Kings I: Chapters 17 to 22

The last bunch looked at the divided kingdom years - now for the days of Elijah

CHAPTER 17

“Elijah” is the first word in this chapter.  It’s an abrupt way to start, as we haven’t been introduced to him yet.  But here he suddenly is – Elijah the Tishbite (no one knows what Tishbite is/was).  And Elijah (whose named means “Behold, Yahweh is my God”) begins to talk smack to King Ahab of Israel.  That’s his grand Biblical entrance.

Elijah declares a drought, saying there will be no rain unless it’s by the word of Elijah (given to him by the power of God).  This is to punish Ahab for his ways, of course.

With the drought on, ravens feed Elijah as he lives in the wilderness.  This continues until the area is out of water.  After that, the Lord directs him to a town, where Elijah comes across a widow.  She is making food for herself and her son.  She must be badly off, because she tells Elijah that when she’s done with it, they’ll die.  Yikes. 

Elijah comes off like a dick here, frankly.  He tells her to make him some grub.  And even after he sob story, he still tells her to get him some grub.  OK, so I assume he knows what’ll happen next, but it’s still a cold start.  She makes food for him and – BOOM – it’s a bottomless jar of flour and bottomless jug of oil. I guess the moral is that if you’re kind to those passing through, you’ll get your reward.  (And telling her in advance would ruin the point of the reward).

But it’s not all well and good.  Her son gets sick and dies.  But it’s cool – Elijah brings the son back to life.  That’s a pretty impressive miracle.  Even Moses never did that.  Also, please note that this makes two straight miracles that Christ will later replicate – extra food and resurrection.  Elijah makes quite a debut for himself.

CHAPTER 18

And now for one of the great kick ass chapters in the entire Bible – of the entire fucking Bible.

Actually, it gets off to a bit of an awkward start.  Apparently, Ahab and wife Jezebel have been killing all the prophets of the Lord, and their servant Obadiah tried to hide some in caves, but was found out.  At any rate, Elijah, now the last prophet left, appears before Obadiah and says he wants to see Ahab.  Obadiah thinks he’ll be killed for this – he’s already on thin ice for the cave thing.  But eventually Elijah and Ahab do meet.  Like I said, this part is all more confusingly written than it needs to be.

But then the chapter starts kicking it into gear.  Elijah is calling out Ahab and all his prophets of Baal.  Let’s have a holy throw down – my God (THE God) versus your puny Baal or whatever you call him.  Thunderdome is still nearly 3,000 years in the future, so Elijah proposes this showdown for deities (and their prophets).  Your guys versus me – bring two bulls, put them up on a mountain with two altars, like any sacrifice.  But this sacrifice showdown has a wrinkle.  Any old jerk with a match can start a fire.  But what happens if we let the gods set them.  You take all your hundreds of prophets of Baal and appeal to this Baal character to send a thunderbolt or lighting or Godzilla or whatever from the sky and spontaneously light a fire for your sacrifice.  Then I’ll ask my god – THE God – to do the same. 

It’s Elijah versus 450 prophets of Baal (and 400 prophets of Asherah, whoever that is). It’s up on Mount Carmel, apparently a big ass height. No pay-per-view – let all Israel come out to see what happens.  Even King Ahab will be there.  It’s the original Super Bowl. 

Note – not only is this a nice little challenge, but it also clearly indicates that only one of these gods is real.  Throughout the Bible there have been indications that the ancient Hebrew weren’t initially monotheists so much as they believed that their God was the most powerful God and had signed a special agreement with them.  In terms of God’s attitude, he was generally a pretty parochial god, just like most gods of the era were.  He only cared about his people (which frankly doesn’t make much sense if he’s the only God and God of all).  Here in Kings I, we’re getting a newer sense of God emerging, one more in keeping with modern thoughts.  First Solomon opened the door to everyone for God in his Temple dedication speech, and now Elijah is implying God is the only deity.

But enough side notes, we’ve got a holy smack down to get to.  Everyone shows up – Elijah, the 450 prophets of Baal, the pair of unlucky oxen, King Ahab, the people of Israel, Bob Costas, Jim Nantz – everyone.  The prophets of Baal go first.

And it doesn’t go well for them.  The ask Baal to start the fire.  Nothing.  They pray.  They implore.  They plead.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing.  They start cutting themselves with knives and puncturing themselves with spears to get their attention.  Big lotta nothing. This ain’t going well at all.

And Elijah decides to take this occasion to invent trash talking.  He becomes the Holy Heckler, mocking them and their puny false god Baal. Hey, maybe your God is on vacation!  Maybe he’s sleeping!  Maybe he’s on the toilet!  (Seriously – the Bible says “Call louder, for he is a go; he may be busy doing his business” – and in the ancient Hebrew the way it’s written indicates that Baal is on the toilet).  Oh my, Elijah is having a blast.

