Local tradition places the site of Elijahs sacrifice, not on the highest point of the mountain (1,728 ft.), but at the southeastern extremity (1,600 ft.) of the ridge, where a shapeless ruin, composed of great hewn stones, and standing amid thick bushes of dwarf-oak, in the near vicinity of a perennial spring, is known to the Arabs as El-Maharrakah, the burning, or the sacrifice. All the circumstances of the locality adapt it for the scene of the contest.<\/P> <\/p>\n
He complied with Elijahs motion; partly, because it was so fair and reasonable, that he could not refuse it with honour, nor without the discontent of all his people, this being proposed in order to their deliverance from this terrible famine; partly, because the urgency of the present distress made him willing to try all means to remove it; partly, from a curiosity of seeing some extraordinary events; and principally, because God inclined his heart to close with it. <\/P> <\/p>\n
20. mount Carmel<\/B>is a bold,bluff promontory, which extends from the western coast of Palestine,at the bay of Acre, for many miles eastward, to the central hills ofSamaria. It is a long range, presenting many summits, and intersectedby a number of small ravines. The spot where the contest took placeis situated at the eastern extremity, which is also the highest pointof the whole ridge. It is called El-Mohhraka, “the Burning,”or “the Burnt Place.” No spot could have been betteradapted for the thousands of Israel to have stood drawn up on thosegentle slopes. The rock shoots up in an almost perpendicular wall ofmore than two hundred feet in height, on the side of the vale ofEsdraelon. This wall made it visible over the whole plain, and fromall the surrounding heights, where gazing multitudes would bestationed.<\/P><\/p>\nFuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible <\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel<\/strong>,…. By messengers, requiring their attendance at Mount Carmel at such a time, at least their chief and principal men:<\/p>\n and gathered the prophets together unto Mount Carmel<\/strong>; the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, but not the four hundred prophets of the groves; for of them we have no account afterwards, only of the former; it may be they were not at the command of Ahab, only of Jezebel, at whose table they ate, who would not suffer them to go.<\/p>\n Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal<\/em>. – Ahab sent through all Israel and gathered the prophets (of Baal) together upon Mount Carmel. According to 1Ki 18:21<\/span>, 1Ki 18:22<\/span>, and 1Ki 18:39<\/span>, a number of the people (“all the people”) had also come with them. On the other hand, not only is there no further reference in what follows to the 400 prophets of Asherah (cf. 1Ki 18:25<\/span> and 1Ki 18:40<\/span>), but in 1Ki 18:22<\/span> it is very obvious that the presence of the 450 prophets of Baal alone is supposed. We must therefore assume that the Asherah prophets, foreboding nothing good, had found a way of evading the command of Ahab and securing the protection of Jezebel.<\/p>\n (Note: It is true that in 1Ki 18:22<\/span> the lxx have this clause, (i.e., ) , which Thenius regards as an original portion of the text, though without observing the character of the lxx. If the Asherah prophets had also been present, Elijah would not only have commanded the prophets of Baal to be seized and slain (1Ki 18:40<\/span>), but the Asherah prophets also. From the principle a potiori fit<\/em>, etc., it may be possible to explain the omission of the Asherah prophets in 1Ki 18:25<\/span>, but not in 1Ki 18:40<\/span>.) <\/p>\n King Ahab also appeared upon Carmel (cf. 1Ki 18:41<\/span>), as he had no idea of Elijah’s intention, which was by no means “to prove to the king that he (Ahab) and not Elijah had brought Israel into trouble” (Vat., Seb. Schm.), but to put before the eyes of the whole nation a convincing practical proof of the sole deity of Jehovah and of the nothingness of the Baals, that were regarded as gods, and by slaying the priests of Baal to give a death-blow to idolatry in Israel.<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:21<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> Elijah addressed the assembled people as follows: “How long do ye limp upon both sides? Is Jehovah God, then go after Him; but if Baal be God, then go after him” – and the people answered him not a word. They wanted to combine the worship of Jehovah and Baal, and not to assume a hostile attitude towards Jehovah by the worship of Baal; and were therefore obliged to keep silence under this charge of infatuated halving, since they knew very well from the law itself that Jehovah demanded worship with a whole and undivided heart (Deu 6:4-5<\/span>). This dividing of the heart between Jehovah and Baal Elijah called limping , “upon the two parties (of Jehovah and Baal).” For the meaning “divided opinions, parties,” is well established by the use of in Psa 119:113<\/span>; and the rendering of the lxx , the hollow of the knee, is only a paraphrase of the sense and not an interpretation of the word.