Elijah

by William H. Stephens

  Not a man moved. Each hand held still to its sword, seared flesh welded to iron handles. Shreds of burnt, smoldering cloth lay on and around the blackened flesh of bodies lying promiscuously together, a center heap with straggled corpses flung around the perimeter.

  Elijah stared down at the scene, his horror mixed with anger. He was not repelled at the sight any more than at the slaughter on Carmel. He could understand God’s vengeance better than God’s gentle voice. And so could other men . . . and so could other men.

  Elisha stood close behind him. As Elijah turned, his servant spread his arms to receive the prophet’s embrace. A thrill of victory grew so fiercely in their breasts that they wept. Elisha spoke first. “Surely,” he said ecstatically, “Ahaziah will repent now.”

  Elijah shook his head. “No. Ahaziah is too weak to repent. Especially with Jezebel at his side. But perhaps the next king will. Perhaps.”

  The horses scattered once they reached the road. Some ran into fields and stopped, snorting their fear, rearing and galloping away when villagers approached them. Some ran south, others north.

  None of the horses returned to Samaria. The noon hour passed and the messengers stared with increasing nervousness down the road that ran along the city wall. A worried Meor-baal posted lookouts on the southeastern parapet.

  At two o’clock, an hour before the afternoon sacrifice, Jezebel summoned her priest. “Perhaps,” he ventured, “villagers faithful to Yahweh were able to overcome the contingent.”

  She shrieked. “Able to overcome fifty-one good fighting men?” Her face was flushed, her hands trembling with anger. She stepped down from her dais and walked to the statue of Melkart by the window. She stared at it for a long time. Her arms hung tight to her sides and she clenched and unclenched her fists repeatedly. Finally she turned. “Meor-baal, come here.”

  The priest immediately stepped close to her. Jezebel spoke directly into his face, loudly. “Order all of the standing army stationed in the city to the large courtyard immediately. I will give the orders to them myself. Move quickly. I want Elijah by nightfall.”

  Meor-baal bowed.

  Word of the call to arms spread rapidly. Soldiers walked away from half-filled wine goblets and pseudo-worried prostitutes. Fathers and husbands quickly kissed their families. Religious soldiers interrupted their sacrifices and left their offerings behind. Within little more than an hour all but a few stragglers had gathered in the assembly area by the city gate.

  Jezebel stood on a quickly-improvised podium. She was dressed in a purple robe trimmed in red, her Queen Mother headdress in place. She raised her chin a bit as she began. “I speak for the king. He has ordered a crucial mission for which only the bravest and most select soldiers should volunteer.” She paused, watching the curious, rough faces staring at her in anticipation. “All of you who worship Melkart step forward. The rest of you fall back,” she ordered. The shuffling began, but, to her surprise, fully two-thirds of the troops fell back. Yahweh had gained more ground than she thought. “You soldiers who do not worship Melkart are dismissed,” she shouted.

  Jezebel reweighed her plan carefully as Yahweh worshipers moved away. Some five hundred soldiers would be left. She had intended to send all of the Melkart men after Elijah, but the surprising show of Yahweh’s strength called for caution. The marginal believers would add weakness, not strength, to the battle of the gods.

  “Now,” she shouted at last, “who is the best among you?”

  The soldiers looked around to find Baal-hanan. A shouting tumult, as his comrades raised his arms and shouted his name companionably, indicated him to be on the left side of the assembly.

  “Come forward,” Jezebel ordered.

  Baal-hanan made his way to the podium.

  “Come up here,” she said softly.

  He mounted the stand quickly, as muted exclamations of surprise swept through the crowd—surprise that a common soldiers would be given such an honor.

  The Queen Mother spoke quietly, making sure her instructions would be heard only by him. He was to select fifty of the best warriors, each one dedicated to Melkart, and order them to prepare to ride at once. When that was arranged, he was to meet her in her conference room.

