her infamous. She was an incarnation of pride, sensuality, and cruelty;
and with all her other vices she was a religious persecutor who has had
no equal. We may perhaps give to her, as to many other tiger-like
persecutors in the cause of what they call their "religion," the meagre
credit of conscientious devotion in their cruelty; for she feasted at
her own table at Jezreel four hundred priests of Baal, besides four
hundred and fifty others at Samaria, while she erected two great
sanctuaries for the Phoenician deities, at which the officiating priests
were clad in splendid vestments. The few remaining prophets of Jehovah
in the kingdom hid themselves in caves and deserts to escape the
murderous fury of the idolatrous queen. We infer that she was
distinguished for her beauty, and was bewitching in her manners like
Catherine de' Medici, that Italian bigot whom her courtiers likened
both to Aurora and Venus. Jezebel, like the Florentine princess, is an
illustration of the wickedness which is so often concealed by enchanting
smiles, especially when armed with power. The priests of Baal
undoubtedly regarded their great protectress as one of the most
fascinating women that ever adorned a royal palace, and in the blaze of
her beauty and the magnificence of her bounty were blind to her
innumerable sorceries and the wild license of her life.
The fearful apostasy of Israel, which had been increasing for sixty
years under wicked kings, had now reached a point which called for
special divine intervention. There were only seven thousand men in the
whole kingdom who had not bowed the knee to Baal, and God sent a
prophet,--a prophet such as had not appeared in Israel since Samuel;
more august, more terrible even than he; indeed, the most unique and
imposing character in Jewish history.
Almost nothing is known of the early history of Elijah. The Bible simply
speaks of him as "the Tishbite,"--one of the inhabitants of Gilead, at
the east of the Jordan. He evidently was a man accustomed to a wild and
solitary life. His stature was large, and his features were fierce and
stern. His long hair flowed upon his brawny shoulders, and he was
clothed with a mantle of sheepskin or hair-cloth, and carried in his
hand a rugged staff. He was probably unlearned, being rude and rough in
both manners and speech. His first appearance was marked and
extraordinary. He suddenly and unannounced stood before Ahab, and
abruptly delivered his awful message. He was an apparition calculated to
strike with terror the boldest of kings in that superstitious age. He
makes no set speech, he offers no apology, he disdains all forms and
ceremonies; he does not even render the customary homage. He utters only
a few words, preceded by an oath: "As Jehovah the God of Israel liveth,
there shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word."
What arrogance before a king! Elijah, an utterly unknown man, in a
sheepskin mantle, apparently a peasant, dares to utter a curse on the
land without even deigning to give a reason, although the conscience of
Ahab must have told him that he could not with impunity introduce
idolatry into Israel.
Elijah doubtless attacked the king in the presence of his wife and
court. To the cynical and haughty queen, born in idolatry, he probably
seemed a madman of the desert,--shaggy, unwashed, fierce, repulsive. To
the Israelitish king, however, with better knowledge of the ways of God,
the prophet appeared armed with supernal powers, whom he both feared and
hated, and desired to put out of the way. But Elijah mysteriously
disappears from the royal presence as suddenly as he had entered it, and
no one knows whither he has fled. He cannot be found. The royal
emissaries go into every land, but are utterly baffled in their search.
The whole power of the realm was doubtless put forth to discover his
retreat, and had he been found, no mercy would have been shown him; he
would have been summarily executed, not only as a prophet of the
detested religion, but as one who had insulted the royal station. He was
forced to flee and hide after delivering his unwelcome message.
And whither did the prophet fly? He fled with the swiftness of a
Bedouin, accustomed to traverse barren rocks and scorching sands, to a
retired valley of one of the streams that emptied into the Jordan near
Samaria. Amid the clefts of the rocks which marked the deep valley, did
the man of God hide himself from his furious and numerous persecutors.
He does not escape to his native deserts, where he would most probably
have been hunted like a wild beast, but remains near the capital in
which Ahab reigns, in a deeply secluded spot, where he quenches his
thirst from the waters of the brook, and eats the food which the ravens
deposit amid the steep cliffs he knows how to climb.
