Elijah

by William H. Stephens

  The governor paused. He glared at the prophet, his breath rapid and short, his usually unruffled face strained. “Elijah,” he said, “I have been a follower of Yahweh since my youth, and I have served him ever since then as well as I know how. Has no one told you how I hid one hundred prophets in the caves of Samaria’s hill? Has no one told you how I fed them with breadcakes and water, which I gathered and took to them at great risk? Now you tell me to go to Ahab, playing on our past friendship, and tell him you are here.” He shook his head firmly. “Elijah, perhaps I have seen too much of this war between the Gods, but neither you nor I can know what Yahweh will do next. You do not belong to yourself. Perhaps he will call you away. I cannot take such a foolhardy chance. I shall take you to Ahab.”

  “You shall not take me to Ahab. He will come here to see me or by the word of Yahweh the drought will not end in Israel.” He caught his friend’s arm. “Obadiah, as Yahweh lives, the God of all the forces of heaven and earth, whose prophet I am and by whose voice I speak, I tell you that I will most certainly show myself to Ahab today.”

  The governor stared a moment at the prophet, then turned to his chariot and stepped into it. He looked down at Elijah. “So be it. You have sworn by Yahweh that you will see Ahab today. You are bound by your oath, and it you are not here, may Yahweh do to you what Ahab does to me.”

  “I am bound.”

  Obadiah signaled for the column to turn around, then he turned his chariot back toward the city. He snapped the horses into a run, leaving a cloud of dust to choke the riders who struggled to get out of his way. Ahab would be only a short way along the road to the south.

  Elijah sat down by the roadside and watched the retreating column return toward Samaria.

  It was but an hour later when Ahab arrived, mounted on a horse rather than in a chariot, and riding fast. He had only five mounted horsemen with him. Obadiah had remained behind. The prophet had not moved, not even to approach closer to the city.

  There was a wild but uncertain look about the king’s eyes. He spoke angrily, but his voice betrayed a sense of astonishment toward the prophet. “Are you the one who has brought trouble to Israel?” he demanded.

  Elijah rose. He did not bow, but walked quickly to the mounted king. His voice was as loud and angry as the king’s. “I am not the one who brought trouble to Israel,” he said. “You are that one. You and your father’s house, for in your rule you have turned your back on Yahweh and his commandments, and in place of the God of Israel you have followed the Baals.”

  A soldier kicked his horse toward the prophet in protest at the tone, but Ahab’s gesture stopped him.

  The prophet’s eyes flashed angrily, as they had two and a half years earlier when he last stood before Ahab. “Now, king of Israel, Yahweh will show himself and his power. By the command of Yahweh, I tell you to send out runners to every city of Israel and gather the people to the top of Mount Carmel. Gather there all of the prophets of Baal-Melkart, all four hundred of them. Gather all of the prophets who eat at the table of Jezebel to Mount Carmel. There Yahweh Elohim, the only true God, will work a great work that will astonish you, and there all Israel will see who is God.”

  He paused, and the king and the prophet glared into each other’s eyes, one man with the armies of Israel at his command, the other with the forces of heaven at his call. Neither man flinched. Then Elijah spoke again. “Gather them here at Carmel, all the prophets and all the great men of Israel. I speak at the command of Yahweh. If you do not gather them, the drought will not end. If you obey, Yahweh will work a miracle that will astound you, and then the drought will end.”

  Ahab stared down from his horse. Twice he started to speak, but each time he thought better of it. Finally, he said quietly, “The drought must end. I do not know the ways of the gods, but one of them must win. I will do as you say. I will send runners throughout Israel. In seven days, the people will gather on Carmel. The leaders of Israel will be there, and all who want to come from among the people. The prophets of Melkart will be there, and the prophets of Asherah. And I will be there.” He wheeled his horse around, then turned back toward the prophet. “We shall see who controls the heavens. And if the drought does not end at the word of Yahweh, if Yahweh does not show himself, you will die.” He gouged his horse hard and broke into a gallop toward Samaria.

