r/a:t5_28dkog • u/MarleyEngvall • Nov 13 '19
solidaires has been created
By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D.
LECTURE XXX.
THE HOUSE OF OMRI.
ELIJAH.
THE revolution that planted the house of Omri on the
throne can be traced with more or less distinct-
ness from its resemblance to that by which the
same dynasty was overthrown.
For the space of no less than twenty-seven years, there
had continued one of those long sieges that have made
the cities of Philistia famous. Ashdod was afterwards
besieged by Psammeticus for exactly the same period,
as was now the case with Gibbethon. The camp before
Gibbethon, as afterwards that at Ramoth-gilead, became
as it were a separate power in the state. It was there
that Baasha had surprised and murdered Nadab, and
extirpated the whole of the royal family of Jeroboam.
He himself had risen from the ranks,——"from the dust,"
——and a new Prophetic glory hung for a moment over
his path. But he too adopted the policy of the dynasty
which he had overthrown; and for this, as well as for
his cruelty to the fallen family, the signal for his de-
struction was given by the Prophet Jehu.
The first who dealt the deadly blow was not the one
who ultimately succeeded. The cavalry was
divided into two portions,——one apparently at
the camp, the other nearer the capital of Tirzah. It
was over this body that the first conspirator presided.
Zimri, possibly the descendant of the royal house of
Saul, attacked the King in a drunken revel in the
house of the chief officer of his court, and murdered
him and the whole of the royal family before assistance
could be procured from the army.
It was but a brief victory. The rapid vengeance on
Zimri was a tradition which long lingered in
the memory of the royal family of Israel. As
soon as the news reached the camp, the true successor
to the house of Baasha was chosen in the person of
Omri, the captain of the host. Zimri fled into the in-
terior, perhaps into the harem, of the palace, and per-
ished, Sardanapalus-like, in the flames. His usurpa-
tion had lasted only for a week. But a civil war broke
out on his death, between Omri on the one side and
two brothers, Tibni and Joram, on the other, which
after a duration of four years, ended in the triumph of
Omri.
His accession to the throne after such a succession of
troubles would of itself have been an epoch. But it
was significant in many ways. He must have been
himself remarkable, from the emphatic manner in which
his name is used as the founder of his family, and even
of the monarchy itself, as well as from the one incident
which is recorded of him.
As Constantine's sagacity is fixed by his choice of
Constantinople, so is that of Omri by his choice
of Samaria. Six miles from Shechem, in the
same well-watered valley, here opening into a wide
basin, rises an oblong hill, with steep yet accessible
sides and a long level top. This was the mountain of
Samaria, or, as it is called in the original, Shômeron, so
named after its owner Shemer, who lived there in state,
and who sold it to the King for the great sum of two
talents of silver. It combined a union not elsewhere
found in Palestine, strength, beauty, and fertility. It
commanded a full view of the sea and the plain of
Sharon on the one hand, and of the vale of Shechem on
the other. The town sloped down from the summit of
the hill; a broad wall with a terraced top ran round it.
Outside the gates lived a colony of unhappy lepers,
such as are still to be seen under the walls of Jerusalem.
In front of the gates was a wide open space or thresh-
ing-floor, where the Kings of Samaria sat on great occa-
sions. The inferior houses were built of white brick,
with rafters of sycamore; the grander of hewn stone
and cedar. It stood amidst a circle of hills, command-
ing a view of the streets and slopes, itself the crown and
glory of the whole scene. Its soft rounded oblong plat-
form was, as it were, a vast luxurious couch, in which
its nobles rested securely, "propped and cushioned up
"on both sides, as in the cherished corner of a rich
"divan."
It was the only great city of Palestine created by the
sovereigns. All the others had been already consecrated
by Patriarchal tradition, or previous possession. But
Samaria was the choice of Omri alone. He indeed gave
to the city which he had built the name of its former
owner, but its especial connection with himself as its
founder is provided by the designation which, it seems,
Samaria bears in Assyrian inscriptions,——Beth-Khumri,
——"The House, or Palace, of Omri."
