40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Kings 18:1-39 (Episode 315)

Episode Date: May 4, 2022

Obadiah is hiding prophets and isn't excited when Elijah wants him to give the king a message. Elijah goes to theological war with the prophets of Baal. Elijah mocks false gods while God consumes a victory. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you check out all the other things that 1517 is doing. We just wrapped up the Northwest Arkansas Regional Conference. Great time. Packed out.

People were happy to be out. Add an event again. When I say packed out, I mean it could fit no more people at that venue. But it was a great time. And it turns out that even though that event is over, registration is open for the national event in San Diego. So you can jump over to 1517.org, find that event, and you can register to hang out with us for three days over in San Diego in October. It's going to be a blast. If you've never gone, then you need to go.

If you have gone, it's back. I mean, we haven't done this in three years now because of COVID, but we are doing it this year. Chad and I will both be there. We'd be happy to be back at our home away from home over there at Mission Bay in San Diego. And so hopefully you will come and join us. Chad, we've been after hanging out in person. We didn't get an opportunity to record live, so we're just back on the computer. But we are in 1 Kings chapter 18.

Yeah, we're going to pick up the story of what's going to go on with Elijah. In the last chapter, we talked about how he was taken care of by the ravens. The ravens were bringing him his breakfast and his supper every day. And then he had to move away from there to the area around the Phoenicians to the region of Tyre and Sidon. God took care of him there, too, with a widow who provided him with a place to stay and three meals a day. And then he provided her with, of course, the ongoing provisions of the oil that didn't run out and the flour that didn't run out. But then he also, when our son got sick and died, he provided him with life again. So that was chapter 17.

So we're kind of, so we introduced to Elijah, we find out a little bit about him, where he's been, what he's been up to. And we're also told that when all this was going on, there was a severe drought and thus a severe famine that was taking place in the land of Israel. And this doesn't go on for just, you know, a few months or just even a year, but for three years. So this is God's way of very vividly reminding the Israelites that though they are worshiping the god Baal, who's the god of fertility and weather and storms and whatnot, that that god is impotent, of course, because he's not a non-entity. He's not able to provide the land with the rain. so all that is kind of the the setup for what's going to happen here in chapter 18 because ahab is going to confront a excuse me elijah is going to confront ahab and then he's going to call all israel to this uh duel this prophetic showdown that's going to take place on mount carmel

so the first part of the chapter though is uh it's kind of an extensive dialogue between a guy named Obadiah, not to be confused with the prophet by that name, with a guy named Obadiah and Elijah himself. So here's how it sets it up. Chapter 18 begins, After many days the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year. This, by the way, this theme of thirds is going to come up. It's already come up once because when the son of the widow became sick and died, Elijah stretched himself out on the child three times and cried to the Lord to let the child's life return. So there we have the theme of life coming on the third day. Of course, a very clear resurrection theme. But here, it's going to be kind of the same thing. So it's going to be the

third year. So after this time of death, we might say, famine, drought, deprivation, hunger, after that time in the grave as it were for the nation now in the third year that's going to come restoration there's going to come resuscitation and it's going to come in the form of of rain which we'll get to at the end of the chapter so third year word of the lord comes to elijah and says go show yourself to ahab and i will send rain upon the earth so i have of course being the king of the northern kingdom the one who has married jezebel the phoenician princess who has brought this theological cancer of the worship of Baal and the worship of Asherah into the heart of Israel.

So verse two says, Elijah went to show himself to Ahab. Now the famine was severe in Samaria and Ahab, we're told, called Obadiah, who was over his household. Now Obadiah has an interesting name. His name actually means servant of Yahweh. So the name itself is indicative of the fact that this is a guy who has not abandoned,

at least if he's living up to his name, has not abandoned worship of the true God. So Ahab, and he's working for Ahab. So as we'll see, he's kind of in a, he's in a tense position. So he's a believer and a worshiper and a fear of Yahweh, but he's employed by, not just employed by,

but he's like the main guy to this Israelite king who's gone off the rails into Baal worship and Asherah worship. So Ahab calls Obadiah over his household, and we're told in your English translations, we'll have this in parentheses, this kind of a footnote, if you will, about Obadiah. Here's how he's described. Obadiah feared the Lord greatly. And when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord,

Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifties in a cave and fed them with bread and water. End, end parentheses here. That's, you know, you got to give it to Obadiah. First of all, that is quite a logistical feat. Right, yeah. You got to find two big caves. you gotta you gotta put 50 prophets in one 50 prophets in another and even if they're on you

know rations that's a lot of food and a lot of water to feed these guys for presumably an extended amount of time that's what's that's what obadiah is doing and by the way uh just a reminder here i know we've talked about this before but it doesn't hurt to repeat it when it says that Obadiah feared the Lord greatly. That doesn't mean that he was simply afraid of God. The verb yara, this is an adjective that's used here in the Hebrew, but the verb yara, which is usually translated to fear, it's an all-encompassing verb in the Old Testament. It can certainly mean to be afraid of. But it also is used synonymously with trust, with serve, with worship. So that it's kind of a, it's like the container that holds a lot of different verbs. So when you say you fear

God in the Old Testament, that means you believe in him. That means you serve him. That means you worship him that you have a healthy fear respect for him because he is god and and you are not so all of those are compressed into obadiah fearing the lord greatly we you know in christian parlance we might say that he was a strong believer or he was a faithful worshiper of god something like that whenever i see that in the scripture where it says that somebody feared god i always i always just read that as this is a man who understands the power hierarchy of the universe that's a good way to put it right so he understands god's place and he understands his place so he's that kind of guy which the bible is full of people who don't understand that they

don't understand that god is god and you are creature they don't understand that order uh but okay reverse it yeah but he understands that and so he fears god is just that he's knows that god is god and he is not yeah yeah and uh it's kind of an irony here we'll uh we'll see as the the narrative unfolds here that he does i mean he does fear the lord greatly but we also reminded that that doesn't mean that you don't also struggle with other fears because he fears the lord greatly but as we'll find out in just a minute he's also afraid that the king is going to take his life so that we'll get with it we'll get to that in just a second so verse five ahab said obadiah go through the land to all the springs of water and to all the valleys perhaps we may find

grass and save the horses and mules alive and not lose some of the animals so they divided the land between them to pass through it ahab went in one direction by himself and obadiah went in another direction by by himself so of course you know things are they're in dire straits uh no rain of course obviously means that you have sparse vegetation you got these hungry animals and uh they're going to just try and at least find some spots here in the low places where water runs down or by the springs of water where they can give them at least some grazing so that they will be able to survive through this through this famine i can't imagine i mean one year i mean i grew up in a farm community i know that if you have a bad year it's bad it's bad for the animals it's bad

for the farmers it's bad for their families it's bad for for the community but i can't imagine going through not one but two but or two but three years three years of this i mean i guess if you if you look back in in you know somewhat recent past the dust bowl days of of america you kind of get a feel for what this would have done what this would have been like for not just those involved in agriculture but the entire the entire area that was affected by this i remember growing up we uh i grew up sort of on a farm uh for part of my life it wasn't like a farm like a farm that produced things for other people we lived off the land kind of deal like we lived out the middle of nowhere and you know we had our own cows and we had our own chickens our own pigs and our own

garden and all that kind of stuff that we weren't we didn't we're making a living manufacturing growing food for the rest of the community or anything but we the food that we had for the most part was the food that we grew whether it was from the ground or the animals that we raised and we also didn't live in a place that had you know city water or anything like that we were pretty far out so we had a well and I remember one summer was particularly hot and went a long long period with no rain and uh the well ran dry it was dry and we had no water in the well for for quite a while at least a month and just that one month of no water in the well and the creek was we had a creek near the house and that was dry running that was dry and uh things got real

tents yes i bet they just can't can't get water to the animals can't water the the you know the garden don't have water you do what you pull in the little water you can out of the creek boiling it all this kind of stuff that's a month and we you started to get kind of worried that i don't know i don't like what we're gonna do whenever i hear about droughts in the bible i always think back to that because i'm like three years yeah no they no water for that it's a miracle everyone's not dead yeah yeah well that's something you can identify with and you know from i think most people today have never experienced anything close to that i mean at the most maybe you know there's been like we had a horrible freeze here in texas last year and we didn't have water and