The bravest and most undaunted man in Israel, shielded and protected by
God, was probably warned by the divine voice to make his escape, since
his life was needful to the execution of Providential purposes. He was
the only one of all the prophets of his day who dared to give utterance
to his convictions. Some four or five hundred there were in the kingdom,
all believers in Jehovah; but all sought to please the reigning power,
or timidly concealed themselves. They had been trained in the schools
which Samuel had established, and were probably teachers of the people
on theological subjects, and hence an antagonistic force to idolatrous
kings. Their great defect in the time of Ahab was timidity. There was
needed some one who under all circumstances would be undaunted, and
would not hesitate to tell the truth even to the king and queen, however
unpleasant it might be. So this rough, fierce, unlettered man of few
words was sent by God, armed with terrible powers.
It was now the rainy season, when rain was confidently expected by the
people throughout Palestine. Yet strangely no rain fell, though sixty
inches were the usual quantity in the course of the year. The streams
from the mountains were dried up; the land, long parched by the summer
sun, became like dust and ashes; the hills presented a blasted and
dreary desolation; the very trees were withered and discolored. At last
even the sheltered brook failed from which Elijah drank, and it became
necessary for the man of God to seek another retreat. The Lord therefore
sent him to the last place in which his enemies would naturally search
for him, even to a city of Phoenicia, where the worship of Baal was the
only religion of the land. As in his tattered and strange apparel he
approached Sarepta, or Zarephath, a town between Tyre and Sidon, worn
out with fatigue, parched with thirst, and overcome with
hunger,--everything around him being depressed and forlorn, the rivers
and brooks showing only beds of stone, the trees and grass withered, the
sky lurid, and of unnatural brightness like that of brass, and the sun
burning and scorching every remnant of vegetation,--he beheld a woman
issuing from the town to gather sticks, in order to cook what she
supposed would be her last meal. To this sad and discouraged woman,
doubtless a worshipper of Baal, the prophet thus spoke: "Fetch me, I
pray you, a little water in a vessel that I may drink;" and as she
turned sympathetically to look upon him, he added, "Bring me, I pray
thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand."
This was no small request to make of a woman who was herself on the
borders of starvation, and of a pagan woman too. But there was a
mysterious affinity between these two suffering souls. A common woman
would not have appreciated the greatness of the beggar and vagrant
before her. Only a discerning and sympathetic woman would have seen in
the tones of his voice, and in his lofty bearing, despite all his rags
and dirt, an unusual and marked character. She probably belonged to a
respectable class, reduced to poverty by the famine, and her keen
intelligence recognized at once in the hungry and needy stranger a
superior person,--even as the humble friar of Palos saw in Columbus a
nobleman by nature, when, wearied and disappointed, he sought food and
shelter. She took the prophet by the hand, conducted him to her home,
gave him the best chamber in her house, and in a strange devotion of
generosity divided with him the last remnant of her meal and oil.
It is probable that a lasting friendship sprang up between the pagan
woman and the solemn man of God, such as bound together the no less
austere Jerome and his disciple Paula. For two or three years the
prophet dwelt in peace and safety in the heathen town, protected by an
admiring woman,--for his soul was great, if his body was emaciated and
his dress repulsive. In return for her hospitality he miraculously
caused her meal and oil to be daily renewed; and more than this, he
restored her only son to life, when he had succumbed to a dangerous
illness,--the first recorded instance of such a miracle.
The German critics would probably say that the boy was only seemingly
dead, even as they would deny the miracle of the meal and oil. It is not
my purpose to discuss this matter, but to narrate the recorded incidents
that filled the soul of the woman of Sarepta with gratitude, with
wonder, and with boundless devotion. "Verily, I say unto you," said a
greater than Elijah, "whosoever shall give a cup of cold water in the
name of a prophet, shall in no way lose his reward." Her reward was
immeasurably greater than she had dared to hope. She received both
spiritual and temporal blessings, and doubtless became a convert to the
true faith. Tradition asserts that her boy, whom Elijah saved,--whether
by natural or supernatural means, it is alike indifferent,--became in
after years the prophet Jonah, who was sent to Nineveh. In all great
friendships the favors are reciprocal. A noble-hearted woman was saved
from starvation, and the life of a great man was preserved for future
usefulness. Austerity and tenderness met together and became a cord of
love; and when the land was perishing from famine, the favored members
of a retired household were shielded from harm, and had all that was
necessary for comfort.