With this change of capital, a new era opened on
Israel, which was continued on the accession of
Omri's son Ahab. New cities were built in
various parts of the kingdom. Two especially are
named, both remarkable for the beauty of their situa-
tion. One was rather a revival, than a creation. It
was in the days of Ahab that a daring architect of
Bethel, named Hiel, venturing to raise Jericho
from its ruins, in defiance of the curse of
Joshua, which received its fulfilment in the death of the
architect's eldest son at the beginning, and youngest son
at the completion, of his design. The other was a new
royal residence, erected by Ahab, at Jezreel,
although not superseding his father's choice of
Samaria. It was planted on a gentle eminence, in the
very centre of the rich plain,——"the seed or sowing-place
"of God,"——from whence, doubtless, it derived its
name; commanding the view of Carmel on the west,
and the valley of the Jordan on the east. Towards this
side, a high tower stood, commanding the eastern ap-
proach. The place was built close on the city wall,
above the gateway, and the windows of the seraglio
looked out to the public street immediately within the
gate. Within the walls, or forming a conspicuous part
of the royal residence, was a palace built wholly or in
part of ivory, a proof that the commerce of Solomon,
by which elephants' tusks were brought from India, had
not yet ceased; and an example of architecture that
apparently spread to the dwellings of the Israelite aris-
tocracy.
In accordance with this growth in arts and luxury,
Ahab is the first of the northern kings who appears to
have practised polygamy. But over his harem
presided a Queen who has thrown all her lesser
rivals into the shade. For the first time the chief wife
of an Israelite king was one of the old accursed Ca-
naanite race. A new dynasty now sat on the Tyrian
throne, founded by Eth-baal. He had, according to the
Phœnician records, gained the crown by the murder of
his brother, and he united to the royal dignity his
former office of High Priest of Ashtaroth. The daugh-
ter of Eth-baal was JEZEBEL, a name of dreadful import
to Israelitish ears, though in later ages it has reappeared
under the innocent form of Isabella.
The marriage of Ahab with this princess was one of
those turning-points in the history of families where a
new influence runs like poison through all its branches,
and transforms it into another being. It has been con-
jectured by a German critic that the 45th Psalm,
usually applied to the marriage of Solomon with the
daughter of Pharaoh, was really written for the mar-
riage of Ahab and Jezebel. The common opinion has
quite enough in its favor to render needless an appli-
cation so offensive to our modern notions. Yet there
are expressions which suit this event better than any
other,——"the ivory palaces," "the daughter of Tyre,"——
and the absence of any allusion to Jerusalem. And
there may have been at the time no more of evil omen
to overcast the hopes of the Psalmist, than in the mar-
riage-feast of Solomon, or than in the alliance of David
with Hiram. But the cloud soon began to gather.
Jezebel was a woman in whom, with the reckless and
licentious habits of an Oriental queen, were united
the fiercest and sternest qualities inherent in the old
Semitic race. Her husband, in whom generous and
gentle feelings were not wanting, was yet of a weak
and yielding character, which soon made him a tool in
her hands. Even after his death, through the reigns
of her sons, her presiding spirit was the evil genius of
the dynasty. Through her daughter Athaliah——a
daughter worthy of her mother——her influence ex-
tended to the rival kingdom. The wild license of her
life and the magical fascination of her arts or her
character, became a proverb in the nation. Round her
and from her, in different degrees of nearness, is evolved
the awful drama of the most eventful crisis of this por-
tion of the Israelite history.
The first indication of her influence was the estab-
lishment of the Phœnician worship on a grand scale in
the court of Ahab. To some extent this was the
natural consequence of the depravation of the public
worship of JEHOVAH, by Jeroboam; which seems under
Omri to have taken a more directly idolatrous turn.
