Who Was Elijah?
Elijah appears in the biblical narrative without introduction – 1 Kings simply announces him, mid-sentence, as a prophet from Tishbe in Gilead, delivering an oracle of drought to King Ahab of Israel. His ministry takes place during the reign of Ahab and his wife Jezebel, who had promoted the worship of Baal at the expense of the worship of Yahweh, and the bulk of Elijah's story in 1 Kings concerns the conflict between these two claims to divine authority.
The most famous episode of that conflict is the contest on Mount Carmel, where Elijah, alone, confronts 450 prophets of Baal in a public test: each side prepares a sacrifice, and the god who sends fire to consume it is shown to be the true God. Baal's prophets cry out all day without result; Elijah's prayer is answered immediately, and the fire that falls consumes not only the sacrifice but the altar, the stones, and even water poured around it. The contest ends with the death of Baal's prophets and, the narrative implies, the vindication of Elijah's God beyond any reasonable doubt.
What follows this victory is the part of Elijah's story most often overlooked. Jezebel threatens his life; Elijah flees, alone, into the wilderness, and travels forty days to Mount Horeb – another name for Sinai, the mountain where God first spoke to Moses. There, in a cave, God asks him a question: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” God then passes by – not in the wind that tears the mountain, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but in what most English translations render “a still small voice” or “a gentle whisper.” Elijah is recommissioned, given a new task, and told he is not, in fact, alone. He is later taken up in a whirlwind without dying, and reappears, in Jewish and Christian tradition, as a figure associated with the end times and, in the Gospels, with the transfiguration of Christ.
In Their Own Words
“And after the fire a still small voice.”
– 1 Kings 19:12, KJV“What are you doing here, Elijah?”
– 1 Kings 19:9, the word of the Lord to Elijah at Horeb“I, even I only, am left…and they seek my life, to take it away.”
– 1 Kings 19:10Selected Bibliography
- 1 Kings 17–19 – the drought, the contest on Carmel, and the flight to Horeb
- 1 Kings 21 – the confrontation with Ahab over Naboth's vineyard
- 2 Kings 2 – the ascension and the succession of Elisha