The Boast of True Prophets and Silence of False Gods
So Ahab sent to all the people of Israel and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel. And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” And the people did not answer him a word. Then Elijah said to the people, “I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord, but Baal's prophets are 450 men. Let two bulls be given to us, and let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. And I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood and put no fire to it. And you call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, he is God.” And all the people answered, “It is well spoken.” Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many, and call upon the name of your god, but put no fire to it.” And they took the bull that was given them, and they prepared it and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, and no one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made. And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention.
1 Kings 18:20-29
Our text is set in the days of the Divided Kingdom and the people of God had a divided heart. There was a worthless king, who had a wicked wife, and they were both hard at work turning the people further away from their covenant Lord and into the arms of Baal. Against such apostasy, God had raised up a prophet whose name meant “The LORD is my God.” 1 Kings 18:20-29 shows how Elijah confronts the king, the false prophets, and the fickle people. The text sets up the powerful response of God, and it does so with very strategic acts of faith and a strong dose of sanctified mockery. The words and actions of this man of God stand in the starkest contrast to the syncretism of Israel. Therefore this essay will show how the narrative in 1 Kings 18:20-29 calls the reader to undivided devotion to the LORD through the boast of the true prophet and silence of the false gods.
Reading through the Hebrew Text
While the ministry of Elijah extends into 2 Kings in our canon, 1 Kings 17 and 18 form a kind of unit. Here the heightened conflict between the LORD and the wicked kings of the north is introduced. Over and above this is the war between the LORD and Baal; and this war in the heavenlies, in a sense, comes down to an earthly mountain, a theater in that spiritual war in which the people of Israel and their prophets take part. While Elijah has already been introduced (17:1), 18:20-29 shows him to be the main character on the human level.
A few other grammatical and syntactical features are worth noting. At the center of all of the Baal prophets’ activity are the taunts of Elijah. DeVries cites this as the verb’s only occurrence in the Hebrew Bible.1 Its root הָתַל understood as “deceived” or “mocked” is used in Gen. 31:7; Ex. 8:29; Judg. 16:10, 13, 15; 1 Ki. 18:27; Job 13:9; Isa. 44:20; Jer. 9:5. The string of five jussives all clearly fit under the command use rather than the request, invitation, or wish.2 The final jussive follows a case of fronting
Commentators differ on the meaning of פֹּסְחִים֮. There is no object for “opinion” but rather something like crutches or the branches of a tree.3 Does it mean hopping,4 skipping or leaping,5 or perhaps faltering or limping? The verb behind it, פָסַח, was even used of God’s action in the Passover (cf. Ex. 12:13, 27). But we will look only at the surface options here.
Conceived one way the Israelites would be very deliberate and nimble in moving from one opinion to the other, whereas the other imagery would suggest that they are very feeble in this indecision. No one doubts, however, that the meaning at least implies syncretism: that Israel was trying to have it both ways in their religion.
Bruggemann seems more certain of the connection between the two times the verb is used in this passage, and thus limping “means to engage in a cultic dance in celebration of Baal while professing Yahweh.”6
I agree with DeVries that, “The thematic word in this narrative is עָנָה, ‘answer,’ ‘respond,’”7 although there is another contender. Walsh draws attention to the verb “to come near” as “an important leitmotif.”8 The root נָגַשׁ can also mean, “draw near, approach, step forth.”9 Compare “[he] came near” (וַיִּגַּ֨שׁ) to Ex. 28:43; 30:20; Jer. 30:21.
Elijah draws near in verse 21, then he summons the people to come near to him in verse 30, and they immediately did so. Elijah does the same approaching the altar to pray in verse 36. Thus if we take the Mount Carmel narrative as a whole, this drawing near seems paramount. What I suggest is that the focus in verse 20 through 29 makes the speech and silence between the parties the more dominant theme.
In light of the predominance of “call out,” “said,” and “answer” (or “no answer”), it seems that we can get the shape of this text from the back and forth of the speakers and the responses of their respective audiences. Elijah summons the people out of silence, the prophets of Baal summon their god with the response of silence.
Historical Context
Mount Carmel was a religious high place. Brueggeman suggests a connection between the word and “vineyard of God”10 and thus fertility. Whether there is any such allusion, it was precisely over which deity could deliver on the fertility of the ground that was at controversy. Mount Carmel was Baal country, “bordering Phoenicia” featuring “a broken down altar of the LORD (v. 30).”11 Worshipers may have been constantly reminded of how Baal delivers with every rain fall and how YHWH worship was a relic of the past.
