ELIJAH PART IV

The fourth story is the story of Elijah’s vision fast.  (I Kings 19) Here’s how the story goes.  When Jezebel learns what Elijah has done to her prophets she vows revenge and so he flees for his life. He goes all the way down south to Be’er Sheva and sits down under a bush praying that he might die.  This, by the way, is an incredible parallel to the story of Hagar and Ishmael, where Hagar places Ishmael under a bush, also in the vicinity of Be’er Sheva (Genesis 21:16) that she might not see him die from thirst. An Angel touches him and provides him with bread and water so that he might live—twice.

We cannot transform ourselves if we are not willing to have who we are metaphorically die.  There is a difference between craving this metaphoric death and the literal death that Hagar fears and Elijah seemingly desires.

Elijah then embarks upon a quest where he walks 40 days and nights and ends up at Horeb, the same place Moses had his vision fast for forty days and nights and came down with the twin tablets. Instead of going up the mountain for his vision, Elijah goes into a cave. He has a vision where he goes out from the cave onto the mountain. There was a great and mighty wind, but YHVH, the text tells us, was not in the wind.  Then an earthquake and a fire, but no YHVH. The earthquake and the fire are all part of the pyrotechnics of revelation with Moses, but visions, we are being taught, come in different flavors.  For Elijah that vision comes in a “Kol Demama Dakah”, a still small voice, in the poetry of the King James translation.

We have, regretfully, no record of the content of the vision. What we have is a process of fasting, prayer and the necessity of metaphoric death.  We have a lesson that visions can come in many different ways. May you be blessed with the visions you need for your life.