Ahaziah and Elijah’s Fire

Ahaziah son of Ahab now reigned over Israel, and made his home in Samaria. He was a wicked man, in every way like both his parents and like Jeroboam, who was the first to transgress and began to lead the people astray. In the second year of his reign the king of Moab broke away from his allegiance and stopped paying the tribute he had paid before to Ahaziah’s father Ahab. [a]

Now it happened that Ahaziah, as he was coming down from the top of his house, fell from it, and in his sickness he sent to the Fly — that was the name of the god of Ekron — to ask about his recovery. But the God of the Hebrews appeared to the prophet Elijah and commanded him to go and meet the messengers who had been sent and ask them whether the people of Israel did not have a God of their own, that the king was sending to a foreign god to ask about his recovery; and to tell them to go back and tell the king that he would not escape this illness. When Elijah had done what God commanded him, and the messengers had heard what he said, they went back to the king at once. The king wondered how they could come back so soon and asked them the reason. They said that a man had met them and forbidden them to go any farther, “but told us to come back and tell you, by the command of the God of Israel, that this illness will end badly.” When the king told them to describe the man who had said this to them, they replied that he was a hairy man, with a leather belt around him. So the king understood from this that the man the messengers described was Elijah.

He then sent a captain to him with fifty soldiers and commanded them to bring Elijah to him. The captain found Elijah sitting on the top of a hill and ordered him to come down and come to the king, for so the king had commanded; if he refused, they would carry him off by force. Elijah said to him, “So that you may have proof whether I am a true prophet, I will pray that fire may fall from heaven and destroy both the soldiers and you.” So he prayed, and a whirlwind of fire fell and destroyed the captain and those who were with him. When the king was told of the destruction of these men, he was very angry, and sent another captain with the same number of armed men as before. When this captain too threatened the prophet that unless he came down of his own accord he would seize him and carry him away, fire, at Elijah’s prayer against him, killed this captain as it had the other. When the king learned by inquiry what had happened to him, he sent out a third captain.

But this captain was a sensible man of a very considerate character. When he came to the place where Elijah happened to be, he spoke courteously to him. He said that he knew it was without his own consent, and only in obedience to the king’s command, that he had come to him, and that those who came before had not come willingly either, but for the same reason. He therefore begged him to have pity on the armed men who were with him, and to come down and follow him to the king. Elijah accepted his tactful words and courteous behavior, came down, and followed him. When he came to the king, he prophesied to him and told him that God said, “Since you have despised him as not being God, and so unable to foretell the truth about your illness, and have sent to the god of Ekron to ask what the end of this illness of yours will be, know this: you will die.”

And so the king died a very short time later, as Elijah had foretold. Since he died without children, his brother Joram succeeded him in the kingdom. This Joram was like his father Ahab in wickedness, and reigned twelve years, indulging in every kind of wickedness and impiety toward God; for he abandoned God’s worship and worshiped foreign gods. But in other respects he was an energetic man. It was at this time that Elijah disappeared from among men, and no one knows of his death to this very day. But he left behind him his disciple Elisha, as we have said before. And indeed, as to Elijah, and as to Enoch, who lived before the flood, it is written in the sacred books that they disappeared, but in such a way that nobody knew that they died. [b]