Baal was the Canaanite storm god. An alternative contest could easily be imagined due to the drought. There had been no rain. The people would be all the more prepared to turn to the one who could make it rain. However, as Wiseman remarks, Baal was also viewed as a “sun-god” who “sent lightning.”12 No wonder, concludes Fullilove, that “fire from heaven is a key component of the miracles in Kings.”13
Now it was the priest’s function to prepare sacrifices, but as DeVries comments, “the sacrifice will remain incomplete … until fire is put to it … The issue is to be left entirely up to the rival gods, eliminating the confusing element of propaganda and ecclesiastical hocus-pocus.”14
Sweeney draws this connection between the blood of the prophets and the rain of their god:
“The practice reflects ancient mythology concerning the death of the fertility god, whether Baal, Tammuz, Dumuzi, or others, who descends into the netherworld during the dry season and must be brought back to life in order for the rains to come in the fall. By gashing themselves, the Baal prophets ritually identify with the dead in an act that reverses the normal course of the created world. Such identification with the dead Baal plays a role in stimulating his revival.”15
Literary Context
DeVries speaks of a “Jehuite redactor”16 who inserted verses 19 and 20 as a transition in the narrative. He is content to regard this account as “a holy legend.”17
Walsh notes that “Elijah’s dialogue with the people is in two unequal parts:
A. Elijah speaks to the people (18:21a)
B. The people do not answer (18:21b)
Aˡ. Elijah speaks to the people (18:22-24a)
Bˡ. The people answer (18:24b)18
We have seen that silence and answering seems very crucial to the form of this passage. When the man of God first approaches, the people are tongue-tied with their hands caught in the cookie jar. As he shows himself reasonable they have little choice but to engage. Now on the higher plane of the gods and their representatives, we also see the silence of Baal in spite of the wailing of his spokespeople.
The true God reveals and the people are at first silent; then the false prophets call out and the phony god is silent. Wherever we see speech that is ashamed here, we also see a corresponding weak life of worship. For example, both the people and their false prophets suffer from a kind of spiritual effeminacy.
Literary devices here include the use of a “pun” from verse 26, referring back to verse 21.19 In verse 21 פסחים referred to the “limping between” those two opinions, whereas in verse 26 the same verbal root, now in the piel (וַֽיְפַסְּח֔וּ), refers to the dance of the Baal prophets. One of the taunts is a bit uncertain: וְכִֽי־שִׂ֛יג לֹ֖ו. A common option has been that Baal needed to “relieve himself,” though one commentator assures us this “is only an inference, as the term means simply ‘to move away.”20 However the word is only used once; and one lexicon renders שִׂ֛יג as a “bowel movement.”21
Canonical Context
A parallel is drawn by Lissa Beal here between Elijah and previous covenant mediators, Moses and Joshua, both of whom were instruments through whom God drew near to the people, and both of whom set before the people the choice of God or idols (Exod. 32:26; Josh. 24:14-24). She also infers that, “Like Moses, Elijah prepares an altar of twelve stones (Exod. 24:3-8), which is twice named by YHWH’s covenant name (vv. 30, 32).”22 So Beal offers confirmation of Walsh’s view that this verb for “come near” is “an important leitmotif in this story.”23
What difference would this make? In speaking of the theological emphases of the book of the Kings, Fullilove sees “the theology of Deuteronomy as the evaluative standard for the kings of Israel and Judah, and it assumes the dynamics of covenantal administration from Deuteronomy.”24 By Elijah drawing near to summon the people, as well as rebuilding the YHWH altar (v. 30), the prophet is at least symbolizing the work of rebuilding the scattered assembly.
Some relationships between Elijah and the false prophets with the prophetic office in general may be discerned. Elijah exaggerates the situation — “even I only, am left a prophet of the LORD” (v. 22) — knowing full well about the prophets that Obadiah had kept hidden (v. 13).
Two activities of the Baal prophets are noteworthy here: the one forbidden the prophets of Israel, the other often erroneously attributed to prophets of Israel. The first is self-mutilation and the second is what we might put under the general category of ecstatic frenzy. Now bodily laceration as a means of manipulating the spiritual realm is condemned in Leviticus 19:28, Deuteronomy 14:1, and Jeremiah 41:5. Ugaritic sources attest that a norm was to be “bathed in their own blood like an ecstatic prophet.”25
Modern scholars have often spoke of the prophetic experience as “characterized by a detached or abnormal state of consciousness in which normal sensory input and mental function are interrupted and replaced by a consuming focus on revelatory experience.”26 There were phenomena such as “frenzies and trances”27 (1 Sam. 10:1-13; 19:18-24), but these are not normative of the true prophetic ministry. Whether it is “scholarly” or not, such activity is depicted to us because the representatives of such religions are as full of demons as their false gods are.