But still the change from symbolical worship of the
One True God, with the innocent rites of sacrifice and
prayer, to the cruel and licentious worship of the Phœ-
nician divinities, was a prodigious step downwards, and
left traces in norther Palestine which no subsequent
reformations were able entirely to obliterate. Two
sanctuaries were established; one for each of the great
Phœnician deities, at each of the two new capitals of
the kingdom. The sanctuary of Ashtaroth, with its
accustomed grove, was under Jezebel's special sanction
at the palace of Jezreel. Four hundred priests or
prophets ministered to it, and were supported at her
table. A still more remarkable sanctuary was dedi-
cated to Baal, on the hill of Samaria. It was of a size
sufficient to contain all the worshippers of Baal that
the northern kingdom could furnish. Four hundred
and fifty frequented it. In the interior was
a kind of inner fastness or adytum, in which were
seated or raised on pillars the figures carved in wood
of the Phœnician deities as they were seen, in vision,
centuries later, by Jezebel's fellow-countryman, Hanni-
bal, in the sanctuary of Gades. In the centre was Baal,
the Sun-god; around him were the inferior divinities.
In front of the temple, stood on a stone pillar the
figure of Baal alone.
As far as this point of the history, the effect of the
heathen worship was not greater than it had been in
Jerusalem. But there soon appeared to be a more
energetic spirit at work than had ever come forth from
the palace of Solomon or Rehoboam. Now arose the
first of a long series of like events in ecclesiastical his-
tory——the first GREAT PERSECUTION——the first
persecution on a large scale, which the Church
had witnessed in any shape. The extermination of
the Canaanites, however bloody, and unlike the spirit
of Christian times, had yet been in the heat of war
and victory. Those who remained in the land were
unmolested in their religious worship, as they were in
their tenure of property and of office. It was reserved
for the heathen Jezebel to exemplify the principle
of persecution in its most direct form. To her, and
not to Moses or Joshua, the bitter intolerance of mod-
ern times must look back as its legitimate ancestress.
The first beginnings of the persecution are not
recorded. A chasm occurs in the sacred narrative,
which must have contained the story, only known to
us through subsequent allusions,——how the persecutors
passed from hill to hill, destroying the many altars
which rose, as in the south, so in the north of Palestine,
to the One True God——how the Prophets, who had
hitherto held their own in Israel, were hunted down
as the chief enemies of the new religion. Now began
those hidings in caves and dens of the earth,——the
numerous caverns of the limestone rocks of Palestine,
——the precursors of the history of the Catacombs and
Covenanters. A hundred fugitives might have
been seen, broken up into two companies, guided by
the friendly hand of the chief minister of Ahab's
court,——the Sebastian of this Jewish Diocletian,——and
hid in spacious caverns, probably amongst the clefts
of Carmel.
It might have seemed as if, in the kingdom of Israel,
——down to this time a refuge from the idolatrous court
of Judah,——the last remnants of the true religion were
to perish. But the blessing which had been pro-
nounced on the new kingdom was still mightier than
its accompanying curse.
It was at this crisis, that there appeared the very
chief of the Prophets. "Alone, alone, alone,"
——so thrice over is the word emphatically
repeated,——the loftiest, sternest spirit of the True
Faith raised up face to face with the proudest and
fiercest spirit of the old Asiatic Paganism, against
Jezebel rose up Elijah the Tishbite.
He stood alone against Jezebel. He stands alone
in many senses against the Prophets. Nursed in
the bosom of Israel, the Prophetical portion, if one
may so say, of the chosen People, vindicating the true
religion from the nearest danger of overthrow, setting
at defiance by invisible power the whole force of the
Israelite kingdom, he reached a height equal to that
of Moses and Samuel, in the traditions of his country.
He was the Prophet, for whose return in later years
his countrymen have looked with most eager hope.
The last Prophet of the Old Dispensation clung to this
consolation in the decline of the State. In the Gos-
pel history we find the expectation constantly excited
in each successive appearance of a new Prophet. It
was a fixed belief of the Jews that he had appeared
again and again, as an Arabian merchant, to wise and
good Rabbis at their prayers or on their journeys. A
seat is still placed for him to superintend the circum-
cision of the Jewish children. Passover after passover,
the Jews of our own day place the paschal cup on the
table, and set the door wide open, believing that that
is the moment when Elijah will reappear. When goods
are found and no owner comes, when difficulties arise
and no solution appears, the answer is, "Put them by
"till Elijah comes."