<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:22-25<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> As the people adhered to their undecided double-mindedness, Elijah proposed to let the Deity Himself decide who was the true God, Jehovah or Baal. The prophets of Baal were to offer a sacrifice to Baal, and he (Elijah) would offer one to Jehovah. And the true God should make Himself known by kindling the burnt-offering presented to Him with fire from heaven, and in this way answering the invocation of His name. This proposal was based upon the account in Lev 9. As Jehovah had there manifested Himself as the God of Israel by causing fire to fall from heaven upon the first sacrifice presented in front of the tabernacle and to consume it, Elijah hoped that in like manner Jehovah would even now reveal Himself as the living God. And the form of decision thus proposed would necessarily appear all the fairer, because Elijah, the prophet of Jehovah, stood alone in opposition to a whole crowd of Baal’s prophets, numbering no less than 450 men. And for that very reason the latter could not draw back, without publicly renouncing their pretensions, whether they believed that Baal would really do what was desired, or hoped that they might be able to escape, through some accident or stratagem, from the difficult situation that had been prepared for them, or fancied that the God of Elijah would no more furnish the proof of His deity that was desired of Him than Baal would. In order, however, to cut off every subterfuge in the event of their attempt proving a failure, Elijah not only yielded the precedence to them on the occasion of this sacrifice, but gave them the choice of the two oxen brought to be offered; which made the fairness of his proposal so much the more conspicuous to every one, that the people willingly gave their consent.<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:26-29<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> The prophets of Baal then proceeded to the performance of the duty required. They prepared ( ) the sacrifice, and called solemnly upon Baal from morning to noon: “O Baal, hear us,” limping round the altar; “but there was no voice, and no one to hear (to answer), and no attention.” is a contemptuous epithet applied to the pantomimic sacrificial dance performed by these priests round about the altar,<\/p>\n (Note: The following is the description which Herodian ( hist<\/em>. v. 3), among others, gives of Heliogabalus when dancing as chief priest of the Emesinian sun-god: , , .)<\/p>\n (“which one had made”).<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:27-29<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> As no answer had been received before noon, Elijah cried out to them in derision: “Call to him with a loud voice, for he is God (sc., according to your opinion), for he is meditating, or has gone aside ( , secessio <\/em>), or is on the journey ( , on the way); perhaps he is sleeping, that he may wake up.” The ridicule lies more especially in the (for he is a god), when contrasted with the enumeration of the different possibilities which may have occasioned their obtaining no answer, and is heightened by the earnest and threefold repetition of the . With regard to these possibilities we may quote the words of Clericus: “Although these things when spoken of God are the most absurd things possible, yet idolaters could believe such things, as we may see from Homer.” The priests of Baal did actually begin therefore to cry louder than before, and scratched themselves with swords and lances, till the blood poured out, “according to their custom” ( ). Movers describes this as follows ( Phnizier<\/em>, i. pp. 682,683), from statements made by ancient authors concerning the processions of the strolling bands of the Syrian goddess: “A discordant howling opens the scene. They then rush wildly about in perfect confusion, with their heads bowed down to the ground, but always revolving in circles, so that the loosened hair drags through the mire; they then begin to bite their arms, and end with cutting themselves with the two-edged swords which they are in the habit of carrying. A new scene then opens. One of them, who surpasses all the rest in frenzy, begins to prophesy with signs and groans; he openly accuses himself of the sins which he has committed, and which he is now about to punish by chastising the flesh, takes the knotted scourge, which the Galli<\/em> generally carry, lashes his back, and then cuts himself with swords till the blood trickles down from his mangled body.” The climax of the Bacchantic dance in the case of the priests of Baal also was the prophesying ( ), and it was for this reason, probably, that they were called prophets ( ). This did not begin till noon, and lasted till about the time of the evening sacrifice ( , not , 1Ki 18:29<\/span>). , “the laying on (offering) of the meat-offering,” refers to the daily evening sacrifice, which consisted of a burnt-offering and a meat-offering (Exo 29:38<\/span>.; Num 28:3-8<\/span>), and was then offered, according to the Rabbinical observance (see at Exo 12:6<\/span>), in the closing hours of the afternoon, as is evident from the circumstances which are described in 1Ki 18:40<\/span>. as having taken place on the same day and subsequently to Elijah’s offering, which was presented at the time of the evening sacrifice (1Ki 18:36<\/span>).<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:30-39<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> Elijah’s sacrifice<\/em>. – As no answer came from Baal, Elijah began to prepare for his own sacrifice. 1Ki 18:30<\/span>. He made the people come nearer, that he might have both eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses present at his sacrifice, and restored the altar of Jehovah which was broken down. Consequently, there was already an altar of Jehovah upon Carmel, which either dated from the times anterior to the building of the temple, when altars of Jehovah were erected in different places throughout the land (see at 1Ki 3:2<\/span>), or, what is more probable, had been built by pious worshippers belonging to the ten tribes since the division of the kingdom (Hengstenberg, Dissertations on the Pentateuch<\/em>, vol. i. p. 183, trans.), and judging from 1Ki 19:10<\/span>, had been destroyed during the reign of Ahab, when the worship of Baal gained the upper hand.