ELIJAH PART 3
TRANCE AND RAINMAKING
The next story is the famous story of the contest between Elijah and 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who are supported by Jezebel. (I Kings 18:19- 46) Jezebel is the Queen of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. She is a Canaanite by birth from what is today Lebanon, and she has brought the prophets of Asherah and Baal from her native land to be the dominant religious figures in the north. This is much to the consternation of the writer(s) of the Books of Kings and to people like Elijah who worshipped only YHVH.
YHVH sends Elijah back to Ahab to tell him that YHVH will send rain to relieve the drought and prove YHVH’s power. (we see again the connection with rain). Elijah proposes a contest to Ahab to prove who is more powerful, Baal or YHVH. The winner is the one who can call upon their God and have the God respond with fire and burn the sacrificial bull. The prophets of Baal danced, shouted and cut themselves to no avail. Then Elijah took 12 stones, one for each tribe, and built an altar. Then, showman that Elijah evidently was, he had the bull soaked with water not once, not twice, but three times. Then he offered a simple prayer to YHVH asking for YHVH to prove that he is the god of Israel and Elijah is his servant. Elijah’s prayer was answered and the sopping wet bull caught fire from heaven and was burned.
Then, as a testimony to a certain kind of zealotry, Elijah had the citizens who were observing this contest seize the prophets of Baal and had them all murdered.
But it still had not rained. So Elijah climbed up to the top of the Mt. Carmel and put his face between his knees. The text doesn’t tell us exactly what Elijah did, but Elijah apparently kept thinking he had done enough to bring the rain, because he kept asking his servant if there was a cloud off to the West over the Mediterranean Sea. The seventh time there was a small cloud and Elijah knew he had been successful and told his servant to go and tell Ahab to get off the mountain before he couldn’t descend because of the downpour that came.