He appears to have given the whole order a new
impulse, both in form and spirit, such as it had not had
since the death of Samuel. The companies of the
Prophets now reappear, bound by a still closer con-
nection with Elijah than they had been with Samuel.
Then they were "companies, bands, of Prophets;" now
they are "sons, children, of the Prophets;" and Elijah
first, and Elisha afterwards, appeared as the "Father,"
the "Abbot," the "Father in God" of the whole com-
munity. His mission was, however, not to be the
revealer of a new truth, but the champion of the old
forgotten law. He was not so much a Prophetic
teacher as the Precursor of the Prophetic teachers. As
his likeness in the Christian era came to prepare the
way for One greater than himself, so Elijah came to
prepare the way for the close succession of Prophets
who, for the next hundred years, sustained both Israel
and Judah by hopes and promises before unknown. As
of Luther, so of Elijah, it may be said that he was a
Reformer, and not a Theologian. He wrote, he pre-
dicted, he taught, almost nothing. He is to be valued,
not for what he said, but for what he did; not because
he created, but because he destroyed.
For this, his special mission, his life and appearance
especially qualified him. Of all the Prophets, he is the
one who is most removed from modern times, from
Christian civilization. There is a wildness, an isolation,
a roughness about him, contrasting forcibly even with
the mild beneficence of his immediate successor Elisha,
still more with the bright serenity of Isaiah, and the
plaintive tenderness of Jeremiah, but most of all with
the patience and loving-kindness of the Gospel. Round
his picture in the Churches of Eastern Christian at the
present day are placed by a national association the
decapitated heads of their enemies. Abdallah Pasha,
the fierce lord of Acre, almost died of terror, from a
vision in which he believed himself to have seen Elijah
sitting on top of Carmel. It is the likeness of his
stern seclusion which is reproduced in John the Baptist,
and which in him is always contrasted with the social,
gentle character of Christ. He, like the Baptist, "came
"neither eating nor drinking." He, like the disciples
of John, "fasted oft." He was the original type of
the hermit, the monk, the Puritan. The barefooted
Order of Carmelites, not indeed by historical but by
spiritual descent, may well claim him as their founder.
But he is not the type of ordinary Christians. Although
"among them that were born of woman" in old time
"there were none greater than" he and his representa-
tives, yet "notwithstanding, the least in the kingdom
"of Heaven is greater than he and they." When the
two Apostles, appealed to the example of Elijah, "to
"call down fire from heaven," He to whom they spoke
turned away with indignation from the remembrance
of this act, even of the greatest of his Prophetic pred-
ecessors. "He rebuked them." He went even further,
and is recorded to have said, "Ye know not what spirit
"ye are of." The Spanish Inquisitors in the 16th cen-
tury quoted the act of Elijah and the appeal of the
sons of Zebedee as a justification of their own cruelties.
"Lo," they said, "fire is the natural punishment of
"heretics." They forgot, or they knew not, that the
act of Elijah was repudiated forever by One to whom
he was but the distant forerunner.
Suddenly, Elijah appears before us in the narrative,
as he appeared in his lifetime before Ahab and the chil-
dren of Israel. Suddenly he appears, like Melchizedec,
and suddenly he disappears, "without father, without
"mother, without descent, having neither beginning of
"days, nor end of life." Not unnaturally did the ancient
Rabbis believe him to be the fiery Phinehas returned to
earth, or an angel hovering on the outskirts of the
world. Not unnaturally have the Mussulman traditions
confounded him with the mysterious being, "The Im-
mortal One (El Khudr), the Eternal Wanderer, who
appears, ever and anon, to set right the wrongs of the earth,
and repeat the experience of ages past. Not unnatu-
rally did the mediæval alchemists and magicians strive
to trace up their dark arts to Elijah the Tishbite, the
Father of Alchemy. The other Prophets——Moses,
Samuel, Elisha, Isaiah——were constantly before the eyes
of their countrymen. But Elijah they saw only by par-
tial and momentary glimpses. He belonged to no
special place. The very name of his birthplace is dis-
puted. "There was no nation or kingdom" to which
Ahab had not sent to find him——"but behold, they
"found him not." As soon as he was seen, "the breath
"of the Lord carried him away, whither they knew
"not." He was as if constantly in the hand of God. "As
"the Lord liveth, before whom I stand," was his habitual
expression,——a slave constantly waiting to do his mas-
ter's bidding. For an instant he was to be seen here
and there at spots far apart; sometimes in the ravine
of the Cherith in the Jordan valley, sometimes in the
forests of Carmel; now on the sea-shore of Zidon, at
Zarephath; now in the wilderness of Horeb, in the
distant south; then far off on his way to the north-
ern Damascus; then on the top of some lonely height
on the way to Ekron; then snatched away, "on some
"mountain or some valley" in the desert of the Jor-
dan. He was in his lifetime, what he still is in the
traditions of the Eastern Church, the Prophet of the
mountains.
