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Episode: Elijah’s Contrasting Mountain Tests

Author: BibleProject Podcast
Duration: 00:55:03

Episode Shownotes

The Mountain E8 — On two different mountains, we witness mountain tests with two very different Elijahs. On Mount Carmel, he partners with God in challenging the false prophets of Baal, leading to the people’s repentance and renewal of trust in God. But then only a chapter later, Elijah is

on Mount Sinai accusing the people and loathing his prophetic calling. Why the sudden shift? In this episode, Jon and Tim discuss the contrasting mountain test stories of 1 Kings 18-19, reflecting on the human tendency toward fear, condemnation, and false narratives—even after great success.View more resources on our website →Timestamps Chapter 1: Recap of the Series So Far (0:00-9:53)Chapter 2: Elijah Tests the People on Mount Carmel (9:53-32:36)Chapter 3: Elijah Fails the Test on Mount Sinai (32:36-53:06)Official Episode TranscriptView this episode’s official transcript.Referenced ResourcesCheck out Tim’s library here.You can experience our entire library of resources in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music“Surrender (Instrumental)” by Beautiful Eulogy“Movement” (artist unknown)BibleProject theme song by TENTSShow CreditsProduction of today's episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey is our supervising engineer. Frank Garza and Aaron Olsen edited today’s episode, and Aaron Olsen also provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty does our show notes, and Hannah Woo provides the annotations for our app. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Full Transcript

00:00:04 Speaker_04
Welcome to Bible Project Podcast. We're continuing to trace the theme of the mountain through the story of the Bible. We've seen that mountains are an overlapping space of heaven and earth, where humans are asked to ascend.

00:00:18 Speaker_04
And when they do, they face a crisis. Will they surrender everything and trust in God's wisdom in order to gain what is truly life? Or will they cling to their own wisdom? In today's episode, we talk about the story of Elijah.

00:00:31 Speaker_04
He's a prophet during the time of King Ahaz, whose wife is Jezebel. During Elijah's time, Israel has turned their allegiance to the god Baal.

00:00:42 Speaker_04
And so Elijah calls a drought on the land, and then he takes the people of Israel up on Mount Carmel to force them into a decision. Who will they trust? The true God of all creation or this domesticated God of their own making?

00:00:55 Speaker_03
Elijah approached the people and he said, how long will you go limping after two opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow him. If Baal is God, go after him.

00:01:07 Speaker_04
It's a showdown, Yahweh versus Baal. Elijah calls on God and fire from heaven consumes the altar. The people repent and they renew their commitment to Yahweh. Rain falls. The king of Ahab throws a feast. It's a high note for Elijah's ministry.

00:01:24 Speaker_03
When the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, Yahweh, he is God. This is a little Eden picture. of God meeting his people with the gift of presence and rain and life on the mountain.

00:01:37 Speaker_03
And so it seems like things are going to go great from here. Except they don't.

00:01:42 Speaker_04
Queen Jezebel threatens to kill Elijah and instead of Elijah remaining bold, he flees into the wilderness and tells God he wants to die. He goes to Mount Sinai and he complains to God.

00:01:56 Speaker_03
He does the opposite of what Moses did in this very spot. He asked God to take his life, but not for the people, but for himself. He's accusing the people who just turned back to Yahweh.

00:02:07 Speaker_03
It's a portrait of how the same person can become that mediating mountaintop. hero to reunite heaven and earth. Yet that same person is capable within just a few choices of becoming completely unable to hear from God on the mountain.

00:02:25 Speaker_04
Today on the podcast, we'll talk about Elijah's two very different cosmic mountain experiences. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey, Tim. Hey, John. Good morning.

00:02:39 Speaker_03
Yeah. Good morning. Hi. We're talking about the mountain. That's what we're doing. Cosmic mountains, in fact. It's these places. that are an in-between space. Their land, so it's where we go as humans.

00:02:54 Speaker_03
Humans belong on the land, but it's a part of the land that's elevated so high up towards the skies that the highest places of those peaks that we call mountains, they are described in the Bible as an in-between kind of space, often spaces where people encounter heaven on earth.

00:03:12 Speaker_03
The main mountain at the center of the show, there's two in the Hebrew Bible, Mount Sinai, down in the deserts, and then Mount Zion, like the hill of Jerusalem. So these are places where heaven meets earth.