the water that did eventually came out was not safe to drink so they're boiling your water i I mean, compared to a drought, that's nothing, but it's a little taste for just how it's a reminder to us, I suppose, of how much we take for granted. I mean, I can walk in my kitchen, walk in my bathroom, turn to the water, assume not only that water is going to come out, but that it's safe, safe to drink. I give no thought most days to the fact that there's water, clean water available for me. But when you experience something like that or you experience through another person what happens when you have a drought, it really brings home just how crucial rainfall is. Yep.

So three years this went by. By the way, there was no baths for like a month. That also probably made the situation tense. Yeah. So if you're wondering, when the well runs dry, baths are the first thing to go. Like, even when the well starts getting low, baths are the first thing to go. Yeah. Yeah, last January, I went three days without a shower, and I thought that was bad.

Yeah, I can't imagine that going on much longer. So that's the situation. And verse 7 says that Obadiah, as he was taking some of the animals, looking for grazing, he was on the way, and behold, Elijah meets him. So Elijah has obviously left his hideout with a widow in Zarephath, and he has gone to meet Obadiah. Obadiah knows him, recognized him, falls on his face and says, is it you, my Lord, Elijah? And Elijah says, yes, it is me. And he's very laconic here. As we'll see, Obadiah is just can't shut up.

He just goes on and on. but Elijah is very brief in the speech that he delivers. He says, yes, it's me. Go tell your Lord, behold, Elijah is here. Pretty short message. Behold, Elijah is here. And Obadiah, here's his first words. How have I sinned that you would give your servant

into the hand of Ahab to kill me? You can tell from this then that Obadiah's reaction to just running into Elijah out here in the middle of nowhere is not necessarily positive. When he says, is it you, my Lord Elijah? That's not necessarily a note of excitement. Like, wow, is it you? Because what he hears from him is not really what he wants to hear

because he's afraid that, as we'll see, he's afraid that if he delivers this message to Ahab, Ahab's basically going to cut him down. It's going to take him out. it's funny how when Elijah confronts people all of a sudden they're thinking about their sin same thing happened with the widow right right her son gets sick dies she says to Elijah you coming to my house has brought my sin to the Lord's attention and because of that he's killed my child same thing here with Obadiah how have I sinned what did I do wrong that you're

basically going to send me on a death a suicide mission here I suppose maybe most people I'm trying to imagine, Chad, if all of a sudden you were told, so, I mean, what is, Elijah's the messenger from God, right? He's that word angel, but he's a messenger. I suppose if I was told the guy, so the messenger of the Lord is going to come to you tomorrow and tell you something, I got to admit, I would be, I don't know, I don't know that I would be like, okay, this is probably going to be something great i might be a little freaked out oh crap i probably wouldn't be happy about it either i probably said this on the podcast before but you know when uh when elijah has his vision in chapter six and god says you know who will go for us whom shall i send and

elijah and isaiah is like you know jumping up in the back raising his hand here am i send me send me i i can almost guarantee you he regretted being just so exuberant about his willingness to be a prophet especially the very speech that god gives him after that basically says your job is going to be terrible here's here's what you're going to do nobody's going to listen to you you're going to preach and preach nobody's going to pay any attention to you yeah i gotta be honest if god was like i'm looking for somebody just one person to go do a thing it's very important i would be yelling i wouldn't be yelling here i am i'd be yelling not it i'd be like with saul hiding behind the wagon baggage

or wherever he was hiding that one time. Not it, not it, nope, nope. Yeah, I'd be like, now that guy over there, he would be good for that job. I highly suggest that you send him. So he goes on, verse 10,

how have I sinned, so on and so forth. And then he goes on to say, as the Lord your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my Lord, he's talking about Ahab, where my lord has not sent to seek you and when they would say he's not here he would take an oath of the kingdom or nation that they had not found you so evidently during this whole time ahab has