  Elijah smiled. Seven days. “Yes,” he said softly, “Yahweh will show himself.” He laughed and called after Ahab’s party, though they likely could not hear. “Yahweh will show himself, Ahab.” He watched the dust from the horses’ hooves spread thin and settle, until the party disappeared out of sight around the corner of the wall and toward Samaria’s entrance. He stood with his hands on his hips, staring toward the distant walls of Samaria. His voice was quiet again. “Yahweh will show himself. And all Israel will know who is God.”

  He felt excitement grow in his stomach and send its tingle through his body. Seven days. How could he contain himself for seven days? But it was good. All Israel would know that the long prophet of Yahweh, one man, would stand against eight hundred fifty of Baal’s best prophets. “Yes,” he repeated again, “Yahweh will show himself.”

  Elijah turned to scan the land. Where would he go to wait? There was the Great Sea, far down the Vale of Barley to the west, hidden by the range of low hills that rose from the Plain of Sharon. There was Jezreel, the fertile valley to the north, and Judah to the south, with the holy city of Jerusalem. He looked northeast, as though he could see Bethshean, set in the Jordan Valley where the Valley of Jezreel spills by terraces down into the Ghor to widen its low plain. He missed Rejab. That is where I would go, he thought, if Rejab still were there.

  He was a lone figure, standing between earth and sky, his heavy mantle draped across his shoulders and loose at his neck, his disheveled hair and unruly beard blowing easily with the occasional breeze, as though he were brother to the wind.

  There was a family, he recalled as he mused, that Rejab had mentioned several times, a friend who was faithful to Yahweh, a man from whom Rejab purchased produce. Shaphat was the man’s name, and he lived in Abel-meholah. The prophet’s eyes brightened. That is where he would go. The town was closer than Bethshean, at the southern end of the same Jordan plain, where the hills of Samaria press in to narrow the valley. He could make the journey before dark.

  Elijah left the road and started directly east toward Tirzah, once the royal city. Beyond Tirzah, he turned northeast on the narrow road called The Way of the Diviners’ Oak. The road followed a wadi bed down a wide valley. A few miles later, well before dusk, he was in the Jordan Valley.

  The valley narrowed at this point, stretching wider toward Bethshean but closing into its deep, three-mile-wide Ghor shortly to the south. He had been here before when the meadow was green. The inspiration for the town’s name was apparent then: Abel-meholah, Meadow of Dancing. Now the area was brown and parched.

  Shaphat was a leading man of Abel-meholah, Elijah learned, owner of a very large field and several oxen. He easily found the house. It was large, with four rooms and a commodious upper chamber.

  The prophet rapped on the door. The knock was answered by a tall, intense young man, dark-skinned and wiry. To Elijah’s surprise the man’s hair hung below his shoulders, though it was not unruly like his own.

  “Are you a Nazirite?” he asked without introducing himself.

  “I am,” the man replied. “I have taken a vow that no razor will touch my head as long as one shrine to Asherah remains in Israel, and as long as one stone of the cursed temple to Melkart stands on another.”

  Elijah whooped. He leaped into the air and turned completely around, landing on his feet. “Praises be to Yahweh. I did not believe such faith still could be found in Israel.”

  “And you are a prophet, sir, I perceive. Where do you hail from, and how is it that Jezebel has not found you out?”

  “I am Elijah, friend of . . .”

  Elijah’s introduction was cut short. This time it was the
young man who whooped, though he did not leap into the air. He grasped Elijah firmly and pulled him forcibly into an embrace, kissing both bearded cheeks in the process. He pulled back, his eyes shining. “You are Elijah, truly? You really are Elijah?”

  The prophet laughed. “I really am Elijah.” But the young man already had turned to call his father and mother. “Excuse me,” he said to Elijah, “I have not invited you in. Please, enter.”

  As Elijah walked through the door, the parents of the young man approached. “Father, mother, this is Elijah,” he introduced excitedly, “the prophet Elijah.”

  The man and woman moved forward quickly, the man throwing his arms wide to embrace the prophet. Tears glistened in their eyes. “I am Shaphat,” the man said, “and this is my good wife, Deborah.” Then he beckoned Elijah to a seat, a pillowed chair with a back to it, one of two set in a corner with a low table between them. Shaphat took the other chair. He was tall like his son, and thin, but his skin hung loose at his neck and arms, and his hair, trimmed straight across the back above his shoulders and tapered from front to back below the ears, was white.