<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:31-35<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> Elijah took twelve stones, “according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come (Gen 32:29<\/span>; Gen 35:10<\/span>), Israel shall be thy name,” and built these stones into an altar. The twelve stones were a practical declaration on the part of the prophet that the division of the nation into two kingdoms was at variance with the divine calling of Israel, inasmuch as according to the will of God the twelve tribes were to form one<\/em> people of Jehovah, and to have a common sacrificial altar; whilst the allusion to the fact that Jehovah had given to the forefather of the nation the name of Israel, directs attention to the wrong which the seceding ten tribes had done in claiming the name of Israel for themselves, whereas it really belonged to the whole nation. (in the name of Jehovah) belongs to (built), and signifies by the authority and for the glory of Jehovah. “And made a trench as the space of two seahs of seed (i.e., so large that you could sow two seahs<\/p>\n (Note: i.e., about two Dresden pecks ( Metzen<\/em>). – Thenius.) <\/p>\n of seed upon the ground which it covered) round about the altar.” The trench must therefore have been of considerable breadth and depth, although it is impossible to determine the exact dimensions, as the kind of seed-corn is not defined. He then arranged the sacrifice upon the altar, and had four Kad<\/em> (pails) of water poured three times in succession upon the burnt-offering which was laid upon the pieces of wood, so that the water flowed round about the altar, and then had the trench filled with water.<\/p>\n (Note: Thenius throws suspicion upon the historical character of this account, on the ground that “ the author evidently forgot the terrible drought, by which the numerous sources of the Carmel and the Nachal Kishon must<\/em> have been dried up; ” but Van de Velde has already answered this objection, which has been raised by others also, and has completely overthrown it by pointing out the covered well of el Mohraka<\/em>, in relation to which he makes the following remark: “ In such springs the water remains always cool, under the shade of a vaulted roof, and with no hot atmosphere to evaporate it. While all other fountains were dried up, I can well understand that there might have been found here that superabundance of water which Elijah poured so profusely over the altar ” (vol. i. p. 325, trans.). But the drying up of the Kishon is a mere conjecture, which cannot be historically proved.) <\/p>\n Elijah adopted this course for the purpose of precluding all suspicion of even the possibility of fraud in connection with the miraculous burning of the sacrifice. For idolaters had carried their deceptions to such a length, that they would set fire to the wood of the sacrifices from hollow spaces concealed beneath the altars, in order to make the credulous people believe that the sacrifice had been miraculously set on fire by the deity. Ephraem Syrus and Joh. Chrysostom both affirm this; the latter in his Oratio in Petrum Apost. et Eliam proph<\/em>. t. ii. p. 737, ed. Montf., the genuineness of which, however, is sometimes called in question.<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:36-37<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> After these preparations at the time of the evening sacrifice, Elijah drew near and prayed: “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel (this name is used with deliberate purpose instead of Jacob: see at 1Ki 18:31<\/span>), let it be known this day that Thou art God in Israel, and I am Thy servant, and do all these things through Thy word. Hear me, Jehovah, hear me, that this people may know that Thou Jehovah art God, and turnest back their hearts!” (i.e., back from idols to Thyself.) This clearly expresses not only the object of the miracle which follows, but that of miracles universally. The perfects and are used to denote not only what has already occurred, but what will still take place and is as certain as if it had taken place already. refers not merely to the predicted drought and to what Elijah has just been doing (Thenius), but to the miracle which was immediately about to be performed; and to the conversion of the people to the Lord their God, for which Elijah’s coming had already prepared the way, and which was still further advanced by the following miracle.<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:38-39<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> Then fire of Jehovah fell and consumed the burnt-offering and the pieces of wood, etc. , the fire proceeding from Jehovah, was not a natural flash of lightning, which could not produce any such effect, but miraculous fire falling from heaven, as in 1Ch 21:26<\/span>; 2Ch 7:1<\/span>) see at Lev 9:24<\/span>), the supernatural origin of which was manifested in the fact, that it not only consumed the sacrifice with the pile of wood upon the altar, but also burned up ( in calcem redegit <\/em> – Cler.) the stones of the altar and the earth that was thrown up to form the trench, and licked up the water in the trench. Through this miracle Jehovah not only accredited Elijah as His servant and prophet, but proved Himself to be the living God, whom Israel was to serve; so that all the people who were present fell down upon their faces in worship, as they had done once before, viz., at the consecration of the altar in Lev 9:24<\/span>, and confessed “Jehovah is God:” , the true or real God.<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:40-46<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> Elijah availed himself of this enthusiasm of the people for the Lord, to deal a fatal blow at the prophets of Baal, who turned away the people from the living God. He commanded the people to seize them, and had them slain at the brook Kishon, and that not so much from revenge, i.e., because it was at their instigation that queen Jezebel had murdered the prophets of the true God (1Ki 18:13<\/span>), as to carry out the fundamental law of the Old Testament kingdom of God, which prohibited idolatry on pain of death, and commanded that false prophets should be destroyed (Deu 17:2-3<\/span>; Deu 13:13<\/span>.).