been on the hunt for elijah he's been looking for him here he's been looking for him there he's been you know probably sent some spies down into judah to look for him maybe he sent some people across the Jordan River into the Transjordan area to look for him. No doubt they checked out Phoenicia looking for him, which is, of course, where he was. He was just a stone's throw there from the heart of Phoenicia, and nobody found him. So he's been looking all over the place, and when they did find him, he would even make those people swear, take an oath saying, no, we did not find him. He's not here. So all of that's gone down, and that helps to explain why Obadiah is so nervous. He goes on to verse 11, and now, given all that background, now you say,

go tell your Lord, behold, Elijah is here. Here's what's going to happen, Obadiah says. As soon as I've gone from you, the Spirit of the Lord will carry you I don't know where, and so when I come until I have, and he can't find you. He's going to kill me. Although I, your servant have feared the Lord from my youth. It just goes on and on and on. In fact, now he's going to give his credentials. He's going to say here, Hey, here's what I've done. Has it not been told my Lord what I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of the Lord, how I hid a hundred men of the Lord's prophets by fifties in a cave and fed them with bread and water. And now you say, go tell your lord behold elijah's here and he will kill me this is uh i was reading robert alter's uh translation

slash commentary this morning and he he pinpoints this whole dialogue is a good example of what he calls contrastive dialogue where you basically have these two individuals who are in a conversation and there's a clear difference in just in the way everything comes across in the way they're approaching this so elijah is he's like you kind of get the impression elijah is just standing there he's very confident you know he has the lord on his side he's laconic in his speech he's you know just states things very briefly and bluntly here's what's going to happen and then obadiah just goes on and on and on and on repeating himself and giving a reason for his fears and he just can't can't stop because he's nervous he's afraid so on and so forth so good example of how the text

sets that up as a different two different portrayals of the participants of this conversation yeah i do feel like i was just exactly how it would be i mean if i was hiding prophets out in a cave feeding them all this stuff and i was you know doing doing some you know pretty dangerous stuff i was put myself on the on the side of the lord here and then somebody was like i need you go to that king who is a straight murderer and tell him that you saw elijah but you haven't brought him i'd be like come on dude i've been out here trying to do the right thing what was the point of me trying to do all this stuff if i'm just gonna go walk right into this this dude's living room and give him a message that certainly he's gonna end up killing me for

yeah this story is a perfect example of one of my one of my favorite proverbs no good deed goes unpunished yeah man i'm sure he's just like man look i'm out here busting my butt like trying to keep people alive and stuff and now you want me to just go commit suicide yeah you can you can completely understand obadiah's perspective here so after saying all of this elijah i guess he feels kind of sorry for for obadiah so he himself swears an oath so all these these nations and kingdoms had to swear an oath elijah's not here now elijah himself is gonna give his words gonna swear an oath he says as the lord of host as the as yahweh of armies lives before whom i stand that's this that's servant language when you stand before someone you serve them before him i stand

i will surely show myself to him today so once he's taken an oath once he's said said this so emphatically to obadiah obadiah is basically like okay all right now i believe you so obadiah goes to meet ahab catches up with him wherever he's at and tells him about this whole scenario and then ahab goes to meet elijah so now we have king confronting prophet prophet confronting king which we will see a lot in not only Kings, but we also see this, of course, in the books of Isaiah. We see this in the book of Jeremiah as well. We've seen it already with Nathan and David, of course. So the prophet confronting a king is a very common scenario that you have in the Old Testament. So Ahab goes to meet Elijah. Verse 17 says, when Ahab saw Elijah,

Ahab was the first one to speak now when Obadiah met him he says is it you my lord Elijah when Ahab meets Elijah here's what he says is it you you troubler of Israel which

is exactly what you would expect from a guy like Ahab so Ahab who is the problem keep in mind the problem is Ahab And Elijah will tell him this in just a minute But of course the problem is him

And he shifts responsibility Completely now To the prophet He's saying you're the guy You're the problem You're the one who's troubling Israel You're the one who's caused all of these issues for the nation So you're the issue

It's not me And by the way there's a rich background To this word here So if you go back to Joshua chapter 7 That's the story of Achan and the taking of Jericho. That was when Achan went in. He stole some of the loot that was supposed to be part of the harem, the stuff devoted to destruction. And then he eventually is found out because the nation of Israel is defeated after that when they try and take on the city of Ai.

So back in the book of Joshua, all that stuff goes down. And when they find out who the culprit is and Achan confesses, here's what they say. This is Joshua speaking to Achan. Why did you bring trouble on us? The Lord brings trouble on you. So that Hebrew word is the exact word that's used here for a troubler of Israel. And then when they stone Achan, they call that place the Valley of Achor, which means the Valley of Trouble. So all that's the background here to Ahab saying basically to Elijah, you're Achan.

You're the one troubling Israel. You're the cause of this national calamity that's taken place in the form of a famine, just like Achan was the cause of the national calamity that happened back in the book of Joshua. So he has things completely backwards, but that's a perspective that Ahab has when he confronts him. now he lied to himself when he's when he's accused of being the troubler he answers i have not troubled israel but you have ahab you and your father's house why because you have abandoned

the commandments of yahweh and followed after the bales then he ends at verse 19 by saying Now, therefore, send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel and the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table. So he switches things around. He says, no, I'm not the problem. You're the problem. And here's why you're the problem, because you have basically you've broken the covenant. You've abandoned the commandments of the Lord. Of course, in abandoning the first, he's abandoned all the rest of them.

and he's not only abandoned them but he's also then gone gone after the bales and the reason that's in the plural is probably because bale was often associated with different areas so you'll have you'll often have bale associated with a place name and so that's most likely why you have the plural there but it's not just bale that's the issue what you also have his consort asherah and you have all of their ministers all of their prophets so you got the bale's prophets you got asherah's asherah's prophets and in the midst of this famine that's going on what's taking place well jezebel the queen is making sure that at least all of her prophets the prophets of asherah have plenty of food to eat because she's feeding them from her own kitchen they eat at jezebel's

table this uh this definitely shows you uh how ramped up the idolatry has gotten right i mean it's one thing where you're like oh yeah we got some idols over here and some idols over there we kind of let people do their own thing they got 850 prophets for these particular idols it seems that this is that i mean this is not i mean obviously this is the predominant worship that's going on in the land yeah yeah and the contrast there's obvious you've got all these hundreds of prophets who are eating where at the queen's table yeah and then what's happening to the true prophets of god well if they if they haven't been martyred already they're like they're hiding yeah in caves eating bread and water just you know survival rations basically so you've got

Obviously, the majority have gone the way of Baal and Asherah. The minority have gone the way of, have stayed the way of fidelity to the Lord. So that's kind of the, that's the setup. And we're going to have a very public demonstration here of who the true God is. Now, Ahab agrees. Why? We're not told. Maybe he was certain that 950 prophets would easily be able to take on one prophet. Or maybe he was convinced that this was taking place at Mount Carmel, which some people say Mount Carmel. Either way, it's fairly close to Phoenicia, so this was like Baal's backyard.

So whatever the reasoning was, Ahab agrees to this. He probably thinks this is my grand opportunity to humiliate the prophet who's given me so many problems and hopefully then also to take him down in this very same situation. But Ahab agrees. He sends to all the people of Israel and he gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel. When it says the prophets, for some reason, we're not told why again, but for some reason, those 400 prophets of Asherah don't show up. the prophets of bale are there but we're never told the prophets of of asherah are there maybe jezebel kept them back jezebel isn't there either so maybe the prophets of asherah stayed with with her but either way we do have the prophets of bale there they're at mount carmel which is a mountain range by the way it's right there by the uh by the sea of galilee and elijah comes near he

gathers all the people today together and he says how long will you i'm reading the esv here how long will you go limping between two different opinions that can be translated various ways here's a couple of other translations how long will you hobble at the crossroads or how long will you hobble on two crutches the the hebrew is a little bit ambiguous but the main thing i want to point out is that this word this verb that's translating is hobbling or limping is the same word that's going to be used down to verse 26 for how the prophets of Baal hobbled or limped or jumped around the altar that they had made.

So that's something that isn't always pointed out, like the NIV messes that up, doesn't use the same English word to translate both of those verbs. But there's an obvious interplay here. So the people of Israel are jumping back and forth. They're hobbling between these two different opinions, just like the prophets of baal will go hobbling or jumping around the the altar and one more thing about that interestingly that's the same verb it's pasach is the verb same verb that is used

at the passover for when the angel of death passed over hopped over we might say the houses that were painted with the blood of the passover lamb so it's the it's a it's a verb that connotes jumping or hopping or hobbling from one place to one place to another. And I think maybe there is an allusion back to the Passover by the use of that verb, because this is a Passover kind of situation because what was the Passover all about? It was God versus the, the true God versus the gods of the Egyptians. And you're going to have this massive death toll on Passover night with the firstborn of the Egyptians being killed, now you're going to have a massive death toll here at Mount Carmel when the prophets of Baal are going to be slain by Elijah. So he goes on,

if the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal, follow him. And the people don't say anything, didn't answer him a word. So Elijah continues and he says, I even, I only am left a prophet of Yahweh, but Baal's prophets are 450 men. Then he proposes a scenario. He says, let two bulls be given to us and let them choose one bull for themselves. He's, as it were, giving them the advantage here. So choose the bull you want, cut it in pieces, lay it in the wood, but don't put any fire on it. And then I'll do the same thing. I'll prepare the other bull. I'll lay it on the wood. I'll put no fire on it. And then you call the name of your God. I'll call upon the name of Yahweh, and the God who answers by fire. He is God. Now, as I've pointed out more than once,

the God who answers by fire, of course, you would expect to be Baal because he is the God of thunder and lightning. It'd be kind of like, you know, asking Poseidon to cast a wave of the sea on this or asking Aphrodite to make two people fall in love. Well, it should be easy, right? If you're the God of fire, of thunder, of lightning, then answering by fire should be simple, simple as it comes. All the people agree. They say, yep, sounds good to us. It is well spoken. Then Elijah turns and he addresses the prophets of Baal and basically repeats himself.

He says, choose your bull, get it ready, call upon the name of your God, but don't put any fire on it. So they do. Verse 26, they took the bull that was given them and they prepared it. They called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon. So hour after hour. And what they say is, O Baal, answer us. The verb there is anah. It's the same verb that's going to be used by Elijah later on when he calls upon Yahweh.

O Baal, answer us. But there was no voice and no one answered. Of course, that means there was no voice, literally. but it also means, the Hebrew there is kol, and kol is often used also to describe the voice of thunder. So there was no thunder, no thunderous voice answering, which is what you would have expected from Baal. So they, again, here's our word, limped around the altar they had made, hobbled around it, just like Israel was limping between two different opinions or hobbling between two different confessions, if you will. So they're hobbling, limping, jumping around the altar they

had made. And then now we get verse 27 to one of the funniest verses in the Bible. This is Elijah mocking. This is full satire. He says, cry aloud for he is a God. Either he's musing or he's relieving himself or he's on a journey or maybe he's asleep and it needs to be awakened. so we have uh elijah you know he's he's obviously rhetorically gifted he's a he's a stalwart of the faith but he's also pretty good when it comes to mockery and satire because he's like maybe y'all just need to ramp up the volume a little bit i mean maybe he's just uh he's meditating somewhere he's musing uh maybe he just had to go to the restroom you know your god has his pants down somewhere somewhere he's in the bathroom and he can't he can't hear you uh maybe he's you know

he's gone on vacation he's on a journey or it could be he's just asleep needs to be needs to be woke up so you you get a you get a feel for elijah's personality i guess in in this particular scenario it does it does tell you that you know you ever get i think about this sometimes you know like maybe you run into someone who believes something that seems pretty outlandish and you wonder like do you really believe that or you know you wonder like all these prophets like Are these all prophets of Baal? Are they there for the food at the queen's table and the prestige? Or do you really believe this?

It would seem that they really believe it. Yeah, they seem to be serious and sincere. I mean, they're working it. They're trying as hard as they can to make this happen. Yeah, because otherwise you don't take them up on this. You find a way out of it if you don't think that this is a challenge that you or God can win. yeah i mean it's a false faith but it's a they definitely have faith in bail they're just going to do this yeah yeah it just happens that bail isn't a thing so yeah right a faith in a non-thing

which is never never a good option so after after elijah mocks them they they they take it a step further they not only cried aloud but they started cutting themselves with swords and lances until blood is gushing out of them uh and we know this was a thing because in leviticus and deuteronomy the the the cutting of oneself after the fashion of the pagans is prohibited so evidently this was part of a ritual that was carried out by the canaanites and other peoples around them so they're cutting themselves they're crying out they they they kept on esv has they raved on and on until the time of the the evening offering uh the verb they translated as rave is actually prophesied but we do know that some prophesying was kind of an ecstatic experience so probably

that's why they chose raving here they're they're they are prophets so of course they are prophesying they're they're having this frenzied ecstatic experience while they're crying out and cutting themselves and kind of worked themselves up to this feverish pitch. But we're told again, no voice, no answer, no one paid attention. Now, Elijah says to the people, come here, come to me. All the people come near to him. He repairs the altar. Rafa is the Hebrew verb there. He literally, he healed the altar. It had been dilapidated. So he's going to, he's going to fix it up. He takes 12 stones, just like Joshua took 12 stones from the Jordan river when they crossed it. Now, Elijah is going to take 12 stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob,

to whom the word of the Lord came saying, Israel shall be your name. So these 12 stones are reminder of who you are. You are the tribes of Yahweh. And with these stones, he builds the altar and he he digs a trench around the altar pretty you know a fairly deep trench he puts wood on there sacrifices the bull puts it on the wood and then not content with all of this he fills four jars with water and then puts those on the offering and on the wood and then he says do it again and then he says do it again so interestingly if you got four jars three times 12 jars of water So you got 12 stones, a 12-fold drenching of the altar and the stones, waters everywhere. So Elijah is like doing everything to an extreme.

So when the time of the offering comes, Elijah says, he prays, he says, O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. In fact, he doesn't use, so he doesn't say Jacob, but he's reminding them of how they got their name. the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. Let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and that I've done all these things at your word. Answer me, O Lord. Anami, O Lord. Same kind of prayer that the prophets of Baal prayed and were not answered. Now Elijah says, Anami, answer me that this people may know, O Lord, our God, that you are the one who have to turn their hearts back. So the whole purpose of this is to get the people to turn their hearts

back to him. And that's precisely what's about to happen. Because verse 38 says that as soon as he finished praying, the fire of Yahweh fell. And not only did it consume that which was you would expect to be consumed by fire, the burnt offering in the wood, but it even consumed the stones and the dust and it licked up the water that was in the trench you have this vision of like what was there is now completely gone it's completely annihilated by by the fire of yahweh so all the people see it they fall on their faces and they they finally are saying the truth the lord he is god the lord he is he is god yeah this this seems like a reasonable thing to say at this point. Yeah, I think it was the appropriate confession at this point in the scenario.

This is not some amazing faith. There is some sight involved in this. At this point, I think you know. Yeah, it's pretty... I'm assuming that even the prophets of Baal at this point were probably ready for conversion, but we'll cover this next time. But they had no chance for that because they will soon be meeting their maker. But the whole scenario is an Exodus event, but it's also a Sinai event because you kind of have this also theme of Yahweh versus the golden calf in the background there

with the idolatry going on. There's a lot of biblical stories that kind of predate this that also help us to understand what's happening. here but i know we're out of time so we'll have to pick that up uh in the next episode well you you would think that from this day forth uh obviously israel will be a god-fearing god worshiping country of course of course of course that's how it'll go stands to reason that would be the case yeah uh so uh we'll see if that happens we'll see what happens to the prophets of baal we'll see uh if we can get some rain at some point because this drought has been going

on for a while we're gonna have to do all of that next week chad i'll see you then all right we'll see you then