  As Deborah hurried to the kitchen to pour wine, the son pulled up a stool to sit with his father and the prophet. As the son seated himself, Elijah asked him, “You have not told me your name.”

  “I am Elisha,” the young man answered.

  “Elisha, ‘God is salvation.’ A good name.”

  “A name I am proud to bear.”

  The days passed pleasantly, more than pleasantly, for Elijah found that Elisha’s knowledge of Israel’s history and his zeal for Yahweh matched his own. His zeal, in fact, was more exuberant, at times bordering on violent anger. The young man clearly had the cast of a prophet.

  Elisha and Shaphat were well informed of affairs in Israel. The seven days were well spent in long discussions. Elijah learned that Jezebel found the prophets Obadiah had hidden in the caves. They were slaughtered at her order and, Shaphat surmised, the queen would have contrived Obadiah’s death, too, were he not a clear favorite of Ahab’s. Elisha talked excitedly of the embarrassment of the Baal prophets that they could not break the drought imposed by Yahweh, but he talked more somberly of the many babies, even occasional youths, who were sacrificed to the Baals by despairing parents advised by desperate priests.

  The drought had done its work. Every Israelite knew of Yahweh’s curse at the mouth of Elijah. Most of them sought to propitiate both of the gods, going first to one shrine, then to another—reciting the laws of Moses at home, and embracing the zonahs at the high places. Elijah grew angry hearing of it, though he already knew of the practices.

  As the days neared an end, Elisha began to pressure Elijah to take him along as a servant. They talked long about the matter. Shaphat was in favor of the arrangement one moment, reluctant the next. The famine had hit him hard—though being near the Jordan he was able to load jars of water onto ox-drawn carts to keep alive a small field—and he needed Elisha’s help.

  But it was Elijah himself who was most reluctant. “Always I have worked alone,” he said. “I move quickly from one place to another. I don’t know that I want a servant.” Finally he agreed, because of the great work to be done on Carmel but especially because the young man had qualities the prophet wanted to develop.

  Chapter Twelve

  People came from all over Israel for the amphictyony, the assembly of the nation. They camped all along the small Kishon River that flows along Carmel’s base and into the Great Sea. Even on the great day, a few latecomers still straggled along the footpaths in the Jezreel Valley, and from across Jordan along Carmel’s caravan route, and from the south along the ancient seacoast highway, and from the hill country—the Shephelah—across the Plain of Sharon to climb Carmel’s flank.

  Elijah and Elisha arrived a day early. They found the Baal prophets already camped under a cluster of terebinth trees near the sacred ground. The two men sought a more congenial place in a ravine to the south.

  Ahab arrived at dawn, having spent the night at his summer home in Jezreel. Jezebel had excused herself, angered that the king had interfered with the authority he had granted her over religion. He left his chariot with attendants at the foot of the mountain and climbed like a pilgrim to its crest. The prophets of Baal thronged around him as he neared Melkart’s shrine.

  Elijah watched the greeting from higher on the hill, then with Elisha he made his way to the sacred ground. A Baal priest heard his approach and turned to speak to his companion. The men laughed.

  The sun had risen high enough to break through the chill of the night air. Not a leaf moved in the stillness, as though nature itself held its breath for the day’s happenings. Elijah beckoned his servant to wait at the edge of the sacred ground, and he strode forward. The clearing was of soft soil laced with rocks. Its north side melted into a ledge of rock that fell sharply for more than two hundred feet toward the Kishon. Near the cliff was a heap of stones, the altar to Yahweh that Jezebel had ordered destroyed. The other three sides were gradual slopes capable of supporting a large audience. A peak rose to the west to block the view of the sea, but to the north, across the Kishon, the Jezreel Valley lay in full view. The brush and bushes that generally grew in patches and clusters in the soft earth of the sacred place had been cleared away. Only a few gnarled old trees remained to draw attention from Melkart’s waist-high altar of dressed stone. That altar stood in the center of the clearing. Elijah stared at it in contempt, then looked toward the crowd of prophets.