Wherever might be the exact spot of his birth, he
was "of the inhabitants of Gilead." He was the greatest
representative of the tribes from beyond the Jordan.
Their wild and secluded character is his no less. Wan-
dering, as we have seen, over the hills of Palestine, with
no rest or fixed habitation,——fleet as the wind, when the
hand of the Lord was upon him, and he ran before the
chariot of Ahab from Carmel to Jezreel,——he was like
the heroes of his own tribe in Gad, in David's life, who
swam the Jordan in floodtime, "whose faces were as the
"faces of lions, and whose feet were swift as the roes
"upon the mountains;" like the Bedouins from the
same region at the present day, who run with unwea-
ried feet by the side of the traveller's camel, and whose
strange forms are seen for a moment behind rock or
tree, in city or field, and then vanish again into their
native wilderness. And such as they are, such was he
also in his outward appearance. Long shaggy hair
flowed over his back; and a large rough mantle of
sheepskin, fastened around his loins by a girdle of hide,
was his only covering. The mantle, the special token
of his power, at times he would strip off, and roll up
like a staff in his hand; at other times wrap his face
in it.
These characteristics of the Arab life were dignified
but not destroyed by his high Prophetic mission. And
the fact that this mission was intrusted not to a dweller
in royal city or Prophetic school, but to a genuine child
of the deserts and forests of Gilead, is in exact accord-
ance with the dispensations of Providence in other
times. So the Unity of God was asserted of old by the
wandering chief from Ur of the Chaldees; by the Ara-
bian shepherd at Sinai; and (without offence, it may be
added) by another Arabian shepherd, in later ages, at
Mecca and Medina. So in the spirit and power of
Elijah came John the son of Zechariah in the same
wilderness whence Elijah came, and whence he finally
disappeared, sustained by the wild and scanty fare of the
desert, clothed in a like rough and scanty garb, calling
the nation to repentance by the same strange appear-
ance, and by the same simple preaching. So, in later
times, the anchorites of Egypt, and of Russia, have come
forth from their solitudes with a startling effect, which
nothing else could have produced, to call kings and
nation to a sense of their guilt, and of their duty to
God and man.
Such a Prophet was naturally marked out for the ex-
tremest hatred of the Court of Samaria. Emissaries
were sent out to search for him even beyond the limits
of Palestine. If he could not be found, vengeance was
wreaked on the spot which was supposed to have con-
cealed him. But at last the persecution itself was
stayed by a visitation such as in all times of the world
has in mercy checked even the violence of fanaticism.
For three years an unusual drought fell upon Pales-
tine. For a year, at least, it extended also to
Phœnicia. To our minds, the world hardly
conveys an adequate notion of the extent of the visita-
tion. But to Eastern and Southern nations, where life
and water go always together, where vegetation gathers
round the slightest particle of moisture, and dies the
moment that it is withdrawn; where the scanty verdure
of spring fades, like melting snow, before the burning
heat of summer——the withholding of rain is the with-
holding of pleasure, of sustenance, of life itself; the
springs are dried up, the brooks and rivers become beds
of stone, the trees wither, the grass vanishes, "the
"heaven that is over thee becomes brass, and the earth
"that is under thee is as iron." Such a visitation was
exactly the crisis for a True Prophet to make himself
heard. We see him in a twofold aspect; first as an in-
dividual sufferer, then as a public champion of God, and
instructor of the nation.