<\/p>\n (Note: It was necessary that idolatry and temptation to the worship of idols should be punished with death, as a practical denial of Jehovah the true God and Lord of His chosen people, if the object of the divine institutions was to be secured. By putting the priests of Baal to death, therefore, Elijah only did what the law required; and inasmuch as the ordinary administrators of justice did not fulfil their obligations, he did this as an extraordinary messenger of God, whom the Lord had accredited as His prophet before all the people by the miraculous answer given to his prayer. – To infer from this act of Elijah the right to institute a bloody persecution of heretics, would not only indicate a complete oversight of the difference between heathen idolaters and Christian heretics, but the same reprehensible confounding of the evangelical standpoint of the New Testament with the legal standpoint of the Old, which Christ condemned in His own disciples in Luk 9:55-56<\/span>.) <\/p>\n 1Ki 18:41<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> Elijah then called upon the king, who had eaten nothing from morning till evening in his eagerness to see the result of the contest between the prophet and the priests of Baal, to come up from the brook Kishon to the place of sacrifice upon Carmel, where his wants were provided for, and to partake of meat and drink, for he (Elijah) could already hear the noise of a fall of rain. is without a verb, as is often the case (e.g., Isa 13:4<\/span>; Isa 52:8<\/span>, etc.); literally, it is the sound, the noise. After the occasion of the curse of drought, which had fallen upon the land, had been removed by the destruction of the idolatrous priest, the curse itself could also be removed. “But this was not to take place without the prophet’s saying it, and by means of this gift proving himself afresh to be the representative of God” (O. v. Gerlach).<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:42-43<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> While the king was refreshing himself with food and drink, Elijah went up to the top of Carmel to pray that the Lord would complete His work by fulfilling His promise (1Ki 18:1<\/span>) in sending rain; and continued in prayer till the visible commencement of the fulfilment of his prayer was announced by his servant, who, after looking out upon the sea seven times, saw at last a small cloud ascend from the sea about the size of a man’s hand.<\/p>\n (Note: V. de Velde has shown how admirably these circumstances (1Ki 18:43<\/span>, 1Ki 18:44<\/span>) also apply to the situation of el Mohraka<\/em>: “ on its west and north-west side the view of the sea is quite intercepted by an adjacent height. That height may be ascended, however, in a few minutes, and a full view of the sea obtained from the top ” (i. p. 326).<\/p>\n The peculiar attitude assumed by Elijah when praying (Jam 5:18<\/span>), viz., bowing down even to the earth ( ) and putting his face between his knees, probably the attitude of deep absorption in God, was witnessed by Shaw and Chardin in the case of certain dervishes (vid., Harmar, Beobachtungen<\/em>, iii. pp. 373-4).<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:44<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> As soon as the small cloud ascended from the sea, Elijah sent his servant to tell the king to set off home, that he might not be stopped by the rain. , go down, sc. from Carmel to his chariot, which was standing at the foot of the mountain.<\/p>\n (Note: “ After three years ‘ drought all herbage must have disappeared from the plain of Jezreel, and the loose clay composing its soil must have been changed into a deep layer of dust. Had time been allowed for the rain to convert that dust into a bed of mud, the chariot-wheels might have stuck fast in it. ” V. de Velde, i. pp. 326-7.) <\/p>\n 1Ki 18:45<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> Before any provision had been made for it ( : hither and thither, i.e., while the hand is being moved to and fro, “very speedily;” cf. Ewald, 105, b<\/em>.) the heaven turned black with clouds and wind, i.e., with storm-clouds (Thenius), and there came a great fall of rain, while Ahab drove along the road to Jezreel. It was quite possible for the king to reach Jezreel the same evening from that point, namely, from the foot of Carmel below el Mohraka<\/em>: but only thence, for every half-hour farther west would have taken him too far from his capital for it to be possible to accomplish the distance before the rain overtook him (V. de Velde, i. p. 326). Jezreel<\/em>, the present Zerin<\/em> (see at Jos 19:18<\/span>), was probably the summer residence of Ahab (see at Jos 21:1<\/span>). The distance from el Mohraka<\/em> thither is hardly 2 3\/4 German geographical miles (? 14 Engl. Miles – Tr.) in a straight line.<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:46<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong> When Ahab drove off, the hand of the Lord came upon Elijah, so that he ran before Ahab as far as Jezreel, – not so much for the purpose of bringing the king to his residence unhurt (Seb. Schm.), as to give him a proof of his humility, and thus deepen the impression already made upon his heart, and fortify him all the more against the strong temptations of his wife, who abused his weakness to support the cause of ungodliness. This act of Elijah, whom Ahab had hitherto only known as a stern, imperious, and powerful prophet, by which he now showed himself to be his faithful subject and servant, was admirably adapted to touch the heart of the king, and produce the conviction that it was not from any personal dislike to him, but only in the service of the Lord, that the prophet was angry at his idolatry, and that he was not trying to effect his ruin, but rather his conversion and the salvation of his soul. , the hand (i.e., the power) of the Lord, denotes the supernatural strength with which the Lord endowed him, to accomplish superhuman feats. This formula is generally applied to the divine inspiration by which the prophets were prepared for their prophesying (cf. 2Ki 3:15<\/span>; Eze 1:3<\/span>; Eze 3:15<\/span>, etc.).