  She answered Meor-baal’s quizzical look as they walked to Jezebel’s chambers. “Melkart obviously has guarded the champion carefully in all his battles, my dear priest. I chose a man whom Melkart likes.”

  A half-hour later Baal-hanan was announced. Jezebel accepted his bow, then told him of the king’s injury and Elijah’s curse. The first contingent had not yet returned, she explained. She spoke with strained emotion. “Look toward the window at Melkart.”

  Baal-hanan obeyed. The stone god was caught in half-stride, a loin cloth coming to midthigh, a high turban on his head. He was bearded, with a large battleaxe on his shoulder. His eyes were large and staring.

  “Walk closer,” she ordered. “See what Melkart will say.”

  Baal-hanan walked self-consciously to the statue. He stared into the large eyes and studied the axe.

  “Give your mind to Melkart,” Jezebel said.

  The soldier let his mind go, caught up in his conviction of Melkart’s power. He stood for several minutes in complete silence, the Queen Mother behind him. When he turned, Jezebel searched his eyes with satisfaction. They were fierce with determination.

  She walked slowly to her dais and pulled a heavy cloth away to uncover a captain’s helmet. She picked it up and turned, holding it at her waist with both hands. “You are a captain now,” she said.

  Baal-hanan blinked, then walked to her and knelt. She placed the helmet on his head without a word.

  “I will not fail you, my Queen Mother Jezebel.”

  “You will not fail Melkart,” she responded.

  By early evening the hand-picked troops stared in horror at the grotesque bodies of horses and men that lay stiffening in the wadi. Baal-hanan watched his men carefully. All of them had seen bodies before, scattered and bloody and decapitated across a battlefield. They were hardened men, knowing well the horrors of war yet captivated by the heroic glory of the conquest.

  The new captain, still mounted, screamed Elijah’s name with such force that his horse jumped forward nervously. Baal-hanan cursed and jerked the reins hard. “Elijah!” he repeated loudly.

  A moment later the prophet appeared at the crest, Elisha close beside and slightly behind him. He stared down on the soldiers without speaking.

  Baal-hanan, enraged at the sight of the blackened corpses of men he knew, rose up in his saddle and screamed at the prophet, his voice rasping from the loudness. “Elijah, you filthy prophet of a filthy god, obey your king and come down! Now!”

  Elijah, his dark hair and mantle black and brown against a darkening gray sky, was indistinct on the crest.

  The captain did not wait for the prophet to speak. Convulsed with rage, he screamed hoarsely at his men and jumped from his horse. He drew his sword and waved it, cursing his men to join him. Elijah watched them take the first few steps up the hill, shouting curses at him as they came. Lost in their violent fury, they did not hear him speak. “If I really am a man of God, then let fire from heaven consume all of you.”

  At dusk, one lone horse loped toward Samaria’s city gate. The gatekeeper, on the watch for Baal-hanan and his men, ordered the gate open. Two men caught the horse’s bridle and calmed him down, patting his shoulder and talking to him in ever more soothing tones.

  Jezebel was mystified. Subdued, she had to force herself to order messengers to the villages near Elijah’s hill to determine what happened. They returned near midnight to find her in Ahaziah’s bedroom with the doctors. The king was deteriorating rapidly and with increasing pain.

  There were eyewitnesses to both catastrophes, the messengers reported, curious men and boys who lived near Elijah. All of them told the same story. The bodies both of horses and men confirmed their words. The messengers had commandeered carts from the villages to bring back the bodie
s.

  Jezebel was stoic. Her control, though, was the result of years of practice. She clasped her hands behind her back to keep them from trembling. She stared hard at the messengers as though the force of her will could change what had happened. Then, rather than risk the chance of a cracked voice, she jerked her head toward the door as a signal to empty the room.

  Ahaziah coughed, a muffled sound that brought blood from his throat. He spit into the container. “So much for your Melkart,” he choked bitterly.

  Jezebel did not speak. Her jaw set hard against violent, angry tears, she knelt beside the bed. Ahaziah knew that she was more disturbed at losing to Elijah than by the approaching death of her son. Weakly, he pushed her away. “Call the attendants,” he said.