This goes on for hours and is an abject failure for Team Baal.  Then it’s Elijah’s turn.  What does he do?  What does a prophet of God do when he’s got to have the Lord spontaneously ignite a sacrificial offering?  I’ll tell you what he does – he pours water all over the altar and offerings.  He has four jars of water filled up three times (12 jug-fuls in all – one for each of the tribes) and completely drenches the sacrificial area.  Yeah, that’s right.  He’s so damn confident he can pull this off that he soaks it, which should make sacrifice impossible.  Because he’s so incredibly a prophet of the Lord like that.  This is like Satchel Paige ordering his fielders to sit down after he walked the bases loaded just so he can strike out the side with a maximum factor of awesome.

So Elijah asks God to light his fire, and – BOOM!  Yeah, that didn’t take long.  Suddenly it’s all incinerated.  “Look at that fire!” Bob Costas probably shouted – “I haven’t seen anything like it since the days of Mickey Mantle!”  The people all bow down. Surely the Lord is the only Lord for them.  (Yeah, but this won’t take at all, now will it)?  Oh, and then Elijah commands the drought to end, and a downpour happens. Remember – he has the power of God’s word to end the drought.

It’s a really fun smack down, but it gets a little ugly.  Elijah has all the 450 Baal prophets killed.  The way the Bible is written it sounds as if Elijah himself might be doing the killing, but then again maybe not.

CHAPTER 19

As awesome as Chapter 18 was, Chapter 19 is arguably just as fascinating, though in a completely different way.  This doesn’t have a great showdown like Chapter 18, but it’s theologically fascinating and in its own quiet way maybe even more important.

Some background.  In the fall of 1993 I was a first semester freshman taking western civilization at Knox College.  Prof. Penny Gold wants us to attend a guest lecturer one night – a Biblical scholar named Richard Elliot Friedman.  He’d previously written a book called “Who Wrote the Bible” on the Old Testament, but tonight he was going to talk about his new research.  (He joked he was glad to be able to discuss something different.  He’d been asked so many times who wrote the Bible that his stock answer was now “James Michner.”  And then he told everyone, “And you wouldn’t believe how many people think they are original when they say, `No, then it would’ve been longer.’” 

Anyhow, his talk was about a book he was finishing up about what he saw as the main theme of the Old Testament: the disappearance of God.  Early on, God is everywhere.  But he gradually makes his appearances less and less frequent.  The last time he appears in the Jewish Bible (which isn’t organized the same as the Christian) is the whirlwind in Joab.  The last miracle is a sundial going back for a minute in Isaiah.  Oh, and the last great miracle of the Bible is Elijah versus the priests of Baal – the part from Chapter 18.

Then Friedman pointed out Chapter 19, what happens immediately after the big showdown.  Elijah flees for his life, fearing retribution from Jezebel and Ahab.  He goes to Mt. Horeb, which is what the Book of Deuteronomy called Mt. Sinai.  He’s in the holiest place on the landscape – the place where Moses got the 10 commandments.  The place where the Hebrew are for nearly half of the Torah. (Elijah walked for 40 days to get there – of course it’s the number 40).  He goes to this most holy of places, and God asks Elijah, What are you doing here.

Then things get even more interesting.  First a strong wind happens.  This is a sign of God’s power, right? No, the Bible then clearly states the Lord isn’t in the wind.  Then an earthquake happens.  Why surely this must be a sign from the Lord, right? No, because then the Bible says “the Lord was not in the earthquake.”  Next came a fire.  Why, the Lord has been doing the fire thing for a long time now – the burning bush with Moses, the pillar of fire for the fleeing Hebrew, and just last chapter in the big showdown.  Now this has to be the Lord in the fire ….right?  Wrong.  He’s not there either.

Then comes an interesting phrase.  We’re told that after all these things, there is just “a light silent sound.”  And that voice that is the light silent sound says, “Why are you here, Elijah?” 

This is fascinating, though I can’t fully wrap my brain around it.  My thinking of it has been forever influenced by Friedman.  This is a key moment in the disappearance of God (at least in the Old Testament). 

There are other ways of viewing it – namely that God is upset at Elijah for fleeing there instead of staying back in Israel.  His job as prophet is to be there and do God’s work, so he should trust in God.  And his departure is a bit odd.  He was the ultimately cocky motherfucker back there, but then he immediately gets scared.  What did he think was going to happen from his showdown? 

Well, God tells Elijah to anoint some people – Jehu as Israel’s king, Hazael as king of Aram (who are the Aram and why does God care who is their king?  That’s never explained).  Oh, and find Elisha and name him your successor, Elijah.  The footnotes tell me that Elijah only does one of the three (getting Elisha) and that Elisha will do a second one and have a follower to a third). 

Well Eliza does find Elisha and it’s an oddly charming scene.  Elisha destroys his oxen and plowing equipment.  He won’t need that any more in his new job!  Oh, and he asks if he can say good-bye to his parents. 

One last thing. Early on, when Elijah is on the run to Mt. Horeb, he pauses in the desert and prays for God to take his life.  Then “a messenger” wakes him and shows him some cake and a jug of water to keep Elijah going.  The messenger is apparently an angel, though he’s never called that.