Meanwhile the abnormal drought and consequent famine continued. The
northern kingdom was reduced to despair. So dried up were the wells and
exhausted the cisterns and reservoirs that even the king's household
began to suffer, and it was feared that the horses of the royal stables
would perish. In this dire extremity the king himself set forth from his
palace to seek patches of vegetation and pools of water in the valleys,
while his prime minister Obadiah--a secret worshipper of Jehovah--was
sent in an opposite direction for a like purpose. On his way, in the
almost hopeless search for grass and water, Obadiah met Elijah, who had
been sent from his retreat once more to confront Ahab, and this time to
promise rain. As the most diligent search had been made in every
direction, but in vain, to find Elijah, with a view to his destruction
as the man who "troubled Israel," Obadiah did not believe that the
hunted prophet would voluntarily put himself again in the power of an
angry and hostile tyrant. Yet the prime minister, having encountered the
prophet, was desirous that he should keep his word to appear before the
king, and promise to remove the calamity which even in a pagan land was
felt to be a divine judgment. Elijah having reassured him of his
sincerity, the minister informed his master that the man he sought to
destroy was near at hand, and demanded an interview. The wrathful and
puzzled king went out to meet the prophet, not to take vengeance, but to
secure relief from a sore calamity,--for Ahab reasoned that if Elijah
had power, as the messenger of Omnipotence, to send a drought, he also
had the power to remove it. Moreover, had he not said that there should
be neither rain nor dew but according to his word? So Ahab addressed the
prophet as the author of national calamities, but without threats or
insults. "Art thou he who troubleth Israel?" Elijah loftily,
fearlessly, and reproachfully replied: "I have not troubled Israel, but
thou and thy father's house, in that thou hast forsaken the commandments
of Jehovah, and hast followed Baalim." He then assumes the haughty
attitude of a messenger of divine omnipotence, and orders the king to
assemble all his people, together with the eight hundred and fifty
priests of Baal, at Mount Carmel,--a beautiful hill sixteen hundred feet
high, near the Mediterranean, usually covered with oaks and flowering
shrubs and fragrant herbs. He gives no reasons,--he sternly commands;
and the king obeys, being evidently awed by the imperious voice of the
divine ambassador.
The representatives of the whole nation are now assembled at Mount
Carmel, with their idolatrous priests. The prophet appears in their
midst as a preacher armed with irresistible power. He addresses the
people, who seemed to have no firm convictions, but were swayed to and
fro by changing circumstances, being not yet hopelessly sunk into the
idolatry of their rulers. "How long," cried the preacher, with a loud
voice and fierce aspect, "halt ye between two opinions? If Jehovah be
God, _follow_ him; but if Baal be God, then follow _him_." The
undecided, crestfallen, intimidated people did not answer a word.
Then Elijah stoops to argument. He reminds the people, among whom
probably were many influential men, that he stood alone in opposition
to eight hundred and fifty idolatrous priests protected by the king and
queen. He proposes to test their claims in comparison with his as
ministers of the true God. This seems reasonable, and the king makes no
objection. The test is to be supernatural, even to bring down fire from
heaven to consume the sacrificial bullock on the altar. The priests of
Baal select their bullock, cut it in pieces, put it on the wood, and
invoke their supreme deity to send fire to consume the sacrifice. With
all their arts and incantations and magical sorceries, the fire does not
descend. They then perform their wild and fantastic dances, screaming
aloud, from early morn to noon, "O Baal, hear us!" We do not read
whether Ahab was present or not, but if he were he must have quaked with
blended sentiments of curiosity and fear. His anxiety must have been
terrible. Elijah alone is calm; but he is also stern. He mocks them with
provoking irony, and ridicules their want of success. His grim sarcasms
become more and more bitter. "Cry with a loud voice!" said he, "yea,
louder and yet louder! for ye cry to a god; either he is talking, or he
is hunting, or he is on a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must
be awakened." And they cried aloud, and cut themselves, after their
manner, with knives and spears, till the blood gushed out upon them.
Then Elijah, when midday was past, and the priests continued to call
unto their god until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice,
and there was neither voice nor answer, assembled the people around him,
as he stood alone by the ruins of an ancient altar. With his own hands
he gathered twelve stones, piled them together to represent the twelve
tribes, cut a bullock in pieces, laid it on the wood, made a trench
around the rude altar, which he filled with water from an adjacent well,
and then offered up this prayer to the God of his fathers: "O Jehovah,
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, hear me! and let all the people know
that thou art the God of 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 hearts back again." Then immediately the fire of Jehovah
fell and consumed the bullock and the wood, even melted the very stones,
and licked up the water in the trench. And when the people saw it, they
fell on their faces, and cried aloud, "Jehovah, he is the God! Jehovah,
he is the God!"