00:03:25 Speaker_03
So that's kind of the basic premise of mountains in the Bible, and the biblical authors take that for granted. What the biblical authors do is they place key pivotal moments of the larger biblical story consistently take place on mountains.

00:03:41 Speaker_03
And this is kind of the unique biblical take on the cosmic mountain motif, is that it's a place where humanity comes to terms with the presence of God in the ultimate reality of human nature and purpose and existence.

00:03:57 Speaker_03
It's on the garden mountain where humans are commissioned to rule as God's image and to spread God's order and generosity and goodness out into the land as God's partners.

00:04:10 Speaker_03
But humans, you know, really don't trust God and act in really terrible ways as a result towards each other. But God wants to get people back up the mountain. And so isn't it interesting in the stories of Abraham? a key covenant partner of God's.

00:04:26 Speaker_03
His whole journey of trusting God, failing, and having to reckon with it all takes place on a journey between two mountains.

00:04:33 Speaker_03
The mountains connected to the tree of Moriah in Genesis 12 and then the mountains of Moriah that also has a tree on it in Genesis 22.

00:04:42 Speaker_03
In the story of Mount Sinai, Israel is going to face a test of whether they'll trust God as God's covenant partners.

00:04:48 Speaker_03
They blow that opportunity and because of what happens with the golden calf, Moses ascends the mountain and puts himself in the vulnerable place before God. He even surrenders his life and identifies with these covenant violators of Israel down below.

00:05:05 Speaker_03
We looked at the story of David. and of how David brought the ark of God's mountain presence up to Jerusalem and he blows it himself with Bathsheba and then all the cascades out of that.

00:05:20 Speaker_03
And then the story of the Samuel scroll ends with David facing a test on that same mountain that is also called the mountain of Moriah where Abraham had his test.

00:05:32 Speaker_03
where he both blows it through a terrible choice that affects the people but then in the last moment he inserts himself and like Moses surrenders his life for his own sins on the mountain.

00:05:44 Speaker_03
That's the place where the temple gets built and that's the place where David's son is going to face his test. And at first he responds well, he asks God to give him wisdom, but then he uses that wisdom to produce too much toe.

00:05:57 Speaker_03
And it corrupts, distorts his sense of right and wrong. So I'm interested in what the biblical authors want to highlight, is that mountains are this place

00:06:05 Speaker_03
where the crisis, being on the mountain forces you into a crisis of reckoning with who you are, what you define as good, what you think is life.

00:06:16 Speaker_03
And mountains are typically places where God forces people to surrender what they think is life and the life they've created by their own wisdom and to surrender it only to discover that God wants to give them an even deeper, richer life and vocation.

00:06:33 Speaker_03
But it requires a kind of death, a death on the passageway up the mountain. And I think that's the motif that so fascinates me. And it's the motif that the biblical authors keep putting in front of us when it comes to these mountains.

00:06:46 Speaker_04
So as we look at these stories of people journeying up the mountain or having tests on the mountain, or next is a story about Elijah and his throw down on the mountain. We're learning about what does it mean?

00:06:58 Speaker_04
What does it take to be people who exist on the cosmic mountain? And when we look at David and Solomon, we're seeing tales of the crisis played out for us to get wisdom. We are,

00:07:12 Speaker_04
mortal dirt creatures who have this impulse to be protective, to not trust, to not be generous. But we've been invited and placed in an environment, in an atmosphere, where that's just not going to work.

00:07:30 Speaker_04
And the way to exist in this atmosphere is trust and generosity and abundance. And we've got to learn how to exist in that atmosphere. And it feels like a death.

00:07:44 Speaker_04
It feels like to learn to live in that atmosphere is to lose so many parts of ourselves that feel vital. But once you've done that, if you can do that, if you can pass through, then you actually are finding

00:07:59 Speaker_04
an existence that is more life than you could have imagined, that actually the atmosphere of the cosmic mountain is a wonderful place to exist. If you could learn to breathe its oxygen, essentially. Yeah, that's right.

00:08:11 Speaker_04
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. And that's the idea of heaven and earth uniting in your life, in your communities, anywhere. Yep, that's right.

00:08:19 Speaker_03
Yeah. And so that process of giving up something that I thought was life, but actually might prevent me from really experiencing the abundant life of God's gift on the mountain. It feels like a death to give that thing up.

00:08:35 Speaker_03
Even if I get it back again, I don't know that I'm going to get it back again. What I know is that I need to give it up. And that's what's happening with Isaac. That's what's happening with David. And that's what's happening with Solomon, too.