<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:20 So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto mount Carmel.<\/p>\n Ver. 20. Unto mount Carmel.<\/strong> ] Where the Papists say that Elias used to live a monastic retired life; and thereupon they call an order of their friars Carmelites. A mere fancy.<\/p>\n children = sons. <\/p>\n gathered: 1Ki 22:9 <\/p>\n Reciprocal: Jos 19:26 – Carmel 1Ki 18:22 – Baal’s prophets 1Ki 19:10 – I only 2Ki 10:20 – Proclaim<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:20. So Ahab sent, &c. He complied with Elijahs motion, because the urgency of the present distress made him willing to try all means to remove it; from a curiosity of seeing some extraordinary events; and, principally, because God inclined his heart.<\/p>\n ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL<\/p>\n 1Ki 18:20-40<\/p>\n “O for a sculptors hand, That thou mightst take thy stand, Thy wild hair floating in the eastern breeze!”<\/p>\n – KEBLE<\/p>\n IT never occurred to Ahab to refuse the challenge, or to arrest the hated messenger. The hermit and the dervish are sacrosanct; they stand before kings and are not ashamed. Having nothing to desire, they have nothing to fear. So Antony stalked into the streets of Alexandria to denounce its prefect; so Athanasius fearlessly seized the bridle of Constantine in his new city; so a ragged and dwarfish old man-Macedonius the Barley-eater-descended from his mountain cave at Antioch to stop the horses of the avenging commissioners of Thedosius and bade them go back and rebuke the fury of their Emperor, -and so far from punishing him they alighted, and fell on their knees, and begged his blessing.<\/p>\n The vast assembly was gathered by royal proclamation. There could have been no scene in the land of Israel more strikingly suitable for the purpose than Mount Carmel. It is a ridge of upper oolite, or Jura limestone, which at the eastern extremity rises more than sixteen hundred feet above the sea, sinking down to six hundred feet at the western extremity. The “excellency of Carmel” of which the prophet speaks consists in the fruitfulness which to this day makes it rich in flowers of all hues, and clothes it with the impenetrable foliage of oak, pine, walnut, olive, laurel, dense brushwood, and evergreen shrubberies thicker than in any other part in Central Palestine. The name means “Garden of God,” and travelers, delighted with the rocky dells and blossoming glades, describe Carmel as “still the fragrant lovely mountain that it was of old.” It “forms the southern extremity of the Gulf of Khaifa, and separates the great western plain of Philistia from the plain of Esdraelon, and the plain of Phoenicia.” “It is difficult,” says Sir G. Grove, “to find another site in which every particular is so minutely fulfilled as in this.” The whole mountain is now called Mar Elias from the Prophets name.<\/p>\n The actual spot of the range near which took place this most memorable event in the history of Israel was almost undoubtedly a little below the eastern summit of the ridge. It is “a terrace of natural rock,” which commands a fine view of the plains and lakes and the hills of Galilee, and the windings of the Kishon, with Jezreel glimmering in the far distance under the heights of Gilboa. The remains of an old and massive, square structure are here visible, called El Muhrakkah, “the burning,” or “the sacrifice,” perhaps the site of Elijahs altar. Under the ancient olives still remains the round well of perennial water from which, even in the drought, the Prophet could fill the barrels which he poured over his sacrifice. Elijahs grotto is pointed out in the Church of the Convent, and another near the sea. In the region known as “the garden of Elijah” are found the geodes and septaria- stones and fossils which assume the aspect, sometimes of loaves of bread, sometimes of watermelons and olives, and are still known as “Elijahs fruits.” The whole mountain murmurs with his name. He became in local legend the oracular god Carmelus, whose “altar and devotion” drew visitors no less illustrious than Pythagoras and Vespasian to visit the sacred hill.<\/p>\n Here, then, at early dawn the Prophet of Jehovah, in his solitary grandeur, met the four hundred and fifty idolatrous priests and their rabble of attendant fanatics in the presence of the half-curious king and the half-apostate people. He presented the oft-repeated type of Gods servant alone against the world. Most rarely is it otherwise. They who speak smooth things and prophesy deceits may always live at ease in amicable compromise with the world, the flesh, and the devil. But the Prophet has ever to set his face as a flint against tyrants, and mobs and false prophets, and intriguing priests, and all who daub tottering walls with untempered mortar, and all who, in days smooth and perilous, softly murmur, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” So it was with Noah in the days of the deluge; so with Amos and Hosea and the later Zechariah; so with Micaiah, the son of Imlah; so with Isaiah, mocked as a babbler by the priests at Jerusalem, and at last sawn asunder; so with Jeremiah, struck in the face by the priest Pashur, and thrust into the miry dungeon, and at last murdered in exile; so with Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, whom they slew between the porch and the altar. Nor has it been less so since the earliest dawn of the New Dispensation. Of John the Baptist the priests and Pharisees said, “he has a devil,” and Herod slew him in prison. All, perhaps, of the twelve Apostles were martyred. Paul, like the rest, was intrigued against, thwarted, hated, mobbed, imprisoned, hunted from place to place by the world, the Jews, and the false Christians. Treated as the off-scouring of all things, he was at last contemptuously beheaded, in utter obscurity. Similar fates befell many of the best and greatest of the Fathers. Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, were slain by wild beasts and by fire. Origens life was one long martyrdom, mostly at the hands of his fellow-Christians. Did not Athanasius stand against the world? What needs it to summon from the prison or the stake the mighty shades of Savonarola, of Huss, of Jerome of Prague, of the Albigenses and Waldenses, of the myriad victims of the inquisition, of those who were burnt at Smithfield and Oxford, of Luther, of Whitfield? Did Christ mean nothing when He said, among His first beatitudes, “Blessed are ye when all men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely for My sake and the gospels”? Was it mere accident and metaphor when He said, “Ye are of the world, and therefore the world cannot hate you; but Me it hateth”; and, “If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, much more them of His household”? Which of His best and purest sons, from the first Good Friday down to this day, has ever passed through life unpersecuted of slanderous tongues? Has the nominal Church ever shown any more mercy to saints than the sneering and furious world? What has sustained Christs hated ones? What but that confidence towards God which lives among those whose heart condemns them not? What but the fact that “they could turn from the storm without to the approving sunshine within”? “See” it has been said, “he who builds on the general esteem of the world builds, not on the sand, but, which is worse, upon the wind, and writes the title-deeds of his hope upon the face of a river.” But when a man knows that “one with God is always in a majority,” then his loneliness is changed into the confidence that all the ten thousand times ten thousand of Heaven are with him. “His banishment becomes his preferment, his rags his trophies, his nakedness his ornament; and so long as his innocence is his repast, he feasts and banquets upon bread and water.”<\/p>\n And so,<\/p>\n Among the faithless, faithful only he; <\/p>\n Among innumerable false, unmoved, <\/p>\n Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified.<\/p>\n Elijah fearlessly stood alone, while all the world confronted him with frowning menace. The coward sympathies of the neutrals who face both ways may have been with him, but the multitude of such Laodiceans wink at wrong, and from love of their own ease do not, and dare not, speak. God only was the protector of Elijah, and in himself alone was all his state, as in his garment of hair he approached the people and confronted the idolatrous priests in all the gorgeousness of Baals vestry. He, like his great predecessor Moses, was the champion of moral purity, of the national faith, of religious freedom, and simplicity, of the immediate access of man to God; they were the champions of fanatical and unhallowed religionism, of usurping priestcraft, of unnatural self-abasements, of persecuting despotism, of licentious and cruel rites. Elijah was the deliverer of his people from a hideous and polluted apostasy which, had he not prevailed that day would have obliterated their name and their memory from the annals of the nations. That he was a genuine historic character-a prophet of Divine commission and marvelous power-cannot for a moment be doubted, however impossible it may now be in every incident to disentangle the literal historic facts from the poetic and legendary emblazonment which those facts not unnaturally received in the ordinary recollection of the prophetic schools. Throughout the great scene which followed, his spirit was that of the Psalmist: “Though a host of men should encamp against me, yet will not my heart be afraid”; that of the “servant of the Lord” in Isaiah: “He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword, and in his quiver hath He hid me.”<\/p>\n His first challenge was to the people. “How long,” he asked, “do ye totter between two opinions? If Jehovah be God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.”<\/p>\n Awestruck and ashamed the multitude kept unbroken silence. Doubtless it was, in part, the silence of guilt. They knew that they had followed Jezebel into the cruelties of Baal-worship, and the forbidden lusts which polluted the temples of the Asherah. Puritanism, simplicity, spirituality of worship involves a strain too great and too lofty for the multitude. Like all Orientals, like the Negroes of America, like most weak minds, they loved to rely on a pompous ritual and a sensuous worship. It is so easy to let these stand for the deeper requirements which lie in the truth that “God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”<\/p>\n Receiving no answer to his stern question, Elijah laid down the conditions of the contest. “The prophets of Baal,” he said, “are four hundred and fifty: I stand alone as a prophet of Jehovah. Let two bullocks be provided for us; they shall slay and dress one, and lay it on wood, but-for there shall be no priestly trickeries today-they shall put no fire under. I, though I be no priest, will slay and dress the other, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under. Then let all of you, Baal-priests and people if you will, cry to your idols; I will call on the name of Jehovah. The God that answereth by fire let him be God.”