ELIJAH
Elijah (" My God is Yahweh ") was perhaps the
greatest of the prophets of the northern kingdom.
He was of Tishbeh in Gilead
(
The public appearance of Elijah occurred during
the reign of Ahab (now placed about 876--854) and
Ahaziah (854-853). Ahab suffered himself to be
unhappily influenced in his domestic
life
and in
religious matters by his
queen Jezebel, the daughter of Eth-
baal, king of Tyre, a priest of Astarte
and a regicide (Josephus,
Contra
Apion, I.
xviii.). Fanatical, scheming, and ener
getic, she procured the establishment of her native
cult in
Israel, and had erected in Samaria a grand
temple of Bawl of Tyre. When heathenish confusion had become dominant in the country and
the faithful among the Yahweh-prophets were
silenced by persecution, Elijah appeared and an
nounced in the name of Yahweh a long drought,
and then suddenly disappeared. He dwelt mean
while by the brook Cherith (Wadi Kelt near Jericho,
or an eastern tributary of the Jordan?), where he
" was fed by the ravens "; after the brook dried up
he lived at Zarephath (now Sarfend) in the territory
of Zidon in the house of a
widow. For two
years no rain fell. Menander (Josephus,
Ant.
VIII.,
xiii. 2) knew of an extraordinary drought which
lasted one year under the Tyrian king Ithobal
(i.e., Ethbaal, father of Jezebel), and this accords
well with the Hebrew mode of computing
time.
The later Jewish tradition, however, differs
(
At last Elijah came again before the
king, who
like his people had been humbled by the famine.
He
asked of him an ordeal to decide which God
should rule the country. The outcome of this
ordeal is described in full,
Soon, however, Elijah had to escape from the
vengeance of Jezebel. This time he went to mount
Horeb (I Kings xix.). There he witnessed a grand
theophany after the manner of
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