1 Kings 18.36-40.
In proposing this contest between the LORD and Baal—which of these gods could set fire to his offering—Elijah wasn’t just putting God’s reputation on the line, but his own. Baal was silent, but if the LORD had been silent too, it wasn’t like the people of Israel would throw up their hands and say, “It’s a draw.” They’d just presume neither Baal nor the LORD thought their contest was worth their divine time, and simply continue with the status quo.
Only problem with the status quo: The LORD’s prophets were getting persecuted and killed. And here’s a prophet of the LORD who suggested his God would make fire, but he didn’t… and hey, didn’t Moses say we’re supposed to kill false prophets?
So yep, Elijah’s life was at stake over this one. Which is why it was only fair when Baal lost the contest, that his prophets should suffer the very same fate they intended to inflict upon Elijah.
Anyway, let’s check out where the LORD came through for Elijah:
- 1 Kings 18.36-40 KWL
- 36The time to offer the sacrifice came,
- and Elijah the prophet came near.
- He said, “YHWH, god of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel,
- make it known today:
- You’re¹ God in Israel,
- and I am your¹ slave,
- and I did all these deeds by your¹ word.
- 37Answer me, YHWH, answer me,
- and the people might know you,¹
- the god YHWH;
- you¹ who make their hearts repent.”
- 38YHWH’s fire fell.
- It consumed the offering,
- the wood,
- the stones,
- the dirt,
- and licked up the water in the trench.
- 39All the people saw,
- fell on their faces,
- and said, “YHWH, he is God!
- YHWH, he is God!”
- 40Elijah told them, “Seize Baal’s prophets.
- Don’t let any of them escape.”
- They seized them.
- Elijah brought them down to the wadi Qišón.
- He slaughtered them there.
Juggling two gods.
The KJV translates Elijah’s prayer as, “Let it be known this day that thou [art] God in Israel,” 1Ki 18.36 KJV and I’ve noticed most preachers tend to stop right there and talk about how the Israelis weren’t all that sure the LORD was still God. I remind you the issue was not that the Israelis had swapped the LORD for the Baals—although they largely had. Instead the Israelis had swapped monotheism for polytheism. They were worshiping the LORD plus other gods. They were still aware the LORD existed, but whereas the LORD was all about morality and justice, the Baals let you have tons of freaky ritual sex with their prostitutes.
Yep. Not for nothing did the LORD use tons of adultery metaphors to describe idolatry. It’s also because of the comparison between a legitimate relationship with God, based on love and voluntary submission; and an illegitimate relationship with an idol, based on lust and greed. It’s because, when you’re cheating on your spouse with sex workers, you’re trying to juggle the loving relationship with your spouse, with your exploitative situations with the prostitutes. Everything in your legit relationship is getting undermined and devalued by the warped nature of the illegitimate one.
So while the Israelis always knew the LORD is real, living, and there, they were more enticed by this new freaky religion of Baalism. They presumed they’d return to the LORD when his holidays came around, once they got all the Baal out of their systems… but the “get it out of your system” idea is crap. It’s just an excuse so we can indulge our vices. We pretend these vices won’t escalate. And they all do. Some of ’em till they kill us.
Today’s idols still involve power, money, and sex, but aren’t as overtly religion-shaped as Baalism, which is why Christians indulge our society’s idols with impunity, and figure they’ll return to Jesus during the holidays. Meanwhile our vices escalate.
What Elijah did here was a big, dramatic, heavenly intervention. The drought reminded everyone the LORD, not Baal-Hadad, controls the weather. Then this contest, in which 850 prophets weren’t able to get Baal-Hadad to move. No fire, no answer, nothing. It’s like they’d been praying to a block of wood this whole time. It was a complete undermining of Baal’s power in front of his chief worshipers—including his chief priest, King Ahab ben Omri.
Are we at the point of such an intervention? Feels like it sometimes.
The fire falls.