<\/p>\n No challenge could be fairer, for Baal was the Sun-god; and what god could be more likely to answer by fire from that blazing sky? The deep murmur of the people expressed their assent. The Baal priests were caught as in a snare. Their hearts must have sunk within them; his did not. Perhaps some of them believed sufficiently in their idol to hope that, were he demon or deity, he might save himself and his votaries from humiliation and defeat; but most of them must have been seized with terrible misgiving, as they saw the assembled people prepared to wait with Oriental patience, seated on their abbas on the sides of that natural amphitheatre, till the descending flame should prove that Baal had heard the weird invocation of his worshippers. But since they could not escape the proposed ordeal, they chose, and slew, and dressed their victim. From morning till noon-many of them with wildly waving arms, others with their foreheads in the dust-they upraised the wild chant of their monotonous invocation, “Baal, hear us! Baal, hear us!” In vain the cry rose and fell, now uttered in soft appealing murmurs, now rising into passionate entreaties. All was silent. There lay the dead bullock putrescing under the burning orb which was at once their deity and the visible sign of his presence. No consuming lightning fell, even when the sun flamed in the zenith of that cloudless sky. There was no voice nor any that answered.<\/p>\n Then they tried still more potent incantations. They began to circle round the altar they had made in one of their solemn dances to the shrill strains of pipe and flute. The rhythmic movements ended in giddy whirls and orgiastic leapings which were a common feature of sensuous heathen worship; dances in which like modern dervishes, they bounded and yelled and spun round and round till they fell foaming and senseless to the ground. The people looked on expectant, but it was all in vain.<\/p>\n Hitherto the Prophet had remained silent, but now when noon came, and still no fire descended, he mocked them. Now, surely, if ever, was their time! They had been crying for six long hours in their vain repetitions and incantations. Surely they had not shouted loud enough! Baal was a god; some strange accident must have prevented him from hearing the prayer of his miserable priests. Perhaps he was in deep meditation, so that he did not notice those frantic appeals; perhaps he was too busy talking to some one else, or was on a journey somewhere; or was asleep and must be awakened; or, he added with yet more mordant sarcasm, and in a gibe which would have sounded coarse to modern ears, perhaps he had gone aside for a private purpose. He must be called, he must be aroused; he must be made to hear.<\/p>\n Such taunts addressed to this multitude of priests in the hearing of the people, whom they desired to dupe or to convince, drove them to fiercer frenzy. Already the westering sun began to warn them that their hour was past, and failure imminent. They would not succumb without trying the darker sorceries of blood and self-mutilation, which were only resorted to at the most dread extremities. With renewed and redoubled yells they offered on their altar the blood of human sacrifice, stabbing and gashing themselves with swords and lances, till they presented a horrid spectacle. Their vestments and their naked bodies were besmeared with gore as they whirled round and round with shriller and more frenzied screams. They raved in vain. The shadows began to lengthen. The hour for the evening Minchah, the evening meal-offering, and oblation of flour and meal, salt and frankincense, drew near. It was already “between the two evenings.” They had continued their weird invocations all through the burning day, but there was not any that regarded. There lay the dead bullock on the still fireless altar; and now their Tyrian Sun-god, like the fabled “Hercules,” was but burning himself to death on the flaming pyre of sunset amid the unavailing agony of his worshippers.<\/p>\n Then Elijah bade the sullen and baffled fanatics to stand aside, and summoned the people to throng round him. There was nothing tumultuous or orgiastic in his proceedings. In striking contrast with the four hundred and fifty frantic sun-worshippers, he proceeded in the calmest and most deliberate way. First, in the name of Jehovah, he repaired the old bamah-the mountain-altar, which probably Jezebel had broken down. This he did with twelve stones, one for each of the tribes of Israel. Then he dug a broad trench. Then, when he had prepared his bullock, in order to show the people the impossibility of any deception, such as are common among priests, he bade them drench it three times over with four barrels of water, from the still-existent spring, and, not content with that, he filled the trench also with water. Lastly at the time of the evening oblation he briefly offered up one prayer that Jehovah would make it known this day to His backsliding people that He, not Baal, was the Elohim of Israel. He used no “much speaking”; he did not adopt the dervish yells and dances and gashings which were abhorrent to God, though they appealed so powerfully to the sensuous imaginations of the multitude. He only raised his eyes to heaven, {1Ki 18:36} and cried aloud in the hush of expectant stillness:-<\/p>\n “Jehovah, God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, Let it be known this day that Thou art God in Israel, And that I am Thy servant, And that I have done all these things at Thy word. Hear me, Jehovah, hear me. That this people may know that Thou, Jehovah, art God, And that Thou hast turned their heart back again.”<\/p>\n The prayer, with its triple invocation of Jehovahs name, and its seven rhythmic lines, was no sooner ended than down streamed the lightning, and consumed the bullock and the wood, and shattered the stones, and burnt up the dust, and licked up the water in the trenches; and, with one terror-stricken impulse, the people all prostrated themselves on their faces with the cry, “Yahweh-hoo-ha-Elohim. Yahweh-hoo-ha-Elohim!” “The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God!”-a cry which was almost identical with the name of the victorious prophet Elijahu-“Yah, He is my God.”