CHAPTER 20

OK, so much for Elijah for the time being.  Now back to Ahab.  This is a long and not terribly interesting chapter – but with a weird coda at the end. 

The upshot is that Ahab wins a few battles over the king of Aram.  What’s weird is that there is a prophet (unnamed) of the Lord helping Ahab, saying that God will deliver Aram to his hands to show the power of the Lord.  Why would God do that for Ahab?  We’ve been told previously that Ahab is the worst king of all and worships Baal. Wouldn’t a victory for him be a sign for Baal?  For that matter, what is Ahab doing hanging out with prophets? Just a few chapters ago we were told he’d had them all killed except for Elijah. This doesn’t make much sense.

Ahab wins one battle, but the Aram guys aren’t impressed.  They figure that Ahab’s god is a mountain god, so fight on the plains instead.  This angers God.  And you don’t want to anger God.  So God has Ahab not only win the second battle, but kill 100,000 Aram guys in it.  Ouch.

However, Ahab lets the Aram king survive.  He has him trapped in a city with a sliver of his previous force, and God wants the king dead.  The unnamed prophet had made that clear.  But Ahab lets the man live and signs a pact with him.  God is infuriated and has a prophet tell Ahab, “Because you have set free the man I put under the ban, your life shall pay for his life.”  OK, we saw something similar with Saul, but this is even worse – the punishment will be death.  And I realize why I don’t like this story of the Samuel-Saul confrontation.  In both cases, God will punish someone for showing mercy.  That’s fucked up. 

But the weird part is how God gets the message to Ahab.  A prophet tells his companion to strike him with a sword.  (The goal is to look wounded, tell the king you got the wound in a battle, and then once you have Ahab’s attention, give him the bad news).  But the companion doesn’t quite like feel like stabbing a guy with a sword for no apparent reason, and so refuses.  Once he refuses, the prophet decrees that for disobeying the word of the Lord, a lion will come up and attack you.  Well, in the next sentence, that’s exactly what happens.  The fuck?  Then the prophet tells a second man to stab man, and this guy does it.  

Yeah, that’s weird.  I guess the moral is ALWAYS obey the Lord, no matter how weird or pointless the command might sound.  Also, the prophet is called “one of the guild prophets.”  Wait – the prophets have a guild?  That just sounds so strange.

I told you the chapter has a weird ending.

CHAPTER 21

Ahab and Jezebel act like dicks. Ahab wants the vineyard of his next door neighbor, and to be fair he makes a nice offer.  Give it to me and I’ll give you money or better land.  But the guy isn’t interesting.  This offer violates Hebrew communal landholding laws of the Torah.  So Ahab doesn’t get it. 

He’s upset and stewing about it, and wife Jezebel notices it.  When she learns of the problem she tells him she has a plan to get it.  (Well, first she mocks him for acting so un-kingly, but then she has a plan).  She has Vineyard Guy sit at a feast between two scoundrels, with the scoundrels paid to say that Captain Vineyard had denounced the king and Lord.  The punishment for that is stoning. This all goes off without a hitch, and Ahab gets his vineyard.   Ahab himself had nothing to do with the killing, but when he learns about it, he has no problem with it or the result. 

Elijah shows up to denounce Ahab now, saying that the dogs will lick up your blood when you die.  Bummer.  Ahab freaks out and repents.  God backs off a bit, saying that he’ll let Ahab’s son rule before wiping out his line. For the life of me I can’t see why God is letting Ahab get away with so much.

CHAPTER 22

Sure enough, Ahab dies.  But he isn’t overthrown, but dies from a wound in battle.  His body is washed in a pool, where we’re told dogs lick up his blood and prostitutes bath in it.  Yikes! 

Before the battle Ahab teams up with the King of Judea.  They ask all kinds of prophets for advice, and they all tell Ahab what he wants to hear.  King Jehosaphat of Judea asks if that’s all the prophets.  Well, there’s this other guy, but he always gives me bad news.  Heh – Ahab intentionally surrounds himself with yes-men. Jeshoaphat insists on seeing Gloomy Gus anyway (actual name: Micaiah), and sure enough it’s all doom and gloom.  Ahab turns to Jehoshaphat and says, do you see why I don’t like calling on this guy?  That gave me a chuckle – it’s like a quip from a movie.

After Ahab dies, we hear that Jehoshaphat did a nice job running Judea, though he kept the altars in high places.  He also dies and his son Jehoram becomes king. Meanwhile, Ahab’s son Ahaziah rules Israel, and is horrible.

Kings I ends in the middle of a section talking about Ahaziah.  It’s an odd place for a break between books.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Kings I is frequently fascinating, especially the bits on Solomon and Elijah.  Solomon is an overrated king but his temple speech is a thing of beauty.  Between the inclusive nature of his speech and the refutation of Baal as any sort of God in Elijah’s story, we get the emergence of a more modern God. 

He’s the only God and everyone has a chance to pray to him.

Click here to begin Kings II.