ELIJAH

1
ELIJAH

• By Jordan Gongora

2
His Name...

• The name Elijah ?????????? means "Yahweh is my
  God or My God is Yahweh'.
• In the New Testament, some translations render
  his name as Elias ???a?
• His name was both the explanation of his
  character and the declaration of his ministry.

3
His Origin...

• One of the most striking things about Elijah is
  that he has no stated ancestry.  This is quite
  unusual in the Old Testament.  The Jews were very
  careful to record ancestry.  This has led some
  scholars to suggest that he might even have been
  a Gentile.
• He is called the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of
  Gilead
• Tishbite, in the Bible, epithet of Elijah,
  referring to Tishbe, his place of origin or his
  family.

4

• His origin is uncertain. Some think "Tishbeh"
  was a city in Galilee others, in Gilead.
  
• Some have even supposed that he was an
  Ishmaelite, not an Israelite, sent to rebuke and
  shame the apostate Israel.
• Some have even opined that he was an angel of
  God, though this can be
  countered by
  James'
  statement.
  (Jam 517)
  Clarke

5

• The mention of Gilead, however, is the key-note
  to much that is most characteristic in the story
  of the prophet Elijah.
• Gilead was the country on the further side of the
  Jordan- a country of chase and pasture, of
  tent-villages, and mountain-castles, inhabited by
  a people not settled and civilized like those who
  formed the communities of Ephraim and Judah, but
  of wandering, irregular habits, exposed to the
  attacks of the nomad tribes of the desert, and
  gradually conforming more and more to the habits
  of those tribes making war with the Hagarites.
• - (1 Chron 510,19-22).

6

• Geography of the town of Tishbe in Gilead. When a
  man is referred to by geography rather than by
  ancestry, it is something to notice.  Elijah is
  from the sticks. 

7
His appearance...

• A hairy man wearing a leather belt around his
  waist.
• - 2 Kings 17-8 cf. John, Mt 34
• That is, he wore a rough garment, either made of
  camels' hair, as his successor John Baptist's
  was, or he wore a skin dressed with the hair on.
• Some think that the meaning is, he had very long
  hair and a long beard. The ancient prophets all
  wore rough garments, or upper coats made of the
  skins of beasts They wandered about in
  sheepskins and goatskins, says the apostle, Heb
  1137.

8

• His ordinary clothing consisted of a girdle of
  skin round his loins, which he tightened when
  about to move quickly (1 Kings 1846). But in
  addition to this he occasionally wore the
  'mantle,' or cape, of sheep-skin, which has
  supplied us with one of our most familiar figures
  of speech.
• In this mantle, in moments of emotion, he would
  hide his face (1 Kings 1913), or when excited
  would roll it up as into a kind of staff. On one
  occasion we find him bending himself down upon
  the ground with his face between his knees.

9
The Historical Context

• Elijah, originally from Tishbe in Transjordania,
  lived in the ninth century before Christ in the
  Northern kingdom.
• The Northern kingdom thus begins to experience a
  rather turbulent and painful epoch the reigns of
  Jeraboam I and his immediate successors cannot be
  described as examples of peace, transparency and
  political stability.
• With the ascension to the throne of Omri, the
  situation begins to change.
• Now begins for Israel a period of consolidation
  and of great power, which will endure for a long
  time.

10

• The politics of Omri provide a vast program of
  alliances that secure for the country an era of
  peace and stability.
• In the year 874, in Samaria, the new capital, a
  temple in the honor of Baal was erected (cf. I
  Kings 16,32), and that an altar dedicated to him
  existed on Carmel.
• Ahab, son of Omri, takes Jezebel as his wife who
  is steeped in Baal and Asherah worship.
• In such a situation of confusion and religious
  syncretism, Elijah is the prophet chosen by God
  to lead the people back to the truth of their
  relationship with Him and to restore fidelity to
  the Alliance, or Covenant.
• The famous episode of the confrontation with the
  prophets of Baal, narrated in I Kings 18, is also
  the only Elijan account which is expressly set by
  the Bible on Mount Carmel.

11

• The choice of this locality can be easily
  explained by the historical context and by its
  geographical position.
• Placed exactly on the border between the kingdom
  of Israel and the territory of the Phoenicians,
  the sacred mountain summarized well the situation
  of the people, still faithful to the religion of
  their Fathers yet at the same time attracted to
  the new cults of Baal.
• The south-eastern part, which opens onto the
  plain of Jezreel, knew a more pure Yahwist cult
  while the north-west promontory, which descends
  into the Mediterranean, was orientated to the
  cult of Baal.
• Like the heart of the people in that particular
  historical moment, the mountain was also divided
  between Yahweh and Baal.

12

• On Baal
• The constant element seems to be that in Baal is
  seen the god of the storm, of the rain and above
  all of fruitfulness.
• It is he - for the peoples of Canaan - who gives
  the rain and the fruits of the earth because of
  this, in Canaanite mythology, his name and his
  cult are associated with the world of nature and
  the cycles
• of life and death.
• When Baal dies the earth dies too
• when he returns to life, with the
• autumn rains, he gives fertility back
• to the earth and the productive
• cycles can recover their vitality.