<\/p>\n The magnificent narrative in which the interest has been wound up to so high a pitch, and expressed in so lofty a strain of imaginative and dramatic force, ends in a deed of blood. According to Josephus, the people, by a spontaneous movement, “seized and slew the prophets of Baal, Elijah exhorting them to do so.” According to the earlier narrative, Elijah said to the people: “Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them; and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there with the sword.” It is not necessarily meant that he slew them with his own hand, though indeed he may have done so, as Phinehas sacrificed Jephthahs daughter, and Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord. His moral responsibility was precisely the same in either case. We are not told that he had any commission from Jehovah to do this, or was bidden thereto by any voice of the Lord. Yet in those wild days-days of ungovernable passions and imperfect laws, days of ignorance which God winked at-it is not only perfectly probable that Elijah would have acted thus, but most unlikely that his conscience reproached him for doing so, or that it otherwise than approved the sanguinary vengeance. It was the frightful lex talionis, which was spoken “to them of old time,” and which inflicted on the defeated what they would certainly have inflicted on Elijah had he not been the conqueror. The prophets of Baal indirectly, if not directly, had been the cause of Jezebels persecution of the prophets of the Lord. The thought of pity would not occur to Elijah any more than it did to the writer, or writers, of Deuteronomy, perhaps, long afterwards, who commanded the stoning of idolaters, whether men or women. {Deu 13:6-9; Deu 17:2-4} The massacre of the priests accorded with the whole spirit of those half-anarchic times. It accords with that Elijah-spirit of orthodox fanaticism, which, as Christ Himself had to teach to the sons of thunder, is not His spirit, but utterly alien from it. If, perhaps two centuries later, the savage deed could be recorded, and recorded with approval, by this narrator from the School of the Prophets in these superb eulogies of his hero; if so many centuries later the disciple whom Jesus loved, and the first martyr-apostle could deem it an exemplary deed; in centuries later, it could be appealed to as a precedent by Inquisitors with hearts made hard as the nether millstone by bigoted and hateful superstition; if even Puritans could be animated by the same false hallowing of ferocity; how can we judge Elijah, if, in dark unilluminated early days, he had not learnt to rise to a purer standpoint? To this day the names about Carmel shudder, as it were, with reminiscence of this religious massacre. There is El Muhrakkah “the place of burning”; there is Tel-el-Kusis, “the hill of the priests”; and that ancient river, the river Kishon, which had once been choked with the corpses of the host of Sisera, and has since then been incarnadined by the slain of many a battle, is-perhaps in memory of this bloodshed most of all-still known as the Nahr-el-Mokatta, or “the stream of slaughter.” What wonder that the Eastern Christians in their pictures of Elijah still surround him with the decapitated heads of these his enemies? To this day the Moslim regard him as one who terrifies and slays.<\/p>\n But though the deed of vengeance stands recorded, and recorded with no censure, in the sacred history, we must-without condemning Elijah, and without measuring his days by the meting-rod of Christian mercy-still unhesitatingly held fast the sound principle of early and as yet uncontaminated Christianity, and say, as said the early Fathers, Violence is a thing hateful to the God of love.<\/p>\n Even Christians, and that down to our own day, have abused the example of Elijah, and asked, “Did not Elijah slaughter the priests of Baal?” as a proof that it is always the duty of States to suppress false religion by violence. Stahl asked that question when he preached before the Prussian court at the Evangelical Conference at Berlin in 1855, adding the dreadful misrepresentation that “Christianity is the religion of intolerance, and its kernel is exclusiveness.” Did these hard-spirits never consider Christs own warning? Did they wholly forget the prophecy that “He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall His voice be heard: in the streets. A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench, till He send forth judgment unto victory, and in His name shall the Gentiles hope?” {Mat 12:19-20; Isa 42:2-3; Eze 34:16} Calvin reproved Rene, Duchess of Ferrara, for not approving of the spirit of the imprecatory psalms. He said that this was “to set ourselves up as superior to Christ in sweetness and humility”; and that “David even in his hatreds is an example and type of Christ.” When Cartwright argued for the execution of the heretics he said: “If this be thought savage and intolerant, I am content to be so with the Holy Ghost.” Far wiser is the humble minister in Old Mortality, when he withstood Balfour of Burleigh, in the decision to put to the sword all the inhabitants of Tillietudlem Castle. “By what law,” asks Henry Morton, “would you justify the atrocity you would commit? If thou art ignorant of it,” said Balfour, “thy companion is well aware of the law which gave the men of Jericho to the sword of Joshua, the son of Nun.” “Yes,” answered the divine, “but we live under a better dispensation, which instructeth us to return good for evil, and to pray for those who despitefully use us and persecute us.”<\/p>\n So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto mount Carmel. Local tradition places the site of Elijahs sacrifice, not on the highest point of the mountain (1,728 ft.), but at the southeastern extremity (1,600 ft.) of the ridge, where a shapeless ruin, composed of great hewn stones, and … Continue reading “Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Kings 18:20”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"