Elijah then commanded to take the prophets of Baal, all of them, so that
not even one of them should escape. And they took them, by the direction
of Elijah, down the mountain side to the brook Kishon, and slew them
there. His triumph was complete. He had asserted the majesty and proved
the power of Jehovah.
The prophet then turned to the king, who seems to have been completely
subjected by this tremendous proof of the prophetic authority, and said:
"Get thee up, eat and drink, for there is the sound of abundance of
rain." And Ahab ascended the hill, to eat and drink with his nobles at
the sacrificial feast,--a venerable symbol by which, from the most
primitive antiquity to our own day, by so universal an impulse that it
would seem to be divinely imparted, every form of religion known to man
has sought to typify the human desire to commune with Deity.
Elijah also went to the top of Carmel, not to the symbolic feast, but in
spirit and in truth to commune with God, reverentially hiding his face
between his knees. He felt the approach of the coming storm, even when
the sky was clear, and not a cloud was to be seen over the blue waters
of the Mediterranean. So he said to his servant: "Go up now, and look
toward the sea." And the servant went to still higher ground and looked,
and reported that nothing was to be seen. Six times the order was
impatiently repeated and obeyed; but at the seventh time, the youthful
servant--as some think, the very boy he had saved--reported a cloud in
the distant horizon, no bigger seemingly than a man's hand. At once
Elijah sent word to Ahab to prepare for the coming tempest; and both he
and the king began to descend the hill, for the clouds rapidly gathered
in the heavens, and that mighty wind arose which in Eastern countries
precedes a furious storm. With incredible rapidity the tempest spread,
and the king hastened for his life to his chariot at the foot of the
hill, to cross the brook before it became a flood; and Elijah,
remembering that he was king, ran before his chariot more rapidly than
the Arab steeds. As the servant of Jehovah, he performs his mission with
dignity and without fear; as a subject, he renders due respect to rank
and power.
Ahab has now witnessed with his own eyes the impotency of the prophets
of Baal, and the marvellous power of the messenger of Jehovah. The
desire of the nation was to be gratified; the rains were falling, the
cisterns and reservoirs were filling, and the fields once more would
soon rejoice in their wonted beauty, and the famine would soon be at an
end. In view of the great deliverance, and awe-stricken by the
supernatural gifts of the prophet, one would suppose that the king would
have taken Elijah to his confidence and loaded him with favors, and been
guided by his counsels. But, no. He had been subjected to deep
humiliation before his own people; his religion had been brought into
contempt, and he was afraid of his cruel and inexorable wife, who had
incited him to debasing idolatries. So he hastens to his palace in
Jezreel and acquaints Jezebel of the wonderful things he had seen, and
which he could not prevent. She was transported with fury and vengeance,
and vowing a tremendous oath, she sent a messenger to the prophet with
these terrible words: "As surely as thou art Elijah and I am Jezebel, so
may God do to me and more also, if I make not thy life to-morrow, about
this time, as the life of one of them." In her unbounded rage she forgot
all policy, for she should have struck the blow without giving her enemy
time to escape. It may also be noted that she is no atheist, but
believes in God according to Phoenician notions. She reflects that eight
hundred and fifty of Baal's prophets had been slain, and that the nation
might return to their allegiance to the god of their fathers, who had
wrought the greatest calamity her proud heart could endure. Unlike her
husband, she knows no fear, and is as unscrupulous as she is fanatical.
Elijah, she resolved, should surely die.