00:08:50 Speaker_03
I don't know how to lead these people, Solomon says. So he puts himself in a vulnerable place before God to say, I don't know what to do. And then that release of control, he finds, at least for a time. When he trusts God, he gets

00:09:05 Speaker_03
an abundant version of life that he had never even imagined. That's a major theme of these mountain stories is somebody giving up or not giving up the thing that is most precious to them.

00:09:16 Speaker_03
What's interesting about the story of Elijah is that two stories with opposite lessons are placed right next to each other. A success story and then a major fail story. So to the Elijah story we go.

00:09:53 Speaker_03
So we ended our last conversation with Solomon and about how he ended up forfeiting his role as the wise son of David King. He married hundreds and hundreds of women who drew his heart away and Israel's heart to follow other gods.

00:10:10 Speaker_03
The kingdom splits in the next generation. A bunch of the tribes in the north secede and that kingdom is typically called Israel and then Judah with its capital in Jerusalem remains in the south.

00:10:23 Speaker_03
The author of Kings starts alternating back and forth between North and South Kings as the generations go by. And seven generations after the split, the seventh king is a guy named Ach-Av, otherwise known as Ahab. But Ach-Av. Ach means brother.

00:10:43 Speaker_03
Av means father. Brother-father. His name means brother-father, which is pretty rad. And the seventh king is climactically the worst, worst of the bunch. And he's in the north? He's in the north, yep. His story begins in 1 Kings chapter 16, verse 29.

00:11:02 Speaker_03
And the important thing for the summary is that he's introduced as, well, Ahab, the son of Omri, did rah, bad, in the eyes of Yahweh more than all who came before him. Okay, this is a new low.

00:11:18 Speaker_03
If it wasn't enough that he imitated the sins of Jeroboam, that was the king that broke off way back after Solomon. So now that was the seventh kingdom. And what he did was build two alternate temples and put golden calves in them.

00:11:35 Speaker_03
That's what's being referred to. So not only did he continue like the worship of the golden calves in those temples, he also took as his wife, Ezetl. the daughter of Etbaal, the king of Sidon. He went and he served Baal, or Baal, and bowed down to him.

00:11:55 Speaker_03
So he marries the princess of Sidon, which is a kingdom connected with Phoenicia, right up north, whose patron deity is Baal, the god of thunder and storm god. Yeah. And the fertility god.

00:12:12 Speaker_03
Whose mountain is... His mountain is either, depends I think for Sidonians, it would have been Yabal-Akra, the cosmic mountain way up in the north. And in the library of literature, it comes from this culture called the Ugaritic library.

00:12:27 Speaker_03
Baal is one of the names of their chief deities and there's all these stories about him slaying the dragon and defeating the waters and ascending the mountain to build a temple and a castle up there and reigning forever and providing food for everybody and rain from the mountain.

00:12:46 Speaker_03
So he's the rain provider.

00:12:47 Speaker_04
And this is a big deal because for God's people, the Israelites, it's like the main thing is don't worship other gods.

00:12:56 Speaker_03
Yeah, no other God liberated you from slavery in Egypt. Just Yahweh alone. So don't give your allegiance to other gods. It won't lead to life. It's the first commandment. You shall have no other gods before me. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. That's right. Okay.

00:13:13 Speaker_03
And so what's interesting is because Baal is associated with rain in particular, what happens next is clearly a jab. at the religious culture and thought of Baalism.

00:13:29 Speaker_03
And that story begins in 1 Kings 17 verse 1, which just begins with saying, there was a guy named Eliyah the Tishbite. Elijah. Elijah, yes. Eliyah means my God is Yah, short for Yahweh.

00:13:46 Speaker_03
And so Elijah said to Ahab, as Yahweh lives, the God of Israel before whom I stand, there will be no dew and no rain for years except by my word. I'm the rain God. Yahweh's the rain God and Elijah is his spokesman. Yep.

00:14:07 Speaker_03
So this whole story then of Elijah and Ahab and their tension takes place in the course of a drought. The whole thing's set in a drought. And that's a crisis for anybody who worships Baal. If there's no rain, then Baals must be ticked off at you.

00:14:24 Speaker_03
We're not in the right relationship with Baal if there's no rain. So, the drama is about how God provides food and water for his prophet in the midst of this drought. We don't have time to go through 1 Kings 17, though it's amazing.