  He called out loudly, “Where are the prophets of Melkart?”

  A spokesman stepped out from the group and answered in a voice that equaled Elijah’s in force, “We are here.”

  “And where are the prophets of Asherah?” Elijah called.

  There was no response.

  “Where are the prophets of Asherah?” Elijah called again.

  No one moved. The Melkart prophets murmured among themselves in low, surprised tones.

  “King Ahab of Israel,” Elijah shouted, “where are the prophets of Asherah?”

  Ahab stepped into the clearing, his bearish head held regally high, and walked slowly toward the prophet until he was a few yards away. “Elijah, I did as you asked,” he said in a normal tone. “They knew of the assembly. I cannot explain their absence.”

  Elijah turned slowly in a circle to look at the crowd which was gathering quickly at the sound of his challenge. “Let all Israel know,” he shouted as he turned, “that Asherah is not God, and her prophets are cowards. Nor do they dare test her power against Yahweh’s.”

  The people did not answer. They continued to take their places as near the holy ground as they could, the lesser personages giving way to the greater. The Melkart spokesman stepped forward. “But we are here, Elijah, prophet of Yahweh.” He wore a prophet’s mantle, closely woven of fine wool and dyed with the purple of Tyre. “We are four hundred fifty gathered her to show that Baal is as much stronger than Yahweh as we are superior to you in numbers.”

  “So be it,” Elijah answered. “You shall stand, all of you, for Baal, and I shall stand alone for Yahweh.” He turned to the crowd, his arms outstretched, his mantle hanging in a triangle from each forearm to drape to a point below his knees. “People of Israel,” he shouted, “how long will you limp from one crippled leg to another, as a lame man who faces a fork in the road and cannot decide which way to go? Make your decision now. If Yahweh is God, follow him. But if Baal is God, follow him.”

  The people were silent. Some of them smiled, satisfied that the entertainment promised to be worth the journey.

  Elijah lowered his arms, but his voice rose in crescendo. “I stand alone, one man, the only living prophet of Yahweh. Only I remain, one, to stand for the God of Israel.” His arm swept toward the men of Melkart. “But there, Baal has four hundred prophets. Yet Yahweh dares to challenge Baal.”

  Still looking at the unimpressed crowd, turning to address all the people, he pointed at the cluster of prophets. “Let those
prophets furnish two small bulls. Of the two, they shall take first choice, so their sacrifice will surely be acceptable to Baal. Let them cut it into pieces as the ritual requires and lay it on the wood of the altar. They shall not set the wood afire, but rather call on their gods to send fire. Afterward, I shall do the same. The God who answers by sending fire from heaven, he is the true God.”

  The people murmured among themselves, many heads nodding in approval. Obadiah had joined him. A voice called out from the crowd, “Well spoken, Elijah.” The leaders of Israel, gathered closer by rank, echoed the call. “Yes, Elijah, it is a good test. Well spoken.” Voices came more loudly from the crowd, and laughter, until Elijah’s voice pealed above the tumult.

  “Choose then, you prophets of Baal. Choose a young bull for yourselves. Call first on your god, for there are many of you. Dress your sacrifice and call on the name of your gods. But do not put fire into the wood.”

  Elijah turned and went to the edge of the clearing. He threw his mantle on the ground, sat on it, and pulled its folds over his legs. The people near him drew back to avoid being close to the strange man.

  The Baal prophets, certain that animals would be required for some sort of sacrifice before the day was out, had brought several young bulls with them. Their spokesman called to his servants to fetch two of the best ones. Quickly, the two were brought forward, both of them well-muscled, with shiny coats. It would not do to give Elijah a poor specimen, for the people surely would react to any unfairness on their part. The spokesman looked the animals over carefully, feeling the withers and flanks, checking the skin for imperfections, inspecting the eyes and mouth. He made his choice.

  At his signal, six prophets came forward. One of them struck the animal hard between the ears with the flat edge of an axe. The animal dropped to its knees without a sound. Another prophet thrust his sword into the bull’s heart. While the seven priests dressed him, other prophets arranged wood on the stone altar.