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Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel

Who Ahab, Jezebel and Baal were, why a drought and fire from heaven challenged Baal, Mount Carmel, Ahab in archaeology, and how Carmel points to the cross.

For three and a half years no rain had fallen on Israel. Then one prophet faced four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. Here is the background to 1 Kings 18: the king and queen, their god, the mountain, and what archaeology has found from Ahab's reign.

Ahab and Jezebel

Ahab ruled the northern kingdom of Israel from Samaria in the ninth century BC. Scripture says he "did evil in the sight of the LORD above all that were before him," and that "he took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him" (1 Kings 16:30-31). Sidon was a Phoenician city on the coast of modern Lebanon: Jezebel was a Phoenician princess, and she brought her religion with her. Ahab built a house for Baal in Samaria, and Jezebel "cut off the prophets of the LORD" (1 Kings 18:4).

Who Baal was

The word baal means "lord." Baal was the chief god of Canaan and Phoenicia, worshipped as the giver of crops and as a storm god, usually pictured holding a lightning bolt. Excavations at Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra, in Syria) since 1929 have uncovered clay tablets with long poems about him. They describe Baal as the sky god who brings the rain; when he disappears before Mot, the god of death, the land dries up. A carving found there in 1932, now in the Louvre, shows him with a thunderbolt in his raised hand. These texts are older than Ahab, but show what Baal's followers believed.

That is why the drought was such a direct challenge. Elijah had told Ahab, "there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word" (1 Kings 17:1). And on Carmel, the god pictured with lightning in his hand could not send down a single spark.

Obadiah and the hidden prophets

Obadiah ran Ahab's household, yet he "feared the LORD greatly." When Jezebel was killing the prophets, he "took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water" (1 Kings 18:3-4). Sent to tell Ahab that Elijah had come, he was frightened and said so, but he went. Faithfulness does not always look fearless.

Mount Carmel

Carmel is not a single peak but a long, wooded ridge running southeast from the Mediterranean coast near modern Haifa, with the Jezreel Valley along its northeast side.

The Bible does not name the exact spot of the contest. Tradition places it at El-Muhraqa, a high point on the ridge where a Carmelite monastery now stands; its Arabic name is linked to burning or sacrifice. It is a tradition, not a proven site.

"How long halt ye between two opinions?"

And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. (1 Kings 18:21)

In old English, to "halt" is to limp. Israel was hobbling between two paths: they had not thrown the LORD out, they simply wanted Baal as well. GotQuestions.org points to this verse as a lesson in the folly of indecision.

The twelve stones and the water

After Baal's prophets had cried out all day in vain, Elijah repaired the broken altar of the LORD with twelve stones, "according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob" (1 Kings 18:31). The kingdom was divided, but Elijah built for all Israel.

He had four barrels of water poured over the sacrifice three times, until "the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water" (1 Kings 18:35). This, GotQuestions.org notes, ruled out any trick. Then he prayed, and the LORD answered:

Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God. (1 Kings 18:38-39)

Elijah then had the prophets of Baal put to death (1 Kings 18:40), in obedience, GotQuestions.org explains, to the Law of Moses.

What archaeology has found from Ahab's reign

The Kurkh Monolith. Found in 1861 in southeastern Turkey and now in the British Museum, this stone of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III describes the battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Among his enemies it lists "Ahab the Israelite," with 2,000 chariots. The Bible does not mention this battle, and Assyrian numbers were often boasts, but it is among the earliest mentions of an Israelite king outside Scripture.

The Samaria ivories. Excavations at Samaria in the 1930s found a large collection of carved ivory pieces near the royal palace, from the ninth and eighth centuries BC. Scripture mentions "the ivory house which he made" (1 Kings 22:39). Many scholars connect the two, though that is an inference, not proven.

A picture of something greater

The fire fell not on the people who had turned away, but on the sacrifice. GotQuestions.org counts Carmel among the times God showed Himself a consuming fire, and teaches that at the cross God's wrath against sin was poured out on Jesus in our place. "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18).

Elijah needed that grace too. James says he "was a man subject to like passions as we are" (James 5:17). In the very next chapter, afraid of Jezebel, he asked to die (1 Kings 19:4), and God gently fed and restored him. Centuries later Elijah stood beside Jesus on the mount of transfiguration, where he and Moses "spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke 9:31). The prophet who saw fire fall on one sacrifice spoke with the Lord about the sacrifice that would end all others.

Sources

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