Integrating Text and Life
Who was vindicated that day: the true God or his true prophet? The answer, it seems, it both.28 Ultimately however it is God over Baal, as this was the danger brought in with Jezebel, and as Baal had recently ascended to the height of the Canaanite pantheon.29 Of course Elijah’s name is a clue. In the end, the people were not being called to a show, but to repentance.
Looking forward to the New Testament we can still see syncretism as a temptation of the church. In Christ’s message to the Laodicean church, he says, “because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16).
Where are the most flagrant forms of syncretism today? In other words, where is Christian worship and devotion seen “limping between two different opinions”?
In probing why Baal worship would be so enticing, Davis suggest that the allure to power is what captivated Ahab, and by extension, his court full of prophets. Jezebel was the “fanatic.” For everyone else it was the means to the end of power. But from the Israelites who “wanted to ‘get on,’”30 we are instructed that the gods of power do not merely promise high positions, but also everyday results.
It may be significant, as Leithart suggests, that “after 18:17 Ahab never speaks again. Ahab, like Baal his god (18:29), falls silent.”31 This would be an application of the Scripture, “Those who make them become like them” (Ps. 115:8).
The idols are mute because they have no life to begin with. Note that it was already said of the whole people that they “did not answer him a word” (v. 21). The whole people under this spell had nothing to say for themselves.
Many, like Davis, would apply this text to the folly of contemporary Evangelical worship that so often attempts to manipulate the Spirit by our efforts in our services or spiritual disciplines.32 Undoubtedly, however, the basic application from this passage has to begin with where the people were that day.
The majority of us in the church are not in the place of either the true or false prophets (though there is that dimension), but rather in the place of the people, limping between two opinions. Since the true God is sovereign over all creation and will have no other gods before him, we must never limp between true worship and idolatry. If we do, we will grow as limp and deaf and silent as the false gods we serve.
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1. Simon J. DeVries, 1 Kings: Word Biblical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004), 229.
2. BHRG, 19.4.4.i.a.
3. Dale Ralph Davis, 1 Kings: The Wisdom and the Folly (Ross-shire, UK 2008), 232, footnote
4. Mordechai Cogan, 1 Kings: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 439.
5. Jerome T. Walsh, 1 Kings: Berit Olam, Studies in Hebrew Narrative & Poetry (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1996), 245
6. Walter Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2000), 223-24.
7. DeVries, 1 Kings, 226.
8. Walsh, 1 Kings, 245
9. Willem VanGemeren, ed. New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis, Volume 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997), 29.
10. Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings, 223.
11. Olley, The Message of Kings, 172.
12. Donald J. Wiseman, 1 & 2 Kings (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993), 169.
13. William Fullilove, in Van Pelt, ed., A Biblical Theological Introduction to the Old Testament (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), 243.
14. DeVries, 1 Kings, 228.
15. Marvin Sweeney, I & II Kings (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 228
16. DeVries, 1 Kings, 226.
17. DeVries, 1 Kings, 226.
18. Walsh, 1 Kings, 245.
19. cf. DeVries, 1 Kings, 229.
20. Sweeney, I & II Kings, 228
21. Holladay, A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 350.
22. Lissa M. Wray Beal, 1 & 2 Kings (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 244
23. Walsh, 1 Kings, 245.
24. Fullilove, A Biblical Theological Introduction to the Old Testament, 231.
25. Wiseman, 1 & 2 Kings, 169.
26. Michael J. Williams, The Prophet and His Message (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2003), 41.
27. Walsh, 1 Kings, 248.
28. DeVries suggests that the story is ultimately “demonstrating that Elijah is Yahweh’s true, authorized prophet” (1 Kings, 226). While leaving aside the motives of that commentator, the inflation of the human agenda, to the exclusion of a supernatural emphasis, often represents a critical impulse.
29. Fullilove, A Biblical Theological Introduction to the Old Testament, 243.
30. Davis, 1 Kings, 232.
31. Peter Leithart, 1 & 2 Kings (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2006), 135.
32. Davis, 1 Kings, 237-38.
