as well as the numerousness of the elect, hidden ones-rebukes the hasty assumption of his being left alone, ‘faithful among the faithless.’ God has more servants than we know of. Let us beware of feeding either our self-righteousness or our narrowness or our faint-heartedness with the fancy that we have a monopoly of faithfulness, or are left alone to witness for God.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
lodged = passed the night.
What. ? Figure of speech Anthropopatheia (App-6), as though He did not know.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Learning How God Works
1Ki 19:9-14
God knew how to treat His servant, resting beneath the juniper tree. He steeped his nature in refreshing sleep, fed his exhausted energies, caused angel-hands to minister to him, and finally conducted him across the desert to that sacred mountain where Moses in the old time had stood in the divine audience-chamber. There the forces of nature spoke to Elijahs varying moods. In the fire, the earthquake, and the tempest, he heard the voices of his own soul. They expressed what he would say, and relieved him in the expression. Then the accents of the still small voice fell upon his ear, calming, quieting, soothing. Best of all, the voice of God commissioned him once more with the words, Go, return. The vacated post was open still; the crown of the life-work could be worthily placed; the gate was open through which he might serve the land he loved.
Often we lie down on the desert-sands, and think that death is near. But it is not so. God does not judge us by our moods. He knows the faithful heart that is true to Him, and he wants to bestow the crown of life. Not the winding-sheet of the desert-sands, but the chariot of fire to the Home-Land was to be the portion of Gods faithful prophet.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
unto a cave: Exo 33:21, Exo 33:22, Jer 9:2, Heb 11:38
What doest thou: 1Ki 19:13, Gen 3:9, Gen 16:8, Jer 2:18, Jon 1:3, Jon 1:4
Reciprocal: 1Ki 17:5 – did according 1Ki 19:14 – I have been Pro 27:8 – man Jer 37:12 – went Jon 4:5 – Jonah Mat 26:69 – Peter Mar 14:54 – and he Joh 18:18 – Peter
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
1Ki 19:9. He came thither Unto the mount where God had formerly manifested his glory in so extraordinary a manner; unto a cave, and lodged there Perhaps the same cave, or cleft of a rock, in which Moses was hid, when the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed his name. Hither, in his wanderings, the Lord led him, probably to assist his faith and devotion with the sight of that famous place where the law was given, and so many great things were done, and that he might meet God there, where Moses had so often met with him. Behold, the word of the Lord came to him We cannot go any where so as to be out of the reach of Gods eye, his arm, and his word: Whither can I flee from thy Spirit? God will take care of his outcasts; and those that for his sake are driven out from among men, he will find and own, and gather with everlasting loving-kindness. What doest thou here, Elijah? A tacit reproof: as much as to say, I have no business for thee here. This is not thy proper place, nor a place wherein to do me service. It is not the station in which I set thee, which was in Israel, that thou mightest turn unto me that backsliding people, to which end I endowed thee with extraordinary powers, and vouchsafed thee my almighty aid and protection, and would not have failed to continue them unto thee, if thou hadst remained there.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
God’s revelation of His methods 19:9-21
Elijah’s zeal for God’s covenant, altars, and prophets was admirable, but he became too discouraged because he underestimated the extent of commitment to Yahweh that existed in Israel. [Note: Ronald B. Allen, "Elijah the Broken Prophet," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 22:3 (1979):202.] He was not alone in his stand for Yahweh (1Ki 19:10; cf. 1Ki 18:13). God asked him what he was doing there (1Ki 19:9; 1Ki 19:13) because He had not sent him to Horeb, as He had sent him to Cherith, Zarephath, and Samaria (cf. 1Ki 17:3; 1Ki 17:9; 1Ki 18:1). Elijah had fled to Horeb out of fear. God proceeded to reproduce demonstrations of His power that He had given Israel at Mt. Sinai (Exo 19:16-18) and to Elijah at Mt. Carmel (1Ki 18:38; 1Ki 18:45). Nevertheless God was not in these in the sense that they were not His methods now. Rather, God was in the gentle blowing (1Ki 19:12). One writer suggested that we should understand the Hebrew words translated "a gentle blowing" (NASB) or "a gentle whisper" (NIV) as "a roaring and thundrous voice." [Note: J. Lust, "A Gentle Breeze or a Roaring Thunderous Sound?" Vetus Testamentum 25:1 (January 1975):115.] This view has not found popular acceptance.