And how did the prophet receive her message? He had not feared to
encounter Ahab and all the priests of Baal, yet he quailed before the
wrath of this terrible woman,--this incarnate fiend, who cared neither
for Jehovah nor his prophet. Even such a hero as Elijah felt that he
must now flee for his life, and, attended only by his boy-servant, he
did not halt until he had crossed the kingdom of Judah, and reached the
utmost southern bounds of the Holy Land. At Beersheba he left his
faithful attendant, and sought refuge in the desert,--the ancient
wilderness of Sinai, with its rocky wastes. Under the shade of a
solitary tree, exhausted and faint, he lay down to die. "It is enough, O
Jehovah! now take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers." He
had outstripped all pursuers, and was apparently safe, yet he wished to
die. It was the reaction of a mighty excitement, the lassitude produced
by a rapid and weary flight. He was physically exhausted, and with this
exhaustion came despondency. He was a strong man unnerved, and his will
succumbed to unspeakable weariness. He lay down and slept, and when he
awoke he was fed and comforted by an angelic visitor, who commanded him
to arise and penetrate still farther into the dreary wilderness. For
forty days and nights he journeyed, until he reached the awful solitudes
of Sinai and Horeb, and sought shelter in a cave. Enclosed between
granite rocks, he entered upon a new crisis of his career.
It does not appear that the future destinies of Samaria and Jerusalem
were revealed to Elijah, nor the fate of the surrounding nations, as
seen by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel. He was not called to foretell the
retribution which would surely be inflicted on degenerate and idolatrous
nations, nor even to declare those impressive truths which should
instruct all future generations. He therefore does not soar in his
dreary solitude to those lofty regions of thought which marked the
meditations of Moses. He is not a man of genius; he is no poet; he has
no eloquence or learning; he commits no precious truths to writing for
the instruction of distant generations. He is a man of intensely earnest
convictions, gifted with extraordinary powers resulting from that
peculiar combination of physical and spiritual qualities known as the
prophetic temperament. The instruments of the Divine Will on earth are
selected with unerring judgment. Elijah was sent by the Almighty to
deliver special messages of reproof and correction to wicked rulers; he
was a reformer. But his character was august, his person was weird and
remarkable, his words were earnest and delivered with an indomitable
courage, a terrific force. He was just the man to make a strong
impression on a superstitious and weak king; but he had done more than
that,--he had roused a whole nation from their foul debasement, and left
them quaking in terror before their offended Deity.
But the phase of exaltation and potent energy had passed for the time,
and we now see him faint and despondent, yet, with the sure instinct of
mighty spiritual natures, seeking recuperation in solitary companionship
with the all-present Spirit.
We do not know how long Elijah remained in his dismal cavern,--long
enough, however, to recover his physical energies and his moral courage.
As he wanders to and fro amid the hoary rocks and impenetrable solitudes
of Horeb, he seeks to commune with God. He listens for some
manifestation of the deity; he is ready to do His bidding. He hears the
sound of a rushing hurricane; but God is not in the wind. The mountain
then is shaken by a fearful earthquake; but Jehovah is not in the
earthquake. Again the mountain seems to flash with fire; but the signs
he seeks are not in the fire. At last, after the uproar of contending
physical forces had died away, in the profound silence of the solitude
he hears the whisper of a still small voice in gentle accents; and by
this voice in the soul Jehovah speaks: "What doest thou here, Elijah?"
Was this voice reproachful? Had the prophet been told to flee? Had he
acted with the courage of a man sure of divine protection? Had he not
been faint-hearted when he wished to die? How does he reply to the
mysterious voice? He justifies himself. But strengthened, comforted,
uplifted by the exaltation of the consciousness of God's presence,
Elijah feels his resilient powers again upspringing. His courage
returns; his perceptions grow sharp again; the inspiration of a new line
of action opens up to him. He hears the word of the Lord: "Go, return on
thy way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when thou comest, anoint
Hazael to be king over Syria, and Jehu the son of Nimshi to be king over
Israel, and Elisha the son of Shaphat to be prophet in thy room. And it
shall come to pass that him who escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu
destroy, and him that escapeth the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay. Yet
I have left me seven thousand in Israel, who have not bowed the knee
unto Baal."
Elijah still knows that his life is in peril, but is ready,
nevertheless, to obey his master's call. He is not designated as the
power to effect the great revolution which should root out idolatry and
destroy the house of Omri; but Jehu, an unscrupulous yet jealous
warrior, was to found a new dynasty, and the king of Syria was to punish
and afflict the ten tribes, and Elisha was to be the mouth-piece of the
Almighty in the court of kings. It would appear that Elijah did not
himself anoint either the general of Benhadad or of Ahab as future
kings,--instruments of punishment on idolatrous Israel,--but on Elisha
did his mantle fall.