13

• It is against this background that one should
  understand the episode of the struggle of Elijah
  against the prophets of Baal, certainly based on
  a story dating back to the end of the ninth
  century before Christ, but narrated with profound
  dramatic art by a redactor of the Deuteronomic
  school in the period of Babylonian exile (after
  587 B.C.)
• The setting of the account in I Kings is also
  datable by the dramatic situation, provoked by a
  long famine and drought, of which we have
  information from the historian Flavius Josephus.
• It is precisely this urgent need of rain and of a
  good crop, and the dilemma about who might be
  their true dispenser, which raises the curtain on
  this confrontation - staged by Elijah - with his
  adversaries.

14
Elijah and the widow of Zarephath
15
1Kings 17 7-24

• Highlights The word of the Lord came to him
  saying, "Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to
  Sidon, and stay there behold, I have commanded a
  widow there to provide for you.
• So he arose and went to Zarephath, and when he
  came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was
  there gathering sticks and he called to her and
  said, Please get me a little water in a jar,
  that I may drink.
• And as she was going to get it, he called to her
  and said, "Please bring me a piece of bread in
  your hand " But she said, "As the Lord your God
  lives, I have no bread, only a handful of flour
  in the bowl and a little oil in the jar, and
  behold, I am gathering a few sticks that I may go
  in and prepare for me and my son, that we may eat
  it and die.

16

• Then Elijah said to her, Do not fear, go, do as
  you have said but make me a little bread cake
  from it first, and bring it out to me
• So she went and did according to the word of
  Elijah, and she and he and her household ate for
  many days.
• Now it came about after these things that the son
  of the woman the mistress of the house, became
  sick and his sickness was so severe, that there
  was no breath left in him.
• So she said to Elijah, What have I to do with
  you, 0 man of God? You have come to me to bring
  my iniquity to remembrance, and to put my son to
  death!
• He said to her, Give me your son. Then he took
  him from her bosom and carried him up to the
  upper room where he was living, and laid him on
  his own bed. And he called to the Lord and said,
  O Lord my God, hast Thou also brought calamity
  to the widow with whom I am staying, by causing
  her son to die?"

17

• Then he stretched himself upon the child three
  times, and called to the Lord, and said, O Lord
  my God, I pray Thee, let this child's life return
  to him. And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah,
  and the life of the child returned to him and he
  revived.
• And Elijah took the child, and brought
  him down from the upper
  room into
  the house and gave him to his mother,
  and Elijah said, See,
  your son is
  alive.
• Then the woman said to Elijah,
  Now I know you
  are a man of God,
  and that the word of the Lord in
  
  your mouth is truth!

18

• The circumstances which confronted Elijah upon
  his approach to Zarephath
• God had told Elijah to go there and had promised
  a widow should sustain him, but what her name
  was, where-about was her house, and how he was to
  distinguish her from others, he was not informed.
  
• He trusted God to give him further light when he
  arrived there nor was he disappointed.
• Apparently this meeting was quite casual, for
  there was no appointment between them. Behold
  the widow woman was there.
• - notice how the Lord in His providence
  overrules all events, so that this particular
  woman should be at the gate at the very time the
  prophet arrived!

19

• The widow comes forth as if on purpose to meet
  him yet he did not know her, nor she him.
• It has all the appearance of being accidental,
  and yet it was decreed and arranged by God so as
  to make good His word to the prophet.
• But how was Elijah to know she was the
  one whom God
  had ordained
  should befriend him?
• Well he must try her, as the servant of
  Abraham did Rebekah
  when he was
  sent to fetch a wife for Isaac.
• So here Elijah tests this woman to see if
  she is kind and
  benevolent Fetch me,
  I pray thee, a little water
  in a vessel, that I may drink.

20

• Observe the gracious and respectful demeanor of
  Elijah. The fact that he was a prophet of Jehovah
  did not warrant him to treat this poor widow in a
  haughty and overbearing manner. Instead of
  commanding, he said, Pray thee.
• And what a severe test it was to which Elijah
  submitted this poor woman to fetch him a drink
  of water! Yet she made no demur nor did she
  demand a high price for what had become a costly
  luxury no, not even though Elijah was a complete
  stranger to her, belonging to another race.
• Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in
  thine hand.
• What a selfish request this seemed. How likely it
  was that human nature would resent such a demand
  upon her slender resources. Yet in reality it was
  God that was meeting with her in the hour of her
  deepest need.

21
Brief summary of Elijah

• Elijah stands before the face of the living God. 
  
• The time is the ninth century B.C. and the place
  is northern Israel. 
• Unexpected and unannounced, he challenges the
  evil governing power of King Ahab and his queen
  Jezebel for the sake of the voiceless ones of the
  land. 
• No dew of rain falls except by his hand. 
• Fed by ravens in the wilderness of the Wadi
  Cherith, Elijah is strengthened for his journey.

22

• Through Zarephath, where he helps a starving
  widow and brings her dead son back to life onto
  the heights of Mount Carmel where he slays the
  false prophets of Baal.
• Through the wilderness for forty days and forty
  nights until he reached Mt. Horeb where he meets
  God
• Back to Samaria to denounce the Ahab and Jezebel
  for murder and theft and finally
• Across the Jordan with his successor Elisha to
  the place where a flaming chariot and flaming
  horses took him up to heaven in a whirlwind.

23
Elijah taken up to heaven
24

• THE END!