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I Kings 19:1-18
Elijah Flees to Horeb
1Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2 So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.”
3 Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4 while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” 5 Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.
All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” 6 He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.
7 The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” 8 So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. 9 There he went into a cave and spent the night.
The Lord Appears to Elijah
And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
10He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
11The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
14He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
15The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. 16Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. 17Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu. 18Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.”
This is one of my favorite stories from the Old Testament. It’s a story that seems incredibly ancient to our modern sensibility, but if you scratch the surface a bit, it’s a story that’s surprisingly relevant to the life of faith, even in our digital age almost 3,000 years later.
Elijah was the leading prophet of the God of Israel at a time when the king of the country was an evil man named Ahab and his wife was a foreign woman named Jezebel. It seems to me that even if you didn’t know anything about the First Book of Kings, the fact that the crazed whaling captain in Moby Dick was named after the king and the queen’s name has come to mean a scary and evil woman should probably tell you that this couple was bad news.
Jezebel was a worshiper of the Canaanite god Baal. And as often happened when kings married foreign women, Ahab had allowed her to spread Baal worship by building a bunch of shrines and importing hundreds of Baal priests. This led to a bitter confrontation between the royal couple and Elijah, including one occasion on which Elijah led the people in killing hundreds of the Baal priests. So Jezebel had sworn vengeance on Elijah, leading the prophet to flee into the desert and announce to God that he just wanted to die.
God let Elijah vent his frustrations, and then sent an angel to encourage the prophet and refresh him with a kind of artisanal bread and pure water. Then God allows Elijah to witness a series of spectacular events. A mighty wind arose – so powerful it could tear apart mountains and crush rocks. Fire fell from the sky. Then there was a mighty earthquake. The kind of events that would be portrayed as signs of God’s anger in old movies about the Old Testament. And the kind of events that our culture has customarily called “acts of God.”
But then, after all these overwhelming events, God allows Elijah to hear the divine voice. Our NIV text says it was “a gentle whisper.” The older versions of the Bible called it “a still, small voice.” But the Hebrew text doesn’t really mean either of those things. The literal translation is “a sheer, fine silence.” And Elijah seems to understand that he is encountering the presence of God – that he is hearing the voice of God in silence.
At the end of the story, God sends Elijah back to work — to the work of a prophet among God’s people. God sends Elijah to his tasks of anointing leaders struggling to purify the land of the worship of false gods. And God sends Elijah with a promise: that even though the forces of evil may seem to be overcoming those who are faithful to the true God, God would still preserve a remnant of his faithful people to carry on his project of bringing his kingdom to fulfillment.
So why do I say this story is relevant to our lives of faith today?
It’s common to hear people who call themselves Christians interpret every natural disaster as a sign that God is angry. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, some Christian leaders announced publicly that it was because the people of New Orleans tolerated sinful behavior, and accepted gay people among them. When a great tsunami struck the coast of South Asia a few years ago, some Christian leaders said God was punishing the people who lived there for being Muslims or Hindus.
But this story seems to say that it’s not in the great storms and calamities that God’s voice is heard. It’s in the silence that comes after these cataclysmic events that the voice of God can really be heard. God speaks a message of comfort and hope through his true followers, and uses them to bring help and encouragement.
I think you could make the case that most of the time, when God speaks, it’s a voice heard in silence. And if that’s true, then one of the most important disciplines of the faith is sitting with God in silence – not just telling God what we want him to do for us, but rather listening for God’s voice in silence, so we can hear what he’s calling us to do in service to him.
Let’s pray. Lord, help us to foster the practice of quiet prayer in our lives, so that we can hear your voice in sheer fine silence, instead of just our own prattling of requests and desires. And empower us to do the work of your kingdom, so that we become living expressions of your voice in the lives of others. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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