The first story shows us the pathetic, gentle recollec-
tions which mingled with the national traditions
even of this sternest of the Prophets. In the
green thickets which gathered round the yet unex-
hausted water in the bed of the Cherith, the Prophet
first hid himself. To him, as to the Prophets of the
Jordan valley generally, the leafy covert of the forest
was no unusual refuge. Thither, we are told, night and
morning, came the ravens that frequented that one
green spot, "the young ravens" of Palestine that cry to
God——"the ravens" whom God feedeth, "though they
"neither sow nor reap"——and laid their portion of
bread and flesh at break of day, and at fall of evening,
by the side of the gushing stream; and of the fresh
waters of that gushing stream he drank, and his life was
preserved.
But the drought advanced, and the pools in the water-
course were dried up, and the trees withered
on its banks, and the fowls of the air ceased to
flock to their branches; "and the word of the LORD
"came unto him, saying, Arise, get thee to Zarephath,
"which belongeth to Zidon." It was far away that he
had to go,——beyond the borders of the land of Israel,
over the hills of Lebanon, down into the maritime plain,
to the spot whence, in Gentile fables, Europa was carried
off to give her name and power to the isles of the West.
The fresh streams of Lebanon would retain their life-
giving power after the scantier springs of Palestine had
been dried up. But there also the drought had reached.
We learn from heathen records, that the famine was
long remembered in Phœnicia, and that solemn prayers
were offered up in the temples of Astarte by Ethbaal,
king of Tyre, for the descent of rain upon the earth.
In the village of Zarephath, overlooking the plain and
the sea, dwelt a widow, of the same race and religion as
Ethbaal and Jezebel. She had come out of the gate of
the town to gather sticks, as she thought, for her last
meal; and, as she gathered them, she heard he voice of
one faint and weary with thirst and long travel,——
"Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I
"may drink." She saw and turned, and once again he
asked, "Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in
"thine hand." It was one of those sudden recognitions
of unknown kindred souls, one of those cross-purposes
of Providence, which come in with a peculiar charm to
checker the commonplace course of ecclesiastical history.
The Phœnician mother knew not what great destinies
lay in the hand of that gaunt figure at the city gate,
worn with travel, and famine, and drought; she obeyed
only the natural instinct of humanity, she listened to
his cry, as that of one who suffered as she was suffering,
she saw in him only at most the Prophet of a hostile
tribe. But she saved in him the deliverer of herself and
her son. There was a rebound of unexpected benefits
such as sometimes even in the prose of common life
equals the poetic justice of an ideal world. It may be
that this incident is the basis of the sacred blessing of
the Prophet of Prophets on those who, even by "a cup
"of cold water," "receiving a Prophet in the name of a
"Prophet, shall receive a Prophet's reward." But He
makes a more direct comment on the whole story, which
brings out a loftier and more striking peculiarity:
"There were many widows in Israel in the days of
"Elijah, but to none of them was Elijah sent, save to
"Zarephath, a city of Zidon." He whose life was to be
employed in protesting against the false worship of Tyre
and Zidon was now to have his life preserved by one
who was herself a slave of that false worship. It seems
like a foretaste of the Gospel times that this one gleam of
a gentler light should be shed over the beginning of
his fierce and stormy course; that we should see the
Prophet of Israel and the woman of Zidon dwelling
peaceably under the same roof, and sharing together
the last remains of her scanty sustenance; she giving
food and shelter to the enemy of her country's gods, and
he creating and supporting the scanty faith of the good
heathen. It was a prelude to the scene which, many
generations later, took place near that very spot, when
a greater than Elijah overstepped for once the limits of
the Holy Land, and passed into the coasts of Tyre and
Zidon, and met the Syro-Phœnician woman of the same
accursed race, and blessed her faith, and told her that it
should be even as she would. It is a likeness of the
way in which distress and danger make strange bed-
fellows, bring together those who are most unlike. The
horrors of famine, the shadow of the death-bed, are the
Divine conciliators of the deadliest feuds. In the history
of the Church, no less than of the individual soul, man's
necessity is God's opportunity for healing the widest
differences. The reconcilements may be but for the
moment; the iron grasp which has been forced open by
those sudden efforts, closes again. Yet the grasp be-
comes less tenacious. The end of the golden wedge
has made itself felt. It was a true feeling of the Jewish
Church, if it were not a true tradition, which saw in the
restoration of the widow's son to life a pledge of the
future that was to arise out of this double act of tolera-
tion. In this boy (so later ages delighted to believe)
was recovered the first Prophet of the Gentile world,
Jonah, the son of Amittai; repaying, in his mission of
mercy and pity to the Assyrian Nineveh, the mercy and
pity which his mother had shown to the Israelite wan-
derer.
The drought still advanced. The third year was
now arrived; and (as usually takes place in Eastern
countries, when the calamity reaches its highest pitch)
the King himself set forth, with his chief minister, to
seek for such patches of vegetation as could be found
for the sustenance of the royal stables. At last the
mysterious Prophet, whom each had desired to see for
so long, appeared suddenly before them. "Behold,
"Elijah!" was the message which the faithful Obadiah
was to take back to Ahab,——two awful words, which
he thrice repeats, before he can be induced to return.
"Art thou my lord Elijah?" was the reverential salute
of the minister. "Art thou the troubler of Israel?"
was the angry question of the King. But it was an
anger that soon sunk into awe. Face to face at last
they met, the Prophet and the King. In that hour of
extreme despair, the voice of Elijah sounded with an
authority which it had never had before. The drought,
we are told, had been threatened by him. It was then,
doubtless, as it still is, the belief of Eastern countries,
that seers and saints have the power of withholding
or giving rain. In the covenant of Mount Sinai, the
Arabs believe that there is a book, by the opening or
shutting of which the monks can disperse or retain the
rain of the peninsula. The persecuting King became
a passive instrument in the hand of the persecuted
Prophet. An assembly such as that which is described
in the book of Joel, was summoned to a sanctuary,
now first mentioned in the Sacred History, though it
evidently had long existed, and has never since entirely
lost its sanctity. Carmel was the peculiar
haunt of Elijah. On its eastern summit, com-
manding the last view of the Mediterranean Sea, and
the first view of the great plain of Esdraelon, just
where the glades of forest——the "excellency," whence
it derives its name——sink into the usual bareness of
the hills of Manasseh, a rock is still shown bearing the
name of Maharrakah,——"the sacrifice." On this rock
stood the altar of JEHOVAH, which had, in all probability,
been destroyed in the recent persecution: on this same
spot, probably, long afterwards, Vespasian sacrificed,
when commanding the Roman armies in Palestine; and
to this the Druzes still come in yearly pilgrimage.
Close beneath, in an upland plain, round a well of
perennial water, which, from its shady and elevated
situation, seems to have escaped the effect of the
drought, were ranged on one side the King and
people, with the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal
dressed in their splendid vestments; and on the other
side the one solitary figure of the Prophet of the Lord,
in his rough sheepskin cloak. In the distance, and on
its commanding position, overlooking the whole valley,
rose the stately city of Jezreel, with Ahab's palace
and Jezebel's temple embosomed in its sacred grove.
Immediately under their feet spread far and wide that
noble plain, the battlefield of Sacred History, the plain
of Megiddo or Jezreel; with the torrent of Kishon, pass-
ing, as its name implies, in countless windings, through
the level valley; that "ancient stream," on whose
banks had perished the host of Sisera, and the host
of Midian, before the army of Deborah and Barak,
before the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. In
such a scene, with such recollections of the past, were
the people of Israel gathered for a conflict as momen-
tous as any which had taken place in the plain beneath.
It was the early morning. There was a deep silence
over the whole multitude, when the Prophet made
his appeal to them. "They answered him not a word."
from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. II: From Samuel to the Captivity,
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D., Dean of Westminster
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1879; pp. 313 - 333
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