The great prophet of the time of Ahab, king of Israel, Elijah is identified at his first appearance in 1 Kings 17:1 as "Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead." Thus the prophet was a native of that mountain region.

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I. The Works of Elijah.

In 1 Kings 16:29-34 we read of the impieties of Ahab, culminating in his patronage of the worship of Baal, god of his queen, Jezebel (1 Kings 16:31). 1 Kings 16:34 mentions, as another instance of the little weight attached in Ahab's time to ancient prophetic threatenings, the rebuilding by Hiel the Bethelite of the banned city of Jericho, "with the loss" of Hiel's eldest and youngest sons. This was judgment of Yahweh, announced beforehand by a faithful servant of Yahweh, Joshua (Joshua 6:26).

1. The Judgment of Drought:

It is unclear whether Elijah was already a familiar figure at the court of Ahab in his introduction in 1 Kings 17:1. His garb (a garment of hair with a leather belt) and his manner identified him as a prophet (2 Kings 1:8; compare Zechariah 13:4 and Mark 1:6). Elijah declared in few words that Yahweh, true and only rightful God of Israel, whose messenger he was, was even at the very time sending a drought which would continue until the prophet himself declared it at an end. The term was fixed not by Elijah but by Yahweh; it was not to be short ("these years"). Guided, as true prophets were continually, by the "word of Yahweh," Elijah then hid himself in one of the ravines east of the Jordan, where the brook Cherith afforded him water, and ravens brought him "bread and meat" twice daily (1 Kings 17:2-6). As the drought advanced the brook dried up. Elijah was then directed, by the "word of Yahweh" to  go beyond the western limit of Ahab's kingdom to the Phoenician village of Zarephath, near Sidon. There the widow to whom Yahweh sent him was found gathering a few sticks from the ground at the city gate, to prepare a last meal for herself and her son. She yielded to the prophet's command that he himself should be first fed from her scanty store; and in return enjoyed the fulfillment of his promise, uttered in the name of Yahweh, that neither barrel of flour nor jug of oil should be exhausted before the breaking of the drought. (Josephus, Ant, VIII, xiii, 2, states on the authority of Menander that the drought extended to Phoenicia and continued there for a full year.) But when the widow's son fell sick and died, the mother regarded it as a Divine judgment upon her sins, a judgment which had been drawn upon her by the presence of the man of God. At the prayer of Elijah, life returned to the child (1 Kings 17:17-24).

"In the third year" (Luke 4:25 and James 5:17 give three years and six months as the length of the drought), Elijah was directed to show himself to Ahab as the herald of rain from Yahweh (1 Kings 18:1). How sorely both man and beast in Israel were pressed by drought and the resulting famine, is shown by the fact that King Ahab and his chief steward Obadiah were in person searching through the land for any patches of green grass that might serve to keep alive some of the king's own horses and mules (1 Kings 18:5,6). The words of Obadiah upon meeting with Elijah show the impression which had been produced by the prophet's long absence. It was believed that the Spirit of God had carried Elijah away to some unknown, inaccessible, mysterious region (1 Kings 18:10-12). Obadiah feared that such would again be the case, and, while he entreated the prophet not to make him the bearer of a message to Ahab, appealed to his own well-known piety and zeal, as shown in his sheltering and feeding, during Jezebel's persecution, a hundred prophets of Yahweh. Elijah reassured the steward by a solemn oath that he would show himself to Ahab (1 Kings 18:15). The king greeted the prophet with the haughty words, "Is it you, you troubler of Israel?" Elijah's reply, answering scorn with scorn, is what we should expect from a prophet; the woes of Israel are not to be charged to the prophet who declared the doom, but to the kings who made the nation deserve it (1 Kings 18:17,18).

2. The Ordeal by Prayer:

Elijah went on to challenge a test of the false god's power. He called for the gathering of all Israel at Mount Carmel, and for the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah, who ate at Jezebel's table. Accepting Elijah's proposal, Ahab called all these to Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18:19,20). Elijah's first word to the assembly implied the folly of their thinking that the allegiance of a people could successfully be divided between two deities: "How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." 

Taking the people's silence as an indication that they admitted the force of his first words, Elijah went on to propose his conditions for the test: a bull was to be offered to Baal and a bull to Yahweh, but no fire was to be put under it; "The God that answers by fire, he is God." The voice of the people approved the proposal as fair (1 Kings 18:22-24). Throughout a day of blazing sunshine the prophets of Baal called in frenzy upon their god, while Elijah mocked them (1 Kings 18:25-29). About the time for the regular offering of the evening sacrifice in the temple of Yahweh at Jerusalem, Elijah assumed control. He repaired the altar that had been thrown down, and used twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Israel. He had the sacrifice and wood drenched with water, until even a trench about the altar, deep and wide enough to hold two seahs (half-bushel) of grain, was filled. Then Elijah called in few and earnest words upon the God of the fathers of the nation (1 Kings 18:30-37). The answer of Yahweh was fire that consumed bull, wood, altar and the dust, and licked up the water in the trench. This struck the people with awe and fear. Convinced that Yahweh is God alone, they readily carried out the prophet's stern sentence of death for the prophets of the idol god (1 Kings 18:38-40). Next the prophet bade Ahab make haste with his meal, which had been made ready, because rain was at hand. On the mountain top Elijah bowed in prayer, sending his servant seven times to look out across the sea for the coming storm. At last the appearance of a rising cloud "as small as a man's hand" was reported; and before the hurrying chariot of the king could cross the plain to Jezreel there was "a great rain" from the heavens black with clouds and wind after three rainless years. With strength from Yahweh, Elijah ran like a courier before Ahab to the very gate of Jezreel (1 Kings 18:41-46).

3. At Horeb:

That same night a messenger from Jezebel found Elijah. The message said, "So may the gods do to me (i.e. may I be cut in pieces like a sacrificed animal if I break my vow; compare Jeremiah 34:18-20) and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them (the slain prophets of Baal) by this time tomorrow." Elijah was afraid and he sought safety in instant flight. At Beersheba, the southernmost town of Judah, he left his "servant," whom the narrative does not elsewhere mention. Going onward into the southern wilderness, he sat down under the scanty shade of a desert broom tree and prayed that he might share the common fate of mankind in death (1 Kings 19:1-4). After sleep he was refreshed with food brought by an angel. Again he slept and was fed. In the strength of that food he then wandered on for forty days and nights, until he found himself at Horeb, the mountain sacred because there Yahweh had revealed Himself to Moses (1 Kings 19:5-8). The prophet was bidden to take his stand upon the sacred mount; and Yahweh passed by, heralded by tempest, earthquake and thunderstorm (19:9-12). These were Yahweh's fore-runners only; Yahweh was not in them, but in the "still small voice". When Elijah heard the voice, he recognized Yahweh was present to hear and answer him. Elijah seems to be seeking to justify his own retreat to the wilderness by the plea that he had been "very jealous" and had done in Yahweh's cause all that mortal prophet could do, before he fled, yet all in vain! The same people who had forsaken the law and "covenant" of Yahweh, thrown down His altars and slain His prophets, would have allowed the slaughter of Elijah himself at the command of Jezebel; and in him would have perished the last true servant of Yahweh in all the land of Israel (19:13,14).

Divine compassion passed by Elijah's complaint in order to give him directions for further work in Yahweh's cause. Elijah must anoint Hazael to seize the throne of Syria, Israel's worst enemy among the neighboring powers; Jehu, in like manner, he must anoint to put an end to the dynasty of Ahab and assume the throne of Israel; and Elisha, to be his own successor in the prophetic office. These three, Hazael and his Syrians, Jehu and his followers, even Elisha himself, are to execute further judgments upon the idolaters and the scorners in Israel. Yahweh will leave Himself 7,000 (a round number, a limited but not an excessively small one, conveying a doctrine, like the doctrine of later prophets, of the salvation of a righteous remnant) in Israel, men proof against the judgment because they did not share the sin. If Elijah was rebuked at all, it was only in the contrast between the 7,000 faithful and the one, himself, which he believed to number all the righteous left alive in Israel (1 Kings 19:15-18).

4. The Case of Naboth:

The anointing of Hazael and of Jehu (2 Kings 9:1-13) seems to have been left to Elijah's successor; indeed, we read of no anointing of Hazael, but only of a significant interview between Hazael and Elisha (2 Kings 8:7-15). Elijah next appears in the narrative as rebuker of Ahab for the murder of Naboth. On the very piece of ground which the king had coveted and seized, the prophet appeared, unexpected and unwelcome, to declare upon Ahab, Jezebel and all their house the doom of a shameful death (1 Kings 21). There was present at this scene, in attendance upon the king, a captain named Jehu, the very man already chosen as the supplanter of Ahab, and he never forgot what he then saw and heard (2 Kings 9:25,26).

5. Elijah and Ahaziah:

Ahab's penitence (1 Kings 21:28,29) averted from himself some measure of the doom. His son Ahaziah pulled it down upon his own head. Sick unto death from injuries received in a fall, Ahaziah sent to ask an oracle concerning his recovery at the shrine of Baal-zebub in Ekron. Elijah met the messengers and turned them back with a prediction, not from Baal-zebub but from Yahweh, of impending death. Ahaziah recognized by the messengers' description the ancient "enemy" of his house. A captain and fifty soldiers sent to arrest the prophet were consumed by fire from heaven at Elijah's word. A second captain with another fifty met the same fate. A third besought the prophet to spare his life, and Elijah went with him to the king, but only to repeat the words of doom (2 Kings 1).

6. Elijah Translated:

A foreboding, shared by the "sons of the prophets" at Beth-el and Jericho, warned Elijah that the closing scene of his earthly life was at hand. He desired to meet the end, come in what form it might, alone. Elisha, however, bound himself by an oath not to leave his master. Elijah divided the Jordan with the stroke of his cloak, that the two might pass over toward the wilderness on the east. Elisha asked that he might receive a firstborn's portion of the spirit which rested upon his master. "...chariots of fire and horses of fire" appeared, and parted the two of them; "and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven" (2 Kings 2:1-11).

7. The Letter to Jehoram:

In 2 Chronicles 21:12-15 we read of a "letter" from Elijah to Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. The statements of 2 Kings 3:11,12 admit of no other interpretation than that the succession of Elisha to independent prophetic work had already occurred in the lifetime of Jehoshaphat. It has been pointed out that the difficult verse, 2 Kings 8:16, appears to mean that Jehoram began to reign at some time before the death of his father; it is also conceivable that Elijah left a message for the future king of Judah who would depart from the true faith.

II. The Work of Elijah.

One's estimate of the importance of the work of Elijah depends upon one's conception of the condition of things which the prophet confronted in Northern Israel. While it is true that the reign of Ahab was outwardly prosperous, and the king himself not without a measure of political sagacity together with personal courage, his religious policy at best involved such tolerance of false faiths as could lead only to disaster. Ever since the time of Joshua, the worship of Yahweh as God alone had been waging its combat with the old Canaanite worship, a worship rendered to local deities, the "Baalim" or "lords" of this and that neighborhood, whose ancient altars stood "on the high mountains, and on the hills, and under every green tree" (Deuteronomy 12:2). The god imported from Phoenicia by Jezebel bore also the title Baal; but his character and his worship were worse and more debasing than anything that had before been known. Resistance offered by the servants of Yahweh to the claims of the queen's favored god led to persecution, rightly ascribed by the historian to Jezebel (1 Kings 18:4). In the face of this danger, the differences between the worship of Yahweh as carried on in the Northern Kingdom and the same worship as practiced at Jerusalem sank out of sight. The work of Elijah was to recall the people from the worship of Baal to worship of Yahweh, the God of their fathers. The vitality of belief in Yahweh in the crisis is shown by the fidelity of such a man as Obadiah (1 Kings 18:3,4), or by the perseverance of a righteous remnant of 7,000, in spite of all that had happened of persecution (1 Kings 19:18). The work begun by Elijah was finished, not without blood, by Jehu; we hear no more of the worship of Baal in Israel after that anointed usurper's time (2 Kings 9; 10). The direction given to Elijah was that he should anoint one man to seize the throne of Syria, another to seize that of Israel, and a prophet to continue his own work; with the promise and prediction that these three forces should unite in executing upon guilty Israel the judgment still due for its apostasy from Yahweh and its worship of a false god. Elijah was not a reformer of peace; the very vision of peace was hidden from his eyes, reserved for later prophets for whom he could but prepare the way. It was his mission to destroy at whatever cost the heathen worship which otherwise would have destroyed Israel itself, with dire consequences. Amos and Hosea would have had no standing-ground had it not been for the work of Elijah and the influences which by Divine direction he put in operation.

III. Character of the Prophet.

It is obvious that the Scripture historian does not intend to furnish us with a character-study of the prophet Elijah. Does he furnish even the material upon which such a study may profitably be attempted? The characterization found in James 5:17, "Elijah was a man with a nature like ours," is brief indeed. Is not the sufficient explanation to be reached by observing that the historian's purpose was not to give a complete biography of any individual, whether prophet or king, but to display the working of Yahweh upon and with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah through the prophets? Few personal details are therefore to be found recorded concerning even such a prophet as Elijah; and none at all, unless they have a direct bearing upon his message. One may seek, and prize, what seems to lie upon the surface of the narrative: faith in Yahweh as God of all the earth and as covenant God of the patriarchs and their descendants; consuming zeal against the false religion which would seek to displace Yahweh from the place which must be His alone; keen vision to perceive hypocrisy and falsehood, and sharp wit to lash them, with the same boldness and disregard of self that must needs mark the true prophet in any age.

IV. Miracles in the Elijah Narratives.

The miraculous element is prominent in the experiences and works of Elijah. Each miraculous event was another example of the exercise of the power of Yahweh over all things as was to be seen in the supply of food by ravens and meal and oil for the prophet and the widow of Zarephath, the raising from the dead of the widow's son, the fire from heaven, the parting of the Jordan, and the ascension of the prophet by whirlwind into heaven.

V. Elijah in the New Testament.

Malachi (4:5) names Elijah as the forerunner of "the great and terrible day of Yahweh," and the expectation founded upon this passage is alluded to in Mark 6:15 parallel Luke 9:8; Matthew 16:14 parallel Mark 8:28 parallel Luke 9:19; Matthew 27:47-49 parallel Mark 15:35,36. The interpretation of Malachi's prophecy foreshadowed in the angelic annunciation to Zacharias (Luke 1:17), that John the Baptist should do the work of another Elijah, is given on the authority of Jesus Himself (Matthew 11:14). The appearance of Elijah, with Moses, on the Mount of Transfiguration, is recorded in Matthew 17:1-13 parallel Mark 9:2-13 parallel Luke 9:28-36, and in Matthew 11:14 parallel Mark 9:13 Jesus again identifies the Elijah of Malachi with John the Baptist. The fate of the soldiers of Ahaziah (2 Kings 1) is in the mind of James and John on one occasion (Luke 9:54). Jesus Himself alludes to Elijah and his sojourn in the land of Sidon (Luke 4:25,26). Paul makes use of the prophet's experience at Horeb (Romans 11:2-4). In James 5:17,18 the work of Elijah affords an instance of the powerful supplication of a righteous man.

LITERATURE.

The histories of Israel and commentaries on Kings are many. Those which tend to rationalizing tend also to decrease the importance of Elijah to the history. F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 2nd series, V; Maurice, Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament, Sermon VIII; Milligan, Elijah ("Men of the Bible" series); W. M. Taylor, Elijah the Prophet.

F. K. Farr

Última modificación: miércoles, 8 de agosto de 2018, 10:25