Elijah vindicated

Preface

The author, believing that the contest waged on Carmel in the days of Elijah the Tishbite between the Baalim and the Personal God of Israel is still going on, sends forth the present work with the prayer that the God who answers by fire will attend it in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, and use it to promote the glory of his name, and extend the triumphs of his Son. No one, we are persuaded, will blame the largeness of the prayer who knows that "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise," and " the weak things of the world' to confound the things which are mighty;" and that it is not by might, nor by power, but by his Spirit.

This book is written not to magnify Elijah, but Him who is the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his being, essence, or essential nature. Persuaded that he, who by fire answered his prophet on Carmel and by the baptism of the Spirit his apostles on Pentecost, is the only-begotten and well-beloved Son — proclaimed to be such at his baptism in Jordan and at his transfiguration on the mount — to him, and to the Church purchased with his own most precious blood, the author consecrates this his labor of love, with the prayer that he may soon confound and triumph over all the forms of Baalism, and be crowned, by all on earth and all in heaven. King of kings and Lord of lords.

Introduction

Among the most valuable, because the most durable, products of modern research and investigation are those rapidly accumulating works which tend to explain and illustrate the historical parts of the Bible. The effort to recover all the geographical data concerning the Holy Land has been crowned with great success. Unexpected confirmations of Biblical statements have added invaluable material for the use of the defenders of inspiration, and painstaking laborers are constantly increasing the obligations we owe to public spirit and to private enterprise.

Availing himself of the latest information concerning the Palestine of the theocratic and royal periods, the author of this volume has produced a book which unites all the interest of a thrilling narrative with the moral and spiritual instruction usually found in a purely didactic work. He endeavors to give a picture of the times, the men, and the customs which will always be essential to the thorough appreciation of Biblical characters. With scholarly precision and exactness he combines a refined and poetical taste, which seizes upon the beautiful, the picturesque, and the impressive, and reads a lesson of value from every incident in the life of the noble Prophet of Carmel.

Dr. Clark joins issue with those who have underestimated, if they have not misrepresented, the bold, unfaltering, and consistent character of the prophet. He defends him with skill and, the reader will acknowledge, with success against the charge of unmanly weakness which has

6 INTRODUCTION.

been made against Elijah. In this book the prophet appears not as a reed, to be bent and overcome by the pressure of untoward circumstances, but as a sturdy oak, whose roots are centered in a foundation not to be removed, and which in the face of every storm abides undisturbed and immovable.

It is with no ordinary pleasure that we commend to the reading public a volume that will at once instruct the mind and improve the heart.

Nashville, November, 1886.

Contents

CuAPTEK. Page.

I. The Tishbite 9-15

II. Baal and Ashtoreth 16-21

Chapter I. The Tishbite. •

ELIJAH came upon the world like an apparition; he went out of it in grandeur like a god. Among the greatest of the human race, whom God raised up to accomplish his designs, there has not been a greater than Elijah the Tishbite. Our blessed Lord, speaking of John the Baptist, tells us that among those born of woman there had not arisen a greater than the son of Zacharias. If our Lord had not affirmed this of his forerunner, we would have been prepared to infer it, and to believe it, from what the angel said to his aged father, when, standing on the right side of the altar of incense, Gabriel announced to Zacharias that John should go before the Lord God of Israel "in the spirit and power of Elias." But, however this may be, Elijah was unquestionably the greatest of the Old Testament prophets ; and he was the most unique of all, either under the old or the new dispensation, who, by inspiration of God, left the deepest trace upon his Church. He was the most unique of all in person, in his habits of life, in character, in the grandeur of his miracles and manner of their performance, and in his entrance upon his work and departure from it.

The first notice we have that such a man was in existence is thus told: "And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of

Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not he dew nor rain these years, hut according to my word.'' He is Elijah the Tishhite! What does this designation mean? Is it a patronymic? and was there any other who was so called? Was it an appellation of Elijah alone? Was he so named because of its appropriateness to his work? to something that he had done, or to something in his character or habits? If there was no country, or city, or village from which the designation was received, w^as it taken from some unknown and isolated spot where Elijah was born? was it the name of his own home? of his own dwelling, or of some secret cave in Gilead, where he led a lonely and recluse life? No one can answer. All is conjecture. We know some suppose it was the same as the place in Naphtali, mentioned in the apocryphal book of Tobit, and called Thishe in the Septuagint. But the book of Tobit was not written until about two hundred years after Elijah's time. There is no evidence, therefore, that in Elijah's day there was in existence such a place as the place of Naphtali; for the town in Naphtali — mentioned only in Tobit, and that but once — may have derived its name from the prophet, and not the prophet his designation from it. The Septuagint translators, in 1 Kings xvii. 1, thus introduce Elijah : "Kai e:-£v ^HXtoh 6 7zpoc>rJTrjq Oeafi^LT-qq 6 ix 0t<T(id)v rT^q raXaad—'ihQ Thesbite, who is of Thesbe of Gilead.' " If this Thesbe was in Gilead, it was not the same as Thishe in Naphtali, for the names are spelled differently by the eanie translators, and the tribe of Naphtali had no inheritance in Gilead. Gilead was on the east of the Jordan; the possessions of Naphtali were on the west, extending south to north from the Lake Chinnereth to the spurs of Lebanon, and east to west from the Jordan to the borders of Asher.

Neither can we see any appropriateness in the meaninsfs — that " makes captives," that " turns back," that " recalls," or

THE TISHBITE. 11 that "dwells" — which have been assigned to the prophet's appellation. Nor do we know that it means " the reformer," as some have supposed. Elijah was indeed a reformer ; and this fact, we suspect, was father to the thought that gave such interpretation to the prophet's designation. Whatever its meaning, it is as unknown to us as are the names of Elijah's father and mother. Where all is conjecture, we will not venture an opinion. The very designation of the prophet is a part of the impenetrable mystery in which all his life, before his appearing to Ahab, is designedly shrouded.

But he was "of the inhabitants of Gilead" — thus says King James's Version. Where Gilead was we know. It was east of the Jordan, and it was the possession of Keuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. And w^e know something of the nature of the country, and something of the character of the inhabitants. It was a mountainous country, "a hard, rocky region," as the name implies; and its inhabitants were as hard and rugged as the rocks of its mountains. But the saying, He was "of the inhabitants of Gilead," does not necessarily inform us that Gilead was his birthplace, or that he was descended from one of the tribes to which Gilead w'as assigned. He may have been born elsewhere — in Thisbe of Naphtali, it may be — and afterward made Gilead his dwelling-place ; or, if born in Gilead, he may have been born of parents who belonged to some other tribe whose inheritance was on the west of the Jordan. The Revised Version translates, "who was of the sojourners of Gilead." If this be the true rendering, it may mean that the prophet was not a permanent inhabitant, but a temporary resident; and how long detained in that "obscure sojourn," no one is able to tell. But wherever born, though no mention is made of his parents or tribe, the prophet, doubtless, was a lineal descendant of Abraham^ and " a Hebrew of the Hebrews." What, then, in the absence of positive knowledge, is the inference from the saying, He was " of the inhabitants of Gilead ? " While it may be true the prophet w^as born in Gilead, or, having been born elsewhere, had taken up his abode there, and so had become one ot its inhabitants, it is certain he was of " the inhabitants of Gilead" in the sense that his character and habits of life possessed certain characteristics of the Gileadites — that he was as hard and rugged as they, as flinty and enduring as their rocks.

It has been said that an inhabitant of Gilead, in the days of Elijah, was to an inhabitant of Judea, or Samaria, as a Highlander in Scotland to a Lowlander in the days of the Great Marquis Montrose. Elijah was indeed the most weird-like, the most romantic of all the characters of the sacred Scriptures. As weird-like as Meg Merrilies in " Guy Mannering," or as Noma of the Fitful Head in " The Pirate," was Elijah among inspired men in the Book of God. And yet, unique as he was, there were at least two characters in the sacred narrative who bore some resemblance to the Tishbite. The Baptist, whose raiment of camel's hair was girded by a leathern girdle about his loins, on whose head no razor was ever used, and whose meat was locusts and wild honey, bore a striking likeness to the Tishbite, with his coarse sheop-skin mantle, and leathern girdle, and shaggy hair. The Tishbite, like the Baptist after him, was secluded in his habits, simple in his tastes, austere in his life, and mingled not in the haunts of men. Except the time spent under the humble roof of the widow woman of Zarephath, Elijah's abode, so far as we know, was ever some mountain-cave, or some rocky dell by pebbled brook or shaded spring. And there is another who bears some marked resemblance to the Tishbite. There are certain things about the prophet which at once suggest the name

THE TISHBITE. 13 of Melchisedec. Like that mysterious King of Salem, and priest of the Most High God, neither father nor mother, nor descent, nor beginning of days nor end of life, has been assigned to Elijah. There is no record of the prophet's parents. Whoever they were, they have no place in the genealogical tables of the Hebrews. And though, in all probability, not of the tribe of Levi — to which tribe alone belonged the priesthood — Elijah, like Melchisedec, and in that respect like Samuel also, was a priest, as well as a prophet of Jehovah. For what was the sacrifice on Carmel but a priestly sacrifice?

And what was Elijah's training for the work to which he was called? Elijah trained Elisha; but who trained Elijah? We know Abraham's father, and we know his history from his call out of Ur of Chaldees, till his sons, Isaac and Ishmael, buried him in the cave of Machpelah. The story of Moses's life is familiar to us from the cradle of bulrushes, laid in the flags by the river's brink, until the Lord " buried him in a valley in the land of Moab." We follow Samuel from the time Elkanah brought him to the house of the Lord in Shiloh till all Israel "buried him in his own house at Ramah." We know David from the sheep-fold to the sepulcher on Mount Zion. We know the story of the Baptist from the message of Gabriel to Zacharias till he was beheaded in prison by King Herod. And we know much, and may infer much more, of the life of St. Paul, from his childhood in Tarsus, on the banks of the Cydnus, till his martyrdom in Rome. And so too with many other illustrious worthies of the Old and New Testament Scriptures. But about Elijah, before his appearing to Ahab, we know absolutely nothing.

Again, Elijah was unique in his manner of announcing the commands or messages of Jehovah. Call to remembrance the announcement to Ahab : "As the Lord God of

Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.'' But according to my word ! The prophet is not repeating a message which he has received from God in the very words of God. He does not introduce the message with a ''Thus saith the Lord," and then give the very words of Jehovah. Elijah uses neither the oratio directa nor the oratio obliqua; neither the precise words of God directly nor their substance indirectly. He does not say, giving Jehovah's very words, " 'As Hive,' saith the Lord God of Israel, ' there shall be neither deiv nor rain these years, but according to my word' " Nor does he say, stating the words of God indirectly, "The Lord God of Israel swears that, as he liveth, there shall neither be dew nor rain these years, but according to his word." Elijah speaks to Ahab by neither of these methods. For the words which he speaks he speaks as if they were his own, and not Jehovah's. He speaks, doubtless, by Jehovah's authority, and by Jehovah's inspiration. But he swears by the Lord God of Israel that the words which he speaks as his own are true. He calls the self-existent and ever-living God, in whose presence he consciously stands, to witness to the truth of what he says to Ahab, invoking the wrath and curse of the Almighty upon his own head if he speak falsely and prove to be no true prophet. For all this is meant when one swears by Jehovah ; and it was thus Elijah swore. "As truly," he swears, " as the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, I, Elijah the Tishbite, call Jehovah to witness that, according to my word, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, and that, according to my word alone, shall they return to the earth." What daring impiety! what wicked presumption! if Elijah be no true prophet, and if he speak not by inspiration of God. But what exaltation of his prophet, if Jehovah made the dew and rain for years to depend upon his prophet's

THE TISHBITE. 15 word ! And what sublime and heroic faith has the prophet, to swear that, according to his word, the dew and rain should cease, and that not until he spoke the word should they return to the earth! For much easier was it, and much less of faith did it require, to deliver, directly or in- .directly, the very words of God, and to leave their fulfillment to some word which God himself must speak, and not to some word which the prophet must utter. Grand prophet of God! Grand, in that faith and courage were equal to the momentous test to which Israel's God subjected them.

Chapter II. Baal And Ashtoreth

ELIJAH appears at the most critical period in the history of the kingdom of Israel. Ahab, seventh king of Israel, had married Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, King of Tyre and Sidon, and priest of Baal. The six kings of Israel who went before him were very wicked and idolatrous kings- ^^But there was none like wito Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up." This Phenician princess, whose name is a synonym for all that is imperious^ cruel, and vindictive, was bent on introducing the idolatrous worship of her father into the kingdom of her husband. To accomplish her purpose, she scrupled not at the means. It seemed to her an easy task to mold the pliant king to her wishes. She succeeded so far as to prevail on her husband to make the gods of Phenicia gods of Israel, and the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth the supreme worship of himself, and of his court and people ; and to wink at, if he did not approve, her purpose to dethrone the Lord God of Israel, and exterminate his worship. Hence the prophets of Jehovah — except the one hundred whom the good Obadiah hid in a cave and secretly fed — were slain, and his altars thrown down. The priests of Baal and Ashtoreth became the established and pampered ministers of the religion of the State; everywhere incense was offered upon their altars ; suppliant knees bowed down before, and impious lips kissed, the images of these gods of Tyre and Sidon. It will thus be seen that the sin of Ahab went much farther than the sin of Jeroboam, and the sins of the five kings who 16

BAAL AND ASHTORETH. 17

succeeded the latter — Nadab, and Baasha, and Elah, and Ziniri, and Omri. When Jeroboam revolted against Rehoboam, the sou and successor of Solomon, and established the separate kingdom of Israel, fearing, if the ten tribes went up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, that their hearts would turn again to their former king, and that they would kill him and go over to the King of Judp.h, he made two calves of gold, and set up one in Bethel, and put the other in Dan, saying: ^'It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" By this act Jeroboam did no more than Aaron, who, while Moses delayed in the mount, made, out of the golden ear-rings of the wives and sons and daughters of the people, a molten calf, and, with his own hands, fashioned it with a gravingtool. The formula, or ritual, which Jeroboam used when he set up the calves in Bethel and Dan was the same which Aaron employed when he set up the molten image before Horeb. ^^ These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt," was Aaron's formula before the molten image at Horeb ; it was, as we have seen, Jeroboam's before the calves in Bethel and Dan.

Neither did Jeroboam, nor Aaron before him, intend, by the golden calves, to supplant the worship of Jehovah, or to set up any other god before the Lord God of Israel. The golden calves both Jeroboam and Aaron meant to be but representative figures of Jehovah, and symbolic images of his person and divinity. In Jeroboam's case, the golden images had also a special political significance. Well knowing with what religious veneration and pride every pious Hebrew regarded the magnificent temple of Jehovah on Mount Zion, and how their imaginations were impressed and inflamed by the splendid ritual observed in its worship, the King of Israel was afraid these things would lead 2 his people to make frequent pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and draw their hearts back again to its king. To prevent this, and to destroy the spiritual as he had destroyed the political unity of the kingdom of David and Solomon, one of the calves Jeroboam set up in Dan, tne extreme northern limit of the new kingdom of Israel, and the other in Betliel, on its extreme southern boundary, twelve miles from Jerusalem. These seats of religious worship it was his purpose to make national, and so to build them up ^nd adorn them that they might rival, if not surpass, the splendid temple which David planned and Solornqn built. It was on Bethel Jeroboam seems most to have relied to effect his object; for it was a place most venerable by its antiquity, and by its sacred and historic associations. It had, of old, been venerated as the house of God, and the gate of heaven. It was there, in a dream by night, Jacob had his vision of God while on his way to seek his Avife in Haran; and it was there he set up the stone on which he had slept, and on which he poured the oil, consecrating it to the worship of the God of his fathers; it was there, on his return from Padan-aram, he received the special blessing of Jehovah, and had his name changed to Israel. It was there, before there was a king in Israel, the people went up to seek counsel of God ; it was there the ark of the covenant of God was deposited in the days of Phineas ; and it was there Samuel held one of his itinerant courts in his annual circuit, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

It was by such means Jeroboam aimed to build up the new and rival kingdom of Israel, and establish himself firmly on its throne. In all this his purpose was not to dethrone Jehovah, or to supplant his worship by another. He intended Dan and Bethel to be seats of Jehovah s worship, just as Shiloh had been the seat of his tabernacle, and as Jerusalem was then the seat of his temple. But as the

BAAL AND ASHTORETH. 19

molten calf, which Aaron set up before Horeb, became an object of idolatrous worship, so likewise the golden calves which Jeroboam placed in Dan and Bethel received divine honors. And as God was angry with the people because they worshiped Aaron's molten calf, and offered burnt-oflerings upon its altar, so too was his wrath kindled against those who worshiped and offered sacrifices to Jeroboam's golden images. And he was wroth with both, because both had broken the second commandment of the Lord their God, which says: '^Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy Of)d am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and shelving mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments"

But while this was so, and the sin of Jeroboam, and the sin of Aaron, was very great, yet neither, we repeat, purposed to proclaim another God and introduce his worship. This is what Ahab did. That daring and impious king not only violated the second, but presumptuously broke the first commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me.'' By the superior worship paid to Baal and Ashtoreth ; by the higher honors given to the priests of these false Phenician gods ; by the persecution and slaughter of the prophets of Jehovah, and the overthrow of his altars, Ahab not only put Baal and Ashtoreth on an equality with the God of Israel, but exalted them above him. His object was not to refuse divinity to Jehovah, but to deny his supreme godhead as the only living and true God of the universe, besides whom there is none other. He was willing to assign him a place in the Pantheon of gods, but would not rO ELIJAH VIKDICATED.

allow he was the only Supreme Being, to whom alone worship must be paid. He might be as Bel in Assyria, or Osiris in Egypt, or Jove in Greece, the supreme tutelary divinity of the rival kingdom of Judah, or of any other that might elect him to be the supreme object of divine worship. But he was resolved, whatever Jehovah's rank in other kingdoms, he should not have the supreme but a subordinate place in the kingdom of Israel Who should be supreme God in Samaria, Ahab claimed it was his sole prerogative to determine. And as he preferred the gods of Phenicia, he proclaimed the gods of his queen to be the supreme divinities of Israel, and that in his realm Baal and Ashtoreth should divide the sovereignty between them. Baal, and his priests, he took under his own immediate care ; Ashtoreth, and her priests, he left to the care of Jezebel; both Baal and Ashtoreth, their priests and their worship, he kept under his kingly protection. How far Jezebel approved a plan which permitted divine worship, though subordinate to the worship of her country's gods, to be paid to the God of the people of her husband and king, we have no means of knowing. A part of this arrangement, no doubt, met her heartiest approval — the exaltation of Baal and Ashtoreth above the God of the Hebrews. But to that part of the comprehension which allowed divinity to the God of Abraham she yielded, if she yielded at all, a reluctant consent; for it was, without dispute, her desire to grant him no share whatever in divine worship. It was rather the design of this restless, ambitious, and idolatrous woman to dethrone Jehovah in Samaria altogether, to destroy his worshipers, and to utterly root out .his service. But in this extreme view, she could neither carry with her the Hebrew subjects of the king, her husband, nor the king himself Wicked as Ahab was, idolatrous as he was, and as much as his pliant mind was under the sway of his

BAAL AND ASHTORETH. 21

haughty, strong-minde-d, and unscrupulous wife, he still retained, as governor of his house, the good Obadiah, who refused to worship Baal. Nor could Ahab so far forget the past history of his race, and the wonderful and miraculous })rovidences of the Lord God of hosts in their behalf, as to deny all divinity to him who, with his strong right-arm, had brought his fathers out of their house of bondage in Goshen. And as to the people whom he ruled, it was impossible for them to blot out of their memories all recollection of the wonders which the Lord God of their fathers had wrought, of old, in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness of Sinai. All that Ahab, therefore, could hope to do was to bring them to acknowledge that there were other gods besides Jehovah, and that Baal and Ashtoreth, gods of the Zidonians, were gods as well as he. But to which — whether to Baal and Ashtoreth, or to Jehovah — the supreme divine sovereignty was due, the great mass of Ahab's Hebrew subjects were at a loss to decide. They Avere willing to pay divine honors to Baal and Ashtoreth, but not to them exclusively. Indeed, they halted between two opinions; they hesitated to determine which was supreme. Admitting both Baal and Jehovah to be gods, they worshiped both, and sought to unite their worship. It seems they went farther, and aimed at a union of personality between them, and worshiped both in one, under the name of Jehovah-Baal. We shall see this thought more clearly developed when we come to the question which Elijah put to assembled Israel on Mount Carmel : ''How long halt ye hefiveen two opinions f if the Lord he Ood, follow him; hut if Baal, then follow him.^'

Chapter III. The Baalim

BUT we must not suppose the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth was a new and unheard-of thing in Israel uiltil introduced by Ahab and Jezebel. Even in Moses's daymany of the children of Israel, beguiled by the Moabites and Midianites, joined themselves unto their god Baal-peor, attended on his sacrifices, and bowed down before his image. Against these Hebrew idolaters the anger of the Lord God was kindled ; four and twenty thousand of them perished by a plague. But, notwithstanding this signal display of divine wrath against their idolatry, the next generation returned to the worship of the tutelary god of Moab and Midian. In the days of the Judges " the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines^ And this idolatry continued more or less prevalent in Israel — except during the judgeship of Gideon — till Samuel, having prevailed on the people to return to the God of their fathers, banished it from the land.

From this it will be seen the worship of Baal and Ashto reth was observed in Israel long before the times of Elijah. The religion of these gods was an old religion. It was at least contemporary with the law given to Moses on Sinai; it doubtless existed years before his day, though not always called by the same name, nor always presenting the same modifications. Indeed, in different countries, and in (22)