Fire on the Mountain

Three years went by with no rain. The grass was gone, the streams were gone, and the king himself was out riding around the country looking for enough green to keep his horses alive. And the word of the Lord came to Elijah: go and show yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain. So Elijah walked back into the kingdom that had been hunting him for three years. And when Ahab saw him, he said, “Is it you — the one who has been ruining Israel?” And Elijah said, “I have not ruined Israel. You have — you and your father’s house — because you left the Lord and went after the Baals. Now send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel — and bring the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal who eat at Jezebel’s table.”

So they all came up the mountain: the king, the whole nation, four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, and one man on the other side. And Elijah stood up in front of them and said, “How long are you going to go limping along on both legs? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal is, then follow him.” And nobody said a word. Not one. They wanted to keep both. So Elijah set them a test that anybody standing on that mountain could understand: “I am the only prophet of the Lord left, and there are four hundred and fifty of them. Let them bring two bulls. Let them choose one and cut it up and lay it on the wood — but put no fire to it. And I will do the same with the other. Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord. And the God who answers by fire — he is God.” And all the people said, “That is fair. Let it be done.”

The prophets of Baal went first, since there were so many of them. They took their bull and laid it on the wood, and from morning until midday they called out, ‘Baal, hear us! Baal, hear us!’ and danced around the altar they had made. And there was no voice, and nobody answered. And at noon Elijah began to make fun of them. He called out, “Shout louder! He is a god, after all. Perhaps he is deep in thought. Perhaps he is busy. Perhaps he has gone on a journey. Perhaps he is asleep, and somebody had better wake him up.” So they shouted louder, and worked themselves into a frenzy, and cut themselves with knives until they were bleeding, the way they always did. And they kept it up all afternoon. And there was no voice, and nobody answered, and nobody was listening.

And in the evening Elijah said to the people, ‘Come here to me.’ And they all crowded round to watch. And he took twelve stones — one for each of the twelve tribes, in a country that had been split in two for years — and he rebuilt the broken-down altar of the Lord with them. And he dug a trench all the way around it. And he laid the wood, and cut up the bull, and laid it on the wood. And then he said, “Fill four jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood.” And they did. And he said, ‘Do it again.’ And they did it again. And he said, ‘Do it a third time.’ And they did it a third time — in the fourth year of a drought, twelve jars of water poured out on a fire that had not been lit. The water ran down off the altar and filled the trench all around it. And then Elijah stepped up and prayed. It was a short prayer. The other side had been shouting since sunrise. “Lord, God of Abraham and Isaac and Israel — let it be known today that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, Lord, answer me — so that this people may know that you are the Lord God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.” And the fire of the Lord fell. It burned up the offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust — and it licked up every drop of the water in the trench. And the whole nation fell on their faces on the ground and shouted, “The Lord — he is God! The Lord — he is God!” And that day the prophets of Baal were seized and taken down to the brook Kishon and put to death — all four hundred and fifty of them. They had spent their lives teaching Israel to worship a god who could not answer, and under the law of Moses that was a killing matter.

And then Elijah said to Ahab, ‘Go up and eat and drink — I can hear the sound of the feet of rain.’ And he climbed to the top of Carmel and crouched down on the ground with his face between his knees, and said to his servant, ‘Go and look toward the sea.’ And the servant went and looked, and came back and said, ‘There is nothing.’ And Elijah said, ‘Go again.’ Seven times. And on the seventh time the servant said, “There is a little cloud coming up out of the sea — no bigger than a man’s hand.” And Elijah said: that is enough. Run and tell Ahab to harness his chariot and get down off this mountain before the rain stops him. And in a little while the sky went black with cloud and wind, and the rain came down in sheets on three dry years — and the hand of the Lord came on Elijah, and he pulled up his cloak and ran ahead of the king’s chariot the whole way to Jezreel.

Ahab went home and told Jezebel everything. And Jezebel sent Elijah a message: by this time tomorrow, you will be as dead as the men you killed today. And Elijah — who had just faced down a whole nation on his own and called fire out of the sky — was afraid, and ran for his life. He ran right out of the country and a day’s journey into the wilderness, and sat down under a broom bush, and asked to die. He said, “It is enough now, Lord. Take my life. I am no better than my fathers were.” And he lay down under the bush and fell asleep. And God did not scold him. Somebody touched him and said, ‘Get up and eat’ — and there was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jug of water, right by his head. And he ate and drank and lay down again. And the messenger of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat. The journey is too long for you.” Food, and sleep, and more food, and no lecture. And in the strength of that meal he walked forty days and forty nights, all the way to the mountain of God — Horeb, where Moses had stood.

And he went into a cave there and spent the night. And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And it all came pouring out: “I have been burning up with zeal for the Lord Almighty. The children of Israel have left you, and torn down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. And I am the only one left — and now they are hunting me too.” And God said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in front of the Lord. Look — the Lord is passing by.’ And a great strong wind came, tearing the mountains apart and breaking the rocks in pieces — but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake — but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire — but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, the sound of a thin quiet breath. And there was the Lord. And when Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went and stood at the mouth of the cave. And the voice said again, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ And he said it all again, word for word — and God gave him three things to do, and one thing to know. Go back, God said, and anoint Hazael to be king over Aram, and Jehu to be king over Israel, and Elisha son of Shaphat to be prophet in your place. And then: “And I have left seven thousand in Israel — every knee that has not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” Seven thousand. He had thought he was the only one.

So Elijah went back. And he found Elisha out in a field, plowing with twelve pairs of oxen, walking behind the last pair himself. And Elijah went over and, without saying a word, threw his own hairy cloak over the young man’s shoulders — and kept walking. And Elisha left the oxen standing in the furrow and ran after him and said, “Let me kiss my father and my mother goodbye, and then I will follow you.” And then he did something that told everybody he was not coming back: he took the pair of oxen he had been plowing with and killed them, and made a fire out of his own plow, and cooked the meat on it and gave it to everybody in the village, and they all ate. Then he got up and went after Elijah, and served him.