00:14:38 Speaker_03
What I want to focus on is chapter 18. Chapter 18 begins, and many days later, the word of Yahweh came to Elijah in the third year. So, sequences of three are almost always associated with the test.

00:14:51 Speaker_03
There's going to be some test of someone's trust in the story. And God said, go present yourself to Ahab so that I can give rain on the face of the land.

00:15:01 Speaker_03
So Yahweh is showing his role as creator by withholding rain, and now he's showing his role as creator by giving rain. So Elijah went to present himself to Ahab, and the famine was very severe in Samaria, which became the capital city of the north.

00:15:21 Speaker_03
Ahab and Elijah meet. Ahab saw Elijah and said to him, is that you? You who have thrown Israel into confusion? This whole drought's your fault. Like, this is your fault. Elijah responds, no, no, no. I didn't throw Israel into confusion.

00:15:41 Speaker_03
You and the house of your father have by forsaking the commands of Yahweh and following after Baal. So send word. and assemble all of Israel to me on Mount Garden. Mount Carmel. It's called Mount Carmel.

00:15:59 Speaker_03
Carmel is a Hebrew word for a cultivated plot of land where you grow fruit trees and grapevines. So on Mount Garden. So in the third year, on Mount Garden, I want you to get 450 prophets of Baal.

00:16:18 Speaker_03
So get the equivalents of who I am for Yahweh, get 450 of them.

00:16:22 Speaker_04
Are these Israelites because Ahab's been worshiping Baal?

00:16:26 Speaker_03
Oh, that's a good question. You know, it doesn't say. So probably It's a whole mix. Some Sidonians came down. 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah, who was a female Canaanite fertility goddess.

00:16:44 Speaker_03
all those prophets who eat at the table of Jezebel." So Jezebel's the key sponsor for this new religious order in Israel. She's the connection to the Sidonians and the way they worship.

00:16:59 Speaker_03
So the whole introduction of Baal allegiance in Israel is connected to his marriage to her. But she's the real engine of it. So Ahab sent word among the Israelites and he assembled all the prophets to Mount Garden.

00:17:14 Speaker_03
Elijah approached the people and he said to all the people, so just imagine it's just as if all of Israel is now on Mount Garden, how long will you go limping after two opinions. That's a deep rabbit hole, we don't have time.

00:17:32 Speaker_03
But that word limping is really interesting. But it's the idea of you've got two paths in the road and you can't decide. You're trying to worship Baal and Yahweh. And you're like wavering between the two. And he says, if Yahweh is God, follow him.

00:17:47 Speaker_03
If Baal is God, go after him. You can't worship both. You're trying to do both. and it's the contradiction in terms. So, choose one. It's time to choose. Time to choose.

00:17:59 Speaker_03
Then Elijah said to the people, I alone am left as a prophet of Yahweh, but the prophets of Baal are 450. Now here's something that's really interesting. That's actually not true. Elijah is not the only prophet of Yahweh? He's not.

00:18:14 Speaker_03
This chapter began with Elijah going to Ahab's right-hand, like, courtier servant, a guy named Obadiah. And what we're told is that Obadiah feared Yahweh. So he's like, he's pro-Yahweh, working in the court of Ahab, who's pro-Yahweh and Baal.

00:18:35 Speaker_03
And when Jezebel was going around killing the prophets of Yahweh, you're like, oh my gosh, she's on like a assassination spree. Obadiah took a hundred Yahweh prophets and hid them by fifties in a cave. sustain them with food and water.

00:18:53 Speaker_03
So Elijah's the only one not hiding? So he's the only one not hiding. Now you could say, well it's just ignorance. He doesn't know those prophets exist because they're in hiding. Well, I'm Mt. Garden. I'm the only one here. I'm the only one here.

00:19:04 Speaker_03
There's 450 of you. The reason I'm bringing this up is because he's gonna take this kind of true insight and like, inflate it big time in the next chapter. So famously, what he says is, let's get two bowls and build two altars.

00:19:21 Speaker_03
You pray to Baal, but don't set it on fire. You pray to Baal, I'll pray to Yahweh, the God who answers with fire from heaven, a lightning bolt that sets the altar on fire, that's God. A pretty simple test. But notice the test is for the people.

00:19:39 Speaker_03
So the people are there, they are wavering between two opinions about who is the true God. And Elijah's gonna force this to a test. So really this is a drama about the people's wavering loyalty. Who do they think's God? That's the test.

00:19:56 Speaker_04
Well, okay, except that the people are gonna decide based off of which God shows up. So in a way, the test is also for God.

