The Answer by Fire, and the Return of Rain

Luke 4:25 and James 5:17 both speak of three years and six months without rain. “The third year” here is probably counted from Elijah’s move to Zarephath, or from the first failed rainy season, so the two figures need not conflict.

The Hebrew calls the famine “strong”, chazaq. Samaria may mean the capital or the whole region; either way, three years without rain has emptied the storehouses.

Obadiah means “servant of the LORD”, a striking name for the chief minister of Ahab’s house. He is not the prophet of the Book of Obadiah, though the Talmud later identified the two.

Carmel and the hills around Samaria are full of limestone caves. Splitting the hundred into two groups of fifty halved the risk if one was found. Jezebel’s purge of the prophets is mentioned only here, in passing, as background.

“Fountains” are springs and “brooks” are nechalim, wadis like Cherith. Horses and mules were the core of Ahab’s chariot army; the king who cannot feed his stables cannot defend his kingdom.

“By himself” is repeated for each man, levaddo. It is the same word Elijah will use on Carmel: “I, even I only” (verse 22). Three men are alone on the roads of a dry country.

The governor of the palace falls on his face before a fugitive with a price on his head. His question is almost disbelief: can this really be the man the king has hunted for three years?

Obadiah has just called Elijah “my lord”, and Elijah answers by sending him to “thy lord”, meaning Ahab. The prophet reminds him whose servant he officially is.

Obadiah assumes the errand is a punishment: “what have I sinned?” To be delivered “into the hand” of someone is the idiom of handing a man over to an enemy.

Making a kingdom swear that Elijah was not there suggests treaty partners pressed to extradite him, the kind of oath allied states exchanged about fugitives. Ahab’s search had diplomatic reach.

The message “Behold, Elijah” can also be read in Hebrew as “Behold, my God is the LORD”, since that is what the name means. Obadiah is being asked to carry that sentence to Ahab.

Elijah had a reputation for vanishing. After his ascension the sons of the prophets voice the same fear, that “the Spirit of the LORD hath taken him up, and cast him upon some mountain” (2 Kings 2:16).

Water was the scarcest thing in the land, and Obadiah supplied it to a hundred men for as long as the drought lasted. Bread and water was the barest ration; 22:27 calls it the ration of a prisoner.

Each time Obadiah repeats Elijah’s command (verses 8, 11 and 14) he ends it closer to his own death: first “to slay me”, then “he shall slay me”, and now the words of the message and his execution fall in one breath.

“The LORD of hosts”, YHWH tseba’ot, the LORD of armies, appears here for the first time in the book, and Elijah uses it again twice at Horeb (19:10, 14). Before the army-commanding Ahab, Elijah names a greater commander.

Ahab goes to meet Elijah, not the other way round. After three years of searching, the king comes to the prophet.

“Troubleth” is ‘akar, the word attached to Achan, who brought disaster on Israel by stealing devoted things and was buried in the valley of Achor, “trouble” (Joshua 7:25). Jonathan had said his father Saul “troubled the land” (1 Samuel 14:29).

“Baalim” is plural: the many local Baals of individual towns and shrines, not a single deity. Elijah pins the charge on “thy father’s house”, the dynasty of Omri.

Carmel is a ridge running into the sea on the border between Israel and Phoenicia, disputed ground for both gods. Tacitus records that in Roman times Carmel still had an altar to a god with no temple or image, consulted by Vespasian.

Ahab does as he is told. The king who called Elijah a troubler spends the next day following his instructions.

“Two opinions” is se‘ippim, literally two branches or forks, so the picture may be of a bird hopping between two boughs. Elijah offers a straight choice in two conditional sentences, and the crowd gives him nothing.

Four hundred and fifty against one is the arithmetic he offers the crowd. At Horeb he will repeat “I, even I only, am left” (19:10, 14), and there the LORD will correct the count.

Baal was the storm god, shown on a stele from Ugarit brandishing a thunderbolt. Fire from heaven was supposed to be his own speciality, so Elijah lets the test be fought on Baal’s ground.

The key word is “answer”, ‘anah, which recurs through the scene: the prophets cry “hear us”, literally “answer us”, and nobody answers until Elijah’s “hear me”. “It is well spoken” is literally “the word is good”: the crowd, silent about the choice, agrees to the test.