As to what it looked like when the LORD’s fire came down, I’ve no idea. I don’t know if it looked like a meteor falling all the way through the atmosphere, and the people watched it come their way, and drew back in fear—and rightly so, because man did it flatten that altar. Or maybe it was a much shorter distance? Or maybe it looked like the altar simply exploded in flames hot enough to vaporize everything? The special effects artists on any future Elijah movie can come up with something clever.
As a Pentecostal, I tend to pray for and encounter the spiritual fire of the Holy Spirit, as opposed to the physical fire we’re talking about in Kings. This was most definitely a physical fire. There were physical results. The fire entirely consumed the steer Elijah had sliced up and arranged on the wood. And it consumed the wood. And the 12 stones Elijah made the altar out of, and any dirt he packed inbetween the stones to keep ’em together. And the trench full of water—and here the Hebrew text switches verbs from
אָכַל/aqál,
“consumed, ate,” to
לָחַךְ/lakhák,
“licked up”—the fire didn’t just generically consume the offering, but ate and drank it. Kinda like an intelligent individual being would do. Kinda like the being who sent the fire.
It’s now ridiculously obvious which god won the contest, and the Israelis’ response makes it clear who they think the national god of Israel is. And it’s certainly not the Baalism which Ahab attempted to import from his Sidonian in-laws; it’s the Yahwism of Abraham, Isaac, and their common ancestor Israel. Elijah challenged them to choose this day which god they’d serve; here’s their answer.
Sadly, we too often wanna see God do something impressive like this before we finally acknowledge and follow him once and for all. (As if saving us from sin and death isn’t impressive enough.) Well, sometimes he takes us up on it, and shows us something amazing like we see in this story. And sometimes—particularly if we’re not being honest about how we gotta see God move before we’ll follow him—he doesn’t.
Also sadly, there’s an unhappy ending for the Baalist prophets. As commanded in the scriptures:
- Deuteronomy 18.20 KJV
- But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
I’ve heard a lot of preachers talk about the 450 prophets of Baal-Hadad, and forget about the additional 400 prophets of Ashtoreth. Yeah, all of them died. Elijah appears to have killed them personally. The KJV just says he slew them, but the text says
וַיִּשְׁחָטֵ֖ם/way-yiškhátem,
“and he slaughtered them,” much like you’d kill a ritual sacrifice—usually by slitting the arteries in their neck and letting the blood drain out of ’em. The verb
שָׁחַט/šakhát
can also be translated “beat,” as in clubbed ’em to death, but that’d require needless extra effort, and the death of 850 prophets is gory enough as it is. Either way it’s not a happy ending for these prophets.
Elijah kills them because it’s commanded. They’d been leading the nation astray, convincing them it’s okay to worship both the LORD and Baal. But lest you think this was solely about a religious difference of opinion, I remind you they were likely complicit with Jezebel bat Ethbaal in killing the LORD’s prophets. 1Ki 18.4 Further, the way the Baalists convinced Israelis to worship their gods was through human trafficking: Buy a bunch of slaves and let their worshipers have their lusty way with men, women, boys, and girls. It’s absolutely vile, and if you think these people didn’t deserve the death penalty, you’re part of the continuing worldwide problem we have with trafficking.
The Baalists weren’t given time to repent and turn to God; that’s the argument we’d nowadays use to avoid killing them. Certainly the one I’d use; I don’t want to kill anyone. God himself has stated he always prefers repentance to death; he doesn’t want to kill anyone either. Ek 33.11 But considering the disregard for human life inherent in Baalism—forced prostitution, sexual slavery, child molestation, etc.—it’s really hard to feel sympathy for these guys. Their chance to repent was once they saw Baal wouldn’t answer; they had hours to repent after that, and kept right on screaming for Baal till sundown. Their deaths are on their own heads.
What’s our takeaway from this story? Obviously, the LORD is real and the Baals are not, and following other gods leads to death. True, these consequences aren’t always as immediate as being led off to the nearest ravine and having your arteries cut… but sometimes they are. Sometimes God doesn’t have to intervene; nature or politics will do it. But in general we regularly see the same results: Embrace God and live, embrace wickedness and don’t.