00:20:07 Speaker_03
Oh, I understand. Yes, that's right. Yeah. Which God is real? Which God is real. Let's test. Yeah. And then based on that, your loyalty should logically follow what happens as a result of this test. You're right. Actually, it's as much a test for Yahweh.

00:20:23 Speaker_03
as it is for the people.

00:20:24 Speaker_04
Do we have a hint here that Elijah, because it seems like testing Yahweh is not. Not cool? Yeah. It's not a typical kind of move.

00:20:34 Speaker_03
Yeah, well, he's presented as being so in with Yahweh that he's... Elijah is. Yep, that what he's putting forth is apparently God's down with this. Yeah, that's what it seems like. That's the assumption of the narrative. Right.

00:20:47 Speaker_03
And, well, as we'll see, that assumption gets itself kind of problematized as the story develops. But it seems like God's down for this because God responds. So he lets the prophets of Baal go first. Yeah. I'm going to summarize. They pray and cry out.

00:21:02 Speaker_03
They dance. They end up doing self-mutilation, which is apparently some kind of cultural practice. And multiple times, the narrator just says, there was no voice. There was no response. There was no answer to their prayers or to their cry.

00:21:18 Speaker_03
He jokes, perhaps Baal's on a journey. He's on a work trip. Maybe he's asleep and needs to wake up. Yeah, it gets sassy. But there was no voice, no response, no answer. Elijah said, everybody, all the people come near to me.

00:21:32 Speaker_03
Then he rebuilds a Yahweh altar right there on top of the mountain. He rebuilds it from 12 stones according to the number of the tribes of Jacob. Now that's interesting because the tribes are split right now.

00:21:46 Speaker_03
He has a vision of all Israel reunited on the mountain experiencing the presence of God. This is also what Moses did when the covenant with Yahweh was made on Mount Sinai. He built a 12 stone altar. So this big hyperlink. He's like a new Moses.

00:22:03 Speaker_03
Then he built the altar. Then he arranged the wood and had the bowl cut into pieces. And then he ups the ante. He says get four jars. Fill them with water, and this is during the famine, during the drought. This is the most precious thing.

00:22:18 Speaker_03
He's surrendering the water that is life. So get four jars. This isn't just showing off. No, he's making a point. He's surrendering what to them is the most precious thing they have at the moment. Pour it on the wood. Do it again. Do it a third time.

00:22:39 Speaker_03
So in the third year of the drought, three times, three times four, that is the four jugs. So 12 jugs of water poured in three times. So it's all the test imagery. And the test is for the 12 tribes of Israel. Anyway, it's a great number symbolism.

00:22:58 Speaker_03
And then he prays. He says, Yahweh, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that goes back to the ancestors, let it be known today that you are God and Israel. and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things by your word.

00:23:13 Speaker_03
Answer me, Yahweh, answer me, so this people will know that you, O Yahweh, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back again."

00:23:23 Speaker_03
Then the fire of Yahweh fell down, and it ate up the burnt offering, it ate up the wood, it ate up the stones, it ate up the dust, and it ate up the water that was in the trench. It licked it all up.

00:23:38 Speaker_03
When the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, Yahweh, He is God, Yahweh, He is God. That's a hot fire.

00:23:50 Speaker_04
I've been on a camping trip where we've made like a really hot fire and it'll just burn anything up. You think like aluminum doesn't burn? A hot enough fire and they'll burn. So it's like that kind of fire.

00:24:02 Speaker_03
Meaning be reduced to ash. Yeah.

00:24:05 Speaker_04
So basically, anything will get reduced to ash. But not the stones. Yeah, the stones.

00:24:10 Speaker_03
I've never seen the stones reduced to ash. I guess that would, from our vantage point, it would be like turning them back into molten material. Yeah, it's hot fire. It's super hot fire. So the people respond. Yahweh's God. Great job, Elijah.

00:24:27 Speaker_03
And great job, Yahweh. And great job, people. Like, it seems like it works. Interestingly, after this passing of the test and the people make the right choice, Elijah, he gets a little, something like a Cain impulse. He gets a violent impulse.

00:24:45 Speaker_03
And he says, seize all those prophets of Baal. Don't let any of them escape. They seized them. Elijah brought them down to like a stream and he slaughtered them all there.