  The Queen Mother walked to the door and beckoned them in. Ahaziah gestured for them to come close.

  “Send a contingent of soldiers for Elijah, but this time send Yahweh’s men.”

  Jezebel gritted her teeth but said nothing.

  Elijah arrived at the palace the next morning. The dead bodies had already been cleared away before the last contingent had arrived at his hill. The captain acknowledged Yahweh as the God of his troops and begged the prophet’s mercy. “Please,” the captain had said, “come with us to the king. Yahweh will protect you there as well as here.”

  The prophet knew they were right even before the voice inside his breast told him he should go. Yahweh had won another great victory. The story would spread throughout the villages and cities of the land. Melkart’s back was broken.

  Ahaziah stared at the prophet through aching gray eyes. He was in constant pain now. “Is there no way to change the word of Yahweh?” he asked.

  Elijah’s voice was even, confident. “No, there is no hope. You would not change even if God were to spare your life. You placed yourself in Baal’s hands—and lost. Now, because you sent messengers to Baal-zebub, as though there were no God in Israel, you shall die.”

  Ahaziah closed his eyes to stem the tears that slipped beneath his lids.

  The king died without a son. His brother, Jehoram, an able military man, was anointed in his place. The new king was met with joy by the people and relief by the prophets.

  Elijah did not go to the coronation, nor did Macaiah. They stayed at Gilgal to await news of the event from a company of younger prophets who represented the coenobia. Elisha listened silently as the older men talked of former days. They spoke as though a great bridge had been crossed. Elisha’s heart pulsed with a sense of premonition.

  At last, near midmorning, the prophets returned with their report. They burst through the door shouting, unable to contain their delight. “Jehoram has vowed to tear down the altars of Melkart and Asherah!” The prophets rose to meet the young emissaries with surprised joy, their faces wide with anticipation. “Are you sure? How do you know?” The questions came quick and confused, until Macaiah called the group to order and set the young men in front to tell their story more fully.

  Only when the report was finished and the questions returned to prolonged comments did Elisha realize that his master was silent. He went to his side, his earlier prescience weighing heavily.

  Elijah waited until his successor kneeled beside him before he spoke, as though he had bided his time until this moment. “Elisha,” he said gently, “I must go to Bethel. Stay here.”

  The younger man, now in his middle years and a powerful prophet in his own right, refused. “No. I fear that I will not see you again. I will go with you.”

  “I want to go alone.”

  “You always want to be alone when you feel Yahweh speaking to you.” Elisha’s whisper became more urgent. He swore a double oath. “As Yahweh lives and as you live, I will not leave you.”

  Elijah glared at the young man, slightly angered at his aggressiveness. He nodded, though, and the two men slipped unnoticed out of the house and away from Gilgal.

  Bethel was seven miles to the south, up higher along the spine of the ridge and toward Jerusalem. They walked the distance in two hours.

  A group of prophets stood outside the door of the coenobia house, waiting as though they expected the great prophet to come. They watched Elijah with curious interest as he neared them. One of them caught Elisha’s sleeve. Quickly, the group surrounded him, whispering in urgent and painful tones. “Did you know that Yahweh is going to take your lord and master away?”

  “Yes,” Elisha replied, “I do know. Let’s not talk about it.” They sensed, as he did, that Jehoram’s promise to remove the baals was the seal of Elijah’s life. His work was done. The awareness struck the other prophets with the overwhelming sense of destiny that Elisha himself felt earlier in the morning. Yet their certainty made him light-headed. He felt as though he walked through a story already written.

  Elijah talked with the coenobia for forty minutes. His speech, Elisha thought, was the best of his life. The prophets listened with awesome awareness that the great man of God soon would be gone.

  The great mentor talked of the past and of the future, of the battle won and the war ahead, of the sense of lostness once that now was turned to victory. He talked of truth, of nearness to Yahweh, of listening for God’s voice amid the din of religious chaos. He talked of a prophet’s distinct and tailored call and how it is garbled when he listens more to other prophets than to God. He challenged them at last to ignore the thumping drumbeat of prophetic fame, so to hear the weeping wail of the wounded day.

  Elijah finished and walked from the group that was left silent in the heavy air of signal truth. Elisha followed. Outside the door, he repeated his earlier plea. “Stay here, Elisha. Yahweh sends me to Jericho. I want to go alone.”

  “No,” Elisha said flatly. “I meant what I said. I will stay with you.”

  Elijah chose not to respond. He wanted to be alone, yet he wanted Elisha with him. The two men took the southeast road toward the Michmash fortress, then turned down the Way of the Border toward Jericho. They covered the fifteen-mile, downhill distance in three hours, running short distances as the older man was able.

  The scene at Jericho was virtually a replay of the Bethel scene. A company of prophets waited expectantly at their door. They watched with deep, silent respect as the great prophet entered the house, then they surrounded Elisha with concern.

  “Yes,” he answered. “I know. Yahweh will take him away. Please do not ask me about it.”

  As the great prophet spoke to the assembled coenobia, Elisha’s mind was caught up in his own sense of destiny. Elijah, he knew, did not stand honored before the prophets because he was famous, but because he was faithful. Ironically, the famous man never had sought fame, only Yahweh’s distinctive word. To be like that at my life’s end, Elisha thought, to be able to look back on life without regret, to have the assurance that life was handled well, faithful against the confusing call of the generation, that is life’s greatest moment.

  A low murmur ran through the group to call Elisha back to the present. Elijah was through. The prophets bowed to their faces and did not rise until the great man was out the door.

  “Yahweh calls me to the Jordan,” he said to Elisha, and again he pled unconvincingly to go alone.

  “You go to die,” Elisha answered quietly.

  “Yes,” the prophet answered. “I go to be taken by Yahweh. Alone.”

  Elisha realized now that his master’s reluctance was to test his disciple. His successor must not see him go unless he feels certain that Yahweh bids him to. “No,” he answered firmly. “You shall not go alone. As God lives, I will stay with you to the end.”

  The road to the Jordan was bleak, the bleached soil spread flat and dismal beyond Jericho. The men walked in silence for nearly two hours. Then they stood on the bank of the river. It was low now, but still swift and thirty yards wide between its ugly mud banks.

  The men watched the brown water. Five miles to the south the Dead Sea glistened a brilliant blue. To the north the mountain walls closed on either side to squeeze the
valley tightly to its green ribbon. Here the wider flood bed was bare and gray, spotted with clumps of thorn bushes.

  Elijah removed his mantle and rolled it tightly into a long bundle. He stepped to the slime-covered edge of the water. Grasping one end, he swung it in an arc over his head. The brown cloak splashed sharply against the brown water. The water began to churn. Backwards it rolled, turned up onto itself in a swirling moment, roaring against itself, clawing at the air, fighting against the unseen shield of God’s breath, piling its brown-earthed fury into a standing wall of wetness.

  The men walked through the corridor, the wild Jordan rearing high to their left, stretching shallow and receding to their right. They looked back from the other side. The water closed from the bottom, its high rippled hump dropping quickly in a racing flood to catch the shallowed south. The moment was done. Elisha stared at his master, open-mouthed.

  The two men did not see the miracle alone. Across the Jordan were fifty prophets who had followed unseen from Bethel and Jericho. They fell to the ground and buried their faces in the dirt, shielding their sight against the moment when Yahweh himself might fill the valley with his blinding glory.

  Elijah’s gentle voice pulled his servant from his stunned silence. “Elisha, I will leave you in a while. What would you have me do for you before I am taken?”

  The servant’s eyes were wide, his lips trembling. He clenched his teeth to still the tempest in his soul. Evenly, with conviction and strength, an edge of anticipation in his voice, he answered, “I have been your son. Give me an elder son’s inheritance of the spirit that dwells within you.”