1And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and all about how he killed all the prophets by the sword. 2And Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, “So may the gods do to me, and even more, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like the life of one of them.” 3And he was afraid, and he arose and went off to save himself, and he came to Beersheba, which is Judah’s, and he left his lad there. 4And he had gone a day’s journey into the wilderness, and he came and sat under a certain broom-tree, and he wanted to die, and he said, “Enough now, LORD. Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” 5And he lay down and slept under a certain broom-tree, and look, a divine messenger was touching him, and he said to him, “Arise, eat.” 6And he looked, and there at his head was a loaf baked on hot coals and a cruse of water. And he ate and he drank and he lay down once more. 7And the LORD’s messenger came back again and touched him and said, “Arise, eat, for your way is long.” 8And he rose and ate and drank and walked in the strength of that eating forty days and forty nights as far as the mountain of God, Horeb. 9And he came into a cave and spent the night there, and, look, the word of the LORD came to him and said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10And he said, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God of Armies, for the Israelites have forsaken Your covenant—Your altars they have destroyed, Your prophets they have killed by the sword, and I alone remain, and they have sought to take my life.” 11And He said, “Go and stand on the mountain before the LORD, and, look, the LORD is about to pass over, with a great and strong wind tearing apart mountains and smashing rocks before the LORD. Not in the wind is the LORD. And after the wind an earthquake. Not in the earthquake is the LORD. 12And after the earthquake—fire. Not in the fire is the LORD. And after the fire, a sound of minute stillness.” 13And it happened, when Elijah heard, that he covered his face with his mantle and he went out and stood at the entrance to the cave, and, look, a voice came to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 14And he said, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God of Armies, for the Israelites have forsaken Your covenant—Your altars they have destroyed, and your prophets they have killed by the sword, and I alone remain, and they have sought to take my life.” 15And the LORD said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus, and you shall come and anoint Hazael king over Aram. 16And Jehu son of Nimshi you shall anoint king over Israel, and Elisha son of Shephat from Abel Meholah you shall anoint prophet in your stead. 17And it shall be, that who escapes the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall put to death, and who escapes the word of Jehu, Elisha shall put to death. 18And I shall leave in Israel seven thousand, every knee that did not bow to Baal and every mouth that did not kiss him.” 19And he went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat while he was plowing with twelve yokes of oxen before him, and he was with the twelfth. And Elijah crossed over to him and flung his mantle upon him. 20And he abandoned the cattle and ran after Elijah. And he said, “Let me, pray, kiss my father and my mother and I will come after you.” And he said to him, “Go, return, for what have I done to you?” 21And he turned back from him and took the yoke of oxen and slaughtered them, and with the wood from the gear of the oxen he cooked the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate. And he arose and went after Elijah and ministered to him.
CHAPTER 19 NOTES
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1. all. This word is repeated three times in the report of Ahab’s speech to Jezebel, probably to suggest his emphasis in speaking to her of the enormity perpetrated by Elijah—all the things he did.
all the prophets. In this instance, the repeated phrase “the prophets of Baal” is not used. Moshe Garsiel has aptly observed that this usage reflects the viewpoint of Ahab and Jezebel, who see the prophets of Baal as prophets tout court, with no need of a qualifier.
3. And he was afraid. The received text reads “And he saw” (a difference of a single vowel in the Hebrew), but several Hebrew manuscripts and most of the ancient translations have “And he was afraid.” One suspects that the Masoretic editors balked at the notion that the iron-willed Elijah could have shown fear. In fact, this turn in the narrative is by no means implausible: Elijah has spent two years or more hiding out from Ahab’s wrath. He then decides to confront him in the conviction that a show of divine force on Mount Carmel will disabuse the king of his idolatrous illusions and make him bend to Elijah’s spiritual authority. But Elijah has not reckoned with Jezebel’s implacability, and now, finding that she seeks his life despite the spectacular public triumph on Mount Carmel, he is afraid and flees.
4. Enough now, LORD. Take my life. The fear for his life inspired by Jezebel is, here, followed by despair. If, after his tremendous performance publicly demonstrating that YHWH is God, the royal couple still seek to kill him and remain unrepentant in the idolatrous ways they have fostered in Israel, his prophetic mission has been a failure, and there is no point in his going on.
6. a loaf baked on hot coals. This is the immemorial Bedouin method of making flatbread (modern-day pittah).
7. your way is long. As the next verse explains, his journey on foot will take forty days, recalling Moses’s forty days on the mountain.
9. What are you doing here, Elijah? This might be a challenge to Elijah for abandoning his people to flee to the wilderness, or it might mean, in view of the attention to the details of epiphany that will follow: what are you doing following in Moses’s footsteps to Mount Horeb?
10. and I alone remain. As before, the hundred prophets hidden by Obadiah are not taken into account because they are not on a prophetic mission.
11. Go and stand on the mountain before the LORD. Elijah is commanded to assume the stature of Moses, but the epiphany he is vouchsafed vigorously revises the details of Moses’s epiphany: God will reveal himself not in storm or fire or the shaking of the mountain but in a small, barely audible sound. On Mount Carmel, God spoke through fire; here at Horeb, he speaks in a more subtle language, for the deity is by no means limited to seismic manifestations.
13. What are you doing here, Elijah? These words, and Elijah’s response, replicate the exchange between “the word of the LORD” and the prophet in verse 9. Either the repetition is intended to frame Elijah’s encounter with God symmetrically, before and after the epiphany in a virtually still voice, or it reflects a duplication in scribal transmission.
15. you shall come and anoint Hazael king over Aram. Perhaps this act is meant to manifest God’s sovereignty over all nations, but it seems strange, and historically altogether unlikely, that a Hebrew prophet could have taken upon himself to anoint an Aramean king.
16. you shall anoint prophet in your stead. The term “in your stead” is the same one used for royal succession. Elisha, then, is designated not merely as ministrant to Elijah but as his successor, so there is an intimation that Elijah’s days are now numbered.
17. who escapes the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall put to death. The prophetic campaign against Ahab and Jezebel is now to take a new path. Since they have demonstrated that no proof of God’s power will deflect them from the promotion of idolatry, they must be destroyed—first by a foreign enemy, then by an Israelite who will depose Ahab, and in the last instance by Elisha, who will follow Elijah’s prophetic precedent in slaughtering Baal worshippers.
19. twelve yokes of oxen. This would make him a rather prosperous farmer, even though the number twelve is obviously symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel.
flung his mantle upon him. This act, which would produce an English idiom, is a clear indication that Elijah is passing on the authority of the prophet’s role to Elisha. In the Samuel story, the prophet’s vocation is similarly associated with a distinctive garment.
20. Let me, pray, kiss my father and my mother. This gesture of filial affection is a contrast to the idolatrous kissing of Baal icons mentioned in verse 18.
Go, return, for what have I done to you? It seems more plausible not to construe these words as a rebuke for hesitancy on the part of Elisha but as an assent: Why shouldn’t you go back to take fond leave of your parents? I have made no unreasonable demands of you.
21. the gear of the oxen. That is, the plow. Elisha’s turning the wooden plow into firewood is a sign that he is definitively putting behind him his life as a farmer to assume the role of prophet.
he cooked the meat and gave it to the people. The slaughtering of the two oxen, then, is not a sacrificial act, or at any rate not primarily a sacrificial act, but rather Elisha’s means of providing a kind of farewell feast for his parents and kinsmen.