Moses had spent 40 days and nights on the mountain fasting while he waited for a new phase of his ministry to begin (Exo 34:28). Jesus spent 40 days and nights in a wilderness at the beginning of His public ministry too (cf. Mat 4:1-2). Elijah covered his face because he realized that He could not look at God and live (1Ki 19:13), as Moses also realized (Exo 33:20-22; cf. Gen 32:30). Elijah was to learn that whereas God had revealed Himself in dramatic ways in the past, He would now work in quieter ways. Instead of Elijah continuing to stand alone for God, God would now put him into the background while the Lord used other people. [Note: For helpful insights into 1Ki 19:9-14, see William Dumbrell, "What Are You Doing Here? Elijah at Horeb," Crux 22:1 (March 1986):12-19.] Elijah evidently got the message, but he still felt depressed (1Ki 19:14). God was dealing with him gently too.
"His [Elijah’s] God-given successes had fostered an inordinate pride (cf. 1Ki 19:4; 1Ki 19:10; 1Ki 19:14) that had made him take his own importance too seriously. Moreover, Elijah had come to bask in the glow of the spectacular. He may have fully expected that because of what had been accomplished at Mount Carmel, Jezebel would capitulate and pagan worship would come to an end in Israel-all through his influence!" [Note: Patterson and Austel, p. 148.]
"I have never been impressed by the view that the command to anoint Hazael, Jehu and Elisha was the expression of God’s disapproval of Elijah’s flight from Jezebel, and that thereby his prophetic work was as good as terminated. He had a considerable period of activity still before him, and there is absolutely nothing in the story of his departure to justify such a conclusion. For Elijah to anoint those who were to carry on his work, whether he did it personally or by proxy, is rather to stress with what authority they would act, when they brought judgment and destruction on Israel." [Note: Ellison, p. 33.]
Yahweh next directed Elijah to return to Israel to do three things (1Ki 19:15-16). Elijah anointed only Elisha personally (1Ki 19:19-21). He anointed Hazael and Jehu indirectly through his successor, Elisha (2Ki 8:7-14; 2Ki 9:1-3). Through these three men God would complete the purge of Baal worship that Elijah had begun (1Ki 19:17). God also had 7,000 other faithful followers in Israel through whom He could work (1Ki 19:18). The writer mentioned some of these loyal people in the chapters that follow. This word from the Lord marks a great crisis in Israel. God now turned from the northern tribes as a whole to deal with a faithful remnant within that nation. [Note: Ibid., p. 44.] Evidence of this is the fact that the stories of Elisha that follow deal mainly with the remnant rather than with the whole nation, in contrast to the record of Elijah’s ministry.
Elisha was a prosperous farmer who lived near Abel-meholah (1Ki 19:16) in the Jordan Valley, 23 miles south of the Sea of Chinnereth (Galilee). Throwing a prophet’s cloak around a person symbolized the passing of the power and authority of the office to that individual. [Note: House, p. 225.] "What have I done to you" (1Ki 19:20) is an idiom that means, "Do as you please." Elisha terminated his former occupation and from then on served as a prophet (cf. Amo 7:14-15; Luk 9:62). His sacrifice of his oxen as a burnt offering to Yahweh symbolized his total personal commitment to God (1Ki 19:21). Perhaps his 12 pairs of oxen (1Ki 19:19) represented the 12 tribes of Israel whom Elisha would now lead spiritually.
"Elijah recruits his attendant and successor at the workplace, as Jesus was to do with many of his followers." [Note: Auld, p. 128. ]
This closes the so-called Elijah cycle or narrative (chs. 17-19), one of the richest portions of the Old Testament for preaching and teaching. In many ways Elijah, Israel’s savior, prefigured Jesus Christ and His ministry.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
THE THEOPHANY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
1Ki 19:9-15
“Who heardest the rebuke of the Lord in Sinai, and in Horeb the judgment of vengeance.”
– Sir 48:7.
THROUGHOUT the Scriptures infinite care is taken to preclude every notion that the Most High God can be represented in visible form. He manifested Himself at Sinai to the children of Israel, but though the mount burned with fire, and there were clouds and thick darkness, and the voice of a. trumpet speaking long and loud, the people were reminded with the utmost solemnity that “they saw no manner of similitude.” Indeed, in later times, when there was a keener jealousy of every anthropomorphic expression, the giving of the law is rather represented as a part of the ministry of angels.
The word Makom, or Place, is substituted for Jehovah, so that Moses and the elders and the Israelites do not see God but only His Makom, the space which He fills; the delivery of the law is ascribed to angelic ministers. At times the angels are almost identified with the careering flames and rushing winds which a modern theologian describes to us as being “the skirts of their garments, the waving of their robes” for is it not written, “He that maketh the winds His angels and the flaming fires His ministers”?
And in the daring description of Jehovah s visible manifestation of Himself to Moses, when He hid him in that fissure of the rock with the hollow of His hand, Moses only observes as it were the fringe and evanishment of His glory, “dark with excessive light.”
It was natural that Jehovah should reveal Himself to Elijah under the aspect of those awful elemental forces with which his solitary life had made him familiar. No spot in the world is more suitable for those powers in all their fire and magnificence than the knot of mountains which crowd the Sinaitic peninsula with their entangled cliffs. Travelers have borne witness to the overwhelming violence and majesty of the storms which rush and reverberate through the granite gorges of those everlasting hills. It was in such surroundings that Jehovah spoke to the heart of his servant.
First “a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks, before the Lord.” The winds of God, which blow where they list, and we know not whence they come nor whither they go, have in them so awful and irresistible a strength, that man and the works of man, are reduced to impotence before them. And when they rush and roar through the gullies of innumerable hills in tropic lands where the intense heat has rarefied the air, the sound of them is beyond all comparison weird and terrific. We cannot wonder that this roar of the hurricane was regarded as the trump of the archangel and the voice of God at Sinai; or that the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind; {Job 38:1; Job 40:6} and appeared to Ezekiel in a great cloud and a whirlwind out of the north; {Eze 1:4} or that Jeremiah compared His anger to a whirling and sweeping storm; {Jer 23:10-20; Jer 25:32, Jer 30:23} or that the Psalmist describes Him as bowing the heavens and coming down and casting darkness under His feet, and flying upon a cherub, and walking upon the wings of the wind; {Psa 18:10, Psa 104:3; Psa 18:5} or that Nahum says, “The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet, and the mountains quake at Him.” {Nah 1:3; Nah 1:5}
And Elijah felt the terror of the scene, as the storm dislodged huge masses of the mountain granite, and sent them rolling and crashing down the hills. But it did not speak to his inmost heart for
“The Lord was not in the wind.”
And after the wind an earthquake shook the solid bases of the Sinaitic range. The mountain saw God and trembled. The Lord, in the language of the Psalmist, shook the wilderness of Kadesh, the mountains skipped like rams and the little hills like young sheep. {Psa 18:7, Psa 77:18, Psa 97:4, Jdg 5:4, 2Sa 22:8} And man never feels so abjectly helpless, he is never reduced to such absolute insignificance, as when the solid earth beneath him, the very emblem of stability, trembles as with a palsy, and cleaves beneath his feet; and shakes his towers to the earth, and swallows up his cities. Once more the soul of Elijah shuddered at the terrific impression of this sign of Jehovahs power. But it had no message for his inmost heart: for
“The Lord was not in the earthquake.”
And after the earthquake a fire. Jehovah overwhelmed the Prophets senses with the dread magnificence of one of those lurid thunderstorms of which the terrors are never so tremendous as in such mountain scenes, where travelers tell us that the burning air seems transfused into sheets of flame.
In that awful muttering and roar of the lurid clouds, that million fold reverberation of what the Psalmist calls “the voice of the Lord,” when the lightnings “light the world, and run along the ground,” and, in the language of Habakkuk, “God sends abroad His arrows, and the light of His glittering spear, and burning coals go forth under His feet, the lips of man quiver at the voice, and his heart sinks, and he trembles where he stands.” And this, too, Elijah must have felt as “the hiding-place of Gods power” {Hab 3:3-16} and yet it did not speak to his inmost heart; for
“The Lord was not in the fire.”
“And after the fire a still small voice.” However the rendering may be altered into “a gentle murmuring sound,” or, as in the Revised Version, “a sound of gentle stillness,” no expression is more full of the awe and mystery of the original than the phrase “a still small voice.” It was the shock of awful stillness which succeeded the sudden cessation of the earthquake and hurricane and thunderstorm, and instantly, in its appalling hush and gentleness, Elijah felt that God was there; and he no sooner heard that voiceful silence speaking within him than he was filled with fear and self-abasement. He wrapped his face in his mantle, even as Moses “was afraid to look upon God.” He came from the hollow of the rock which had sheltered him amidst that turbulence of material forces, and stood in the entering in of the cave.
At once the silence became articulate to his conscience, and repeated to him the reproachful question, “What doest thou here, Elijah?”
Amazed and overwhelmed as he is, he has not yet grasped the meaning of the vision. Something of it perhaps he saw and felt. It breathed something of peace into the despair and tumult of his heart, but he still can only answer as before:-
“I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword; and I, I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”
Whatever that theophany had taught him, it had not yet fully removed his perplexity. But now God, in tender forbearance, unfolds at any rate the practical issue of the vision. Elijah is to be inactive no longer. He is to find in faithfulness and work the removal of all doubts, and is to learn that man may not abandon his duties, even when they are irksome, even when they seem hopeless, even when they have become intolerable and full of peril.
He has to learn that it is only when men have finished their days work that God sends them sleep, and that his own days work was as yet unfinished. He is no longer to linger in the wilderness apart from the ways of guilty and suffering men. He is one with them: he may not separate his destiny from theirs; he has to feel that God has no favorites and is no respecter of persons, but that all men are His children, and that each child of His must work for all. “Go,” the Lord said unto him, “return on thy way by the wilderness to Damascus.” Did the return involve unknown dangers? Still he must commit his way unto the Lord, and simply be doing good, regardless of all consequences. The saints of the Old Dispensation no less than of the New had to go forth bearing their cross, and on their way to Golgotha.
Three missions still awaited him.
First, he is to supersede the old dynasty of Benhadad, King of Syria, founded by Solomons enemy, and to anoint Hazael to be king over Syria.
Next, he is to abolish the dynasty of Omri, and to anoint Jehu, the son of Nimshi, to be king over Israel.
Thirdly-and there was deep significance in this behest, and one which must have humiliated to the dust the risings of pride and the half-reproach, so to speak, for inadequate support which had underlain his appeal to Jehovah-he is to anoint Elisha, the son of Shaphat, of Abel-meholah, to be prophet in his room.
Elijah had thought himself necessary-an indispensable agent for the task of delivering Israel from the guilty and demoralizing apostasy of Baal-worship. God teaches him that there is no such thing as a necessary man; that man at his best estate is altogether vanity; that God is all in all; that “God buries His workmen, but continues His work.”
And something of the meaning of these tasks is explained to him. The people of Israel are not yet converted. They still needed the hand of chastisement. The three years drought had been ineffectual to wean them from their backslidings, and turn their hearts again to the Lord. On the royal house and on the worshippers of Baal should fall the remorseless sword of Jehu. On the whole nation the ruthless invasions of Hazael should press with terrible penalty. And him that escaped from their avenging missions should Elisha slay. The last clause is enigmatical. Elisha can hardly be said directly to have slain any. He lived, on the whole, in friendship with the kings both of Israel and of Aram, and in peace and honor in the cities. But the general idea seems to be that he would carry on the mission of Elijah alike for the guidance and the heaven-directed punishments of kings and nations, and that the famines, raids, and humiliations which rendered his nation miserable under the sons of Ahab should be elements of his sacred mission. {Isa 11:4; Isa 49:2; comp. Jer 1:10; Jer 18:7}
One more revelation remained to lift the Prophet above his lower self. His cry had been, again and again: “I, I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.” He must not indulge the mistaken fancy that the worship of the true God would die with him or that God needed his advice, or that God was slack concerning His promise as some men count slackness. He was not the only faithful person left, nor would truth perish when he was called away. Nor is he to judge only by outward appearances, nor to suppose that the arm of God can be measured by the finger of man. A new prophet is soon to take his place, but God has not been so neglectful as he supposes, -“Yet,” in spite of all thy murmurings of failure and a frustrated purpose-“yet will I leave Me”-not thee, thee only- “but seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which has not kissed him.”
It has been regarded as a difficulty that Elijah fulfilled but one of the three behests. But Scripture does not narrate events with the finical and pragmatic accuracy of modern annals. Elisha, directly or indirectly, caused both Jehu to be anointed and Hazael to ascend the throne of Syria, and we are left to infer that in these deeds he carried out the instructions of his Master.
It is a more serious question, What was the exact meaning of the theophany granted to Elijah on the Mount of God?
Here, too, we are left to large and liberal applications. The greatest utterances of men, the loftiest works of human genius, often admit of manifold interpretations, and lend themselves to “springing and germinal developments.” Far more is this the case in the revelations of God to the spirit of man. We can see the main truths which were involved in that mighty scene, even if the narrator of it leaves unexplained its central significance.
It is usually interpreted as a reproof to the spirit which led Elijah to regard the tempestuous manifestations of wrath and vengeance as the normal methods of the interposition of God. He was fresh from the stern challenge of Carmel; his hands were yet red with the blood of those four hundred and fifty priests. It was perhaps needful for him to learn that Gods gentler agencies are more effectual and more expressive of His inmost nature, and that God is Love even though He can by no means clear the guilty. Something of this lesson has been at all times learnt from the narrative.
“The raging fire, the roaring wind,
Thy boundless, power display;
But in the gentler breeze we find
Thy Spirits viewless way.”
“The dew of heaven is like Thy grace,
It steals in silence down; But where it lights, the favored place
By richest fruits is known.”
Quite naturally men have always seen in the storm, the earthquake, and the fire, the presence of God as manifested in His wrath. “Then the earth shook and trembled,” says the Psalmist; “the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because He was wroth. There went up a smoke in His nostrils, and fire out of His mouth devoured: coals burnt forth from it. He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under His feet. And He rode upon a cherub, and swooped down: yea, He did fly upon the wings of the wind.” {Psa 18:7-9; comp. 2Sa 22:8-11} “I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, at the wrath of the Lord.” {Isa 13:13} “Thou shalt be visited,” says Isaiah, “of the Lord of Hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.” On the other hand, in His mercy God maketh the storm a calm. When He reveals Himself in a vision of the night to Eliphaz the Temanite “a wind passed before my face, so that the hair of my head stood up, and there was silence, and I heard a voice saying, Shall mortal man be great before God? shall a man be pure before his Maker?” These passages in no small measure explain the symbolism of Elijahs vision, and point to its essential significance. Who can measure (asks Mr. Ruskin) the total effect produced upon the minds of men by the phenomenon of a single thunderstorm?-“the questioning of the forest leaves together in their terrified stillness which way the wind shall come-the murmuring together of the Angels of Destruction as they draw in the distance their swords of flame-the rattling of the dome of heaven under the chariot wheels of death?” Yet it is not the thunderstorms nor the hurricanes that have been most powerful in altering the face or molding the structure of the world, but rather the long continuance of Natures most gentle influences.
Viewing the vision thus, we may say that it pointed forward to that transcendently greater than Elijah who did not strive, nor cry, nor was His voice heard in the streets. “There is already a gospel of Elijah. He, the farthest removed of all the Prophets from the evangelical spirit and character, had yet enshrined in the heart of his story the most forcible of all protests against the hardness of Judaism, the noblest anticipation of the breadth and depth of Christianity.” This view of the passage is taken, with slight modifications, by many, from Irenaeus down to Grotius and Calvin, and modern commentators.
Similarly it is a universal law of history that while some mighty and tumultuous energy may be needed to initiate the first movement or upheaval, the greatest work is done by gentler agencies. As in the old fable, the quiet shining of the sun effects more than the bluster of the storm. Love is stronger than force, and persuasion than compulsion. Mr. J. S. Mill treats it not only as a platitude but as a falsity to assert that truth cannot be suppressed by violence. He says that (for instance) the truths brought into prominence by the Reformation had been again and again suppressed by the brutal tyrannies of the Papacy. But in all these instances has not the truth ultimately prevailed? Is it not a fact of experience that
“Truth, pressed to earth, shall rise again,
The eternal years of God are hers;
But error, wounded, writhes in pain
And dies among her worshippers”?
The truth prevails and the error dies under the slow light of knowledge and by the long results of time.
Nor is it any answer to this view of the revelation to Elijah on the Mount of God that there is not the slightest proof of his having learnt any such lesson, or of such a lesson having been deduced from it by the narrator himself. Neither Elijah, it has been said, nor the writer of the Book of Kings, felt the smallest regret for the avenging deed of Carmel. Their consciences approved of it. They looked on it with pride, not with compunction. This is shown by the subsequently recorded story of Elijahs calling down fire from heaven on the unfortunate captains and soldiers of Ahaziah, in whatever light we regard that story which was evidently current in the Schools of tile Prophets. If the massacre of the priests cannot be regarded as morally excusable, the destruction of these royal emissaries by consuming fire was certainly much less so. The vision may have had a deeper significance than Elijah or the Schools of the Prophets understood, just as the words of Jesus often had a deeper significance than was dreamt of even by the Apostles when they heard them. The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Neither Elijah nor the sacred historian may have grasped all that was meant by the wind, and earthquake, and fire, and still small voice.
“As little children sleep and dream of heaven,
So thoughts beyond their thoughts to those high bards were given.”
It is scarcely more than another aspect of the many-sided truth that love is more potent and more Divine than violence, if we also see in this incident a foreshadowing of the truth, so necessary for the impatient souls of men, that God neither hasteth nor resteth; that He is patient because Eternal; that a thousand years in His sight are but as yesterday, seeing that it is past as a dream in the night. Something of this we learn from the study of nature. It used to be thought that the upheaval of the continents and the rearing of the great mountains was due to cataclysms and conflagrations and vast explosions of volcanic force. It has long been known that they are due, on the contrary, to the inconceivably slow modifications produced by the most insignificant causes. It is the age-long accumulation of mica-flakes which has built up the mighty bastions of the Alps. It is the toil of the ephemeral coral insect which has reared whole leagues of the American Continent and filled the Pacific Ocean with those unnumbered isles
“Which, like to rich and various gems, inlay
The unadorned bosom of the deep.”
It is the slow silting up of the rivers which has created vast deltas for the home of man. It has required the calcareous deposit of millions of animalculae to produce even one inch of the height of the white cliffs along the shores. Even so the thoughts of man have been made more merciful m the slow course of ages, and quiet, incommensurable influences have caused all those advances in civilization and humanity which elevate our race. The “bright invisible air” has produced effects incomparably more stupendous than the wild tornadoes. “That air, so gentle, so imperceptible, is more powerful, not only than all the creatures that breathe and live by it, not only than all the oaks of the forest which it rears in an age and shatters in a moment, not only than the monsters of the sea, but than the sea itself, which it tosses up with foam and breaks upon every rock in its vast circumference; for it carries its bosom all perfect calm, and compresses the incontrollable ocean and the peopled earth, like an atom of a feather.”
“Thus regarded,” says Professor Van Oort, “the picture of Elijah at Mount Horeb is full of consolation to all lovers of the, truth. Sometimes they cry, All is lost! and are ready to despair. But God answers, Never lose heart. Storms in which God is not, in which the power of darkness seems to sweep unbridled and unconquered oer the earth, come before the whispering of the cooling breeze, but the kingdom of peace and blessedness is ever drawing nigh. Let all who love God truly, work for its approach.”
Let us then cling to the lesson that mercy is better than sacrifice, and is transcendently to be preferred to holocausts of human sacrifice, even when the victims are polluted and cruel idolaters. Scripture never hides from us the imperfections of its heroes, and St. James tells us that Elijah was but a man of like passions with ourselves. The progress of the generations, the slow shining of the light of God, has not been in vain, and we can see truths and read the meaning of theophanies by the experience of three subsequent millenniums, of which two have followed the incarnation of the Son of God.