Elijah gives them the first turn and the whole of the day, “for ye are many”. Every advantage of time and numbers goes to Baal.

“O Baal, hear us” is two Hebrew words, ba‘al ‘anenu, repeated for hours. The Hebrew says they leaped about the altar “which he had made”, an odd singular that may point to their leader.

“Pursuing” translates siyg, and many readers, rabbinic and modern, take it as a euphemism for having gone aside to relieve himself. Canaanite myths really did tell of Baal travelling, and of his death and sleep in the underworld, so the taunts bite.

Self-laceration in mourning or appeal to a god is attested in Canaanite texts, where the god El gashes himself grieving for Baal. Israel’s law forbade it (Leviticus 19:28, Deuteronomy 14:1). “Lancets” are spears.

“Prophesied” here is hitnabbe’, to rave in frenzy, the verb used of Saul in his fit (1 Samuel 18:10). The evening sacrifice was offered in the mid-afternoon. The three negatives stack up: no voice, no answer, no attention.

An altar to the LORD had stood on Carmel, and someone had torn it down, probably in Jezebel’s campaign. Elijah rebuilds an altar outside Jerusalem, which Deuteronomy’s rule of one chosen place would normally forbid; the emergency overrides it.

“Israel shall be thy name” quotes Genesis 35:10. Twelve stones for the tribes also recall the twelve Joshua set up at Gilgal after crossing the Jordan (Joshua 4:3–9), a memorial of entering the land now used to call the land back.

“Two measures of seed” is an area measure, the ground sown by two seahs of seed, perhaps a few hundred square metres. The trench encloses a wide space, not a narrow ditch.

The word for “barrels” is kad, the same word as the widow’s “barrel” of meal in 17:12. The jar that never ran out of flour in Zarephath has its counterpart here, emptied deliberately.

Four jars poured three times makes twelve, the same number as the stones. The instruction and its execution are given in full each time, like a liturgy.

The traditional site of the contest is el-Muhraqa, “the place of burning”, on the southeast end of the ridge, overlooking the Jezreel valley and the Kishon below.

“At thy word” is bidbareka, recalling the refrain of chapter 13, bidbar YHWH. Elijah claims no initiative of his own: the drought, the contest and the flooded altar were all done by the LORD’s word.

“Hear me” is ‘aneni, “answer me”, twice, against the prophets’ hours of “answer us”. “Turned their heart back again” can be read as God bringing them back, or as God having let them turn away; most take the first.

“The fire of the LORD” fell on the first offerings at the tabernacle (Leviticus 9:24), and Chronicles says it fell again at Solomon’s dedication (2 Chronicles 7:1). “Licked up” is lachak, the verb used of an ox licking up grass (Numbers 22:4).

“The LORD, he is the God” in Hebrew is YHWH hu’ ha’elohim. The crowd’s cry combines the two halves of Elijah’s own name, Eli-Yahu, my God is the LORD.

The Kishon is the river that swept away Sisera’s army in Deborah’s song (Judges 5:21). Deuteronomy 13:5 and 18:20 prescribed death for a prophet who spoke in the name of other gods.

“Sound” is qol, voice or thunder. Baal’s prophets got no qol all day (verse 26); Elijah hears one before any cloud is visible. Ahab, who may have fasted through the contest, is told to eat, as the crisis is over.

Head between the knees is a crouched posture of intense entreaty. James 5:18 cites this prayer as the reason the heavens gave rain. From the summit Carmel looks west over the Mediterranean.

Rain in the land comes off the Mediterranean from the west; Jesus would say “When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower” (Luke 12:54). The servant is sent to watch the right horizon.

The plain of Jezreel is heavy clay that turns to mud in a downpour, fatal to chariot wheels. “Prepare thy chariot” is literally “harness”; Ahab has perhaps twenty five kilometres to cover before the ground becomes impassable.

“In the mean while” is literally “until thus and until thus”, a phrase for something happening very quickly. Jezreel was the royal family’s second residence, in the valley between Carmel and Gilboa, and the setting of Naboth’s vineyard in chapter 21.

To gird the loins was to tuck the long robe into the belt so the legs were free to run. Elijah runs before the chariot like the royal runners who escorted the king’s car (1:5), a herald in front of Ahab all the way to Jezreel.