00:24:56 Speaker_03
The word slaughter, shachat, it's usually used of animals, how you prepare an animal for sacrifice. So that's gnarly. He's pulling like what Phineas did. He was a priest from a priestly family in the wilderness. He speared

00:25:15 Speaker_03
an Israelite and a non-Israelite woman through, it seems like when they were having sex in a tent, because this guy, this Israelite had given his allegiance to another God by wanting to marry this woman. Is that in Judges? It's in the book of Numbers.

00:25:31 Speaker_03
That's the book of Numbers. Yeah. And he said to have zeal. Oh yeah. Zeal. Right, right, right. For Yahweh. And Elijah's following that same tradition here.

00:25:43 Speaker_04
Now, seems like you kind of have this undertone here of Elijah went rogue.

00:25:50 Speaker_03
Well, I don't want to go that far. I just want to notice, also at the Golden Calf, when Moses enacts the killing spree of the Levites to kill the idolaters at the Golden Calf,

00:26:03 Speaker_03
There the narrative is really ambiguous of whether that was God's idea, or Moses' idea, or Moses claiming that it's God's idea, but the narrator never explicitly said so.

00:26:16 Speaker_03
There's this motif within Israel's story about the use of violence to coerce Israel into following Yahweh. And it seems to not really work. And it's this interesting study of religious violence that keeps not working.

00:26:34 Speaker_03
That's a theme in the Hebrew Bible that I want to learn more about, but it's happening here.

00:26:40 Speaker_04
Yeah. Cause you could read this and easily just be like, Elijah's on team Yahweh, they're in cooperation this whole time and Yahweh shows up. And so when Elijah makes this move,

00:26:53 Speaker_04
Why would you not consider that Yahweh and Him are still tag teaming on this?

00:26:57 Speaker_03
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So my point is just that it's ambiguous. But what's interesting is it does set in motion.

00:27:05 Speaker_04
You have made it feel ambiguous, but I don't see it in the text where the ambiguity. The ambiguity is hyperlinking to all these other stories?

00:27:13 Speaker_03
The ambiguity would be through the hyperlinks. Yeah, when God's representatives employ violence to coerce religious devotion to Yahweh, it doesn't work. Like the outcome of it is almost always a backfiring.

00:27:28 Speaker_03
And so you have to stop and say, what's the purpose of that motif? That religious violence actually doesn't generate trust and faith among God's people. Yeah, so that's the little, that's the rabbit hole. The zeal rabbit hole.

00:27:42 Speaker_03
Yeah, the zeal rabbit hole. So what follows is Elijah goes, tells Ahab, so we're not told if Ahab made this confession of Yahweh as God.

00:27:53 Speaker_03
Ahab is an Israelite and we're told that all the people of Israel were up there and all the people saw and said Yahweh is God. So I think we're meant to see Ahab as Among. He chose a lane. Among those who choose the lane, yep.

00:28:10 Speaker_03
Elijah said to Ahab, hey, go up to the top of the mountain and eat and drink for I hear the sound, the noise of rain. So let's go have an Eden feast and celebrate God's blessing that's returning because God's people have acknowledged him as God.

00:28:27 Speaker_03
So Ahab went up and he had a big feast. And Elijah went to the very tippy top of garden, Carmel, and he kneeled down to the ground. He put his face between his knees. He is praying. He's in intercession mode.

00:28:44 Speaker_03
And he said to his servant, please go look towards the sea. Mount Carmel exists today. And there's a park on top of it. And you can go up and look at the sea. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, it's great. I had a picnic up there once. It's a great spot.

00:28:58 Speaker_03
Go look in the direction of the sea. He went up and looked. And the servant said, I don't see anything. And then Elijah said, go back. This happened seven times. So now this servant's faith, Elijah's faith is being tested, right?

00:29:15 Speaker_03
Because he's like, I said that there was gonna be rain, but there's not, where's the cloud? So the rain hasn't showed up yet. It's like everybody's getting tested in the story. Yahweh had to show up. The people had to show up and make a choice.

00:29:30 Speaker_03
And now Elijah's prediction of the rain is being tested. And it happened at the seventh time. The servant said, well, I see a small cloud. It's about the size of, well, a human hand coming up from the sea. That is a small cloud. It's a very small cloud.

00:29:49 Speaker_03
Elijah said, okay, go tell Ahab, harness your horses. Get ready. Rain's coming. You're going to be riding in the mud, buddy. So get on your chariot and beat the rain. Because in no time, the heavens grew dark with clouds and wind and there was rain.

00:30:07 Speaker_03
Ahab rode to Jezreