Showdown

The drought grew more intolerable by the day. Streams ran dry; crops failed. The king was frantic for grazing land for his herds while peasants ached with hunger. Disaster stalked the land. Something had to break.

In the third year of the drought, 1 Kings 18, Elijah went to confront King Ahab. When they met, Ahab cursed Elijah - 'you trouble-maker' he sneered. ‘On the contrary’, Elijah countered, "you and your family are Israel's trouble-makers by abandoning the Lord's commands and following the Baals" (I Kings 18:17-18). Elijah called for a spiritual show-down on Mount Carmel, a sort of religious duel between Yahweh and Baal.

With a large crowd assembled from all over Israel, Elijah courageously faced down four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. He challenged the people, "how long will you waver between two opinions? He challenged them. ‘If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him."

Each side prepared bulls for sacrifice and competed to see which god could send lightening to ignite the sacrifice. All afternoon Elijah taunted the priests for Baal’s failure to perform.

Finally, just to raise the bar impossibly high, Elijah had the Yahweh sacrifice drenched in water. Since the drought had been severe, this water was probably brought up from the sea. Then Elijah prayed. “O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again" v.37.

Then, as the Bible tells it, “the fire of the LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, "The LORD--he is God! The LORD--he is God!" (1 Kings 18:38-9)

It was especially ironic that Baal proved powerless, since he was regarded as the storm god. A storm god who can’t produce lightning on demand has a credibility problem. Elijah had the fraudulent priests rounded up and put to the sword.  The influence of their vile practices was arrested for the moment and the nation had caught a glimpse of both Yahweh's power and Baal's impotence.

Sadly, later kings came back to Baal worship like an addiction, but for the moment, Yahweh was able to cut short the suffering of the drought.

The mercy that follows will be the subject of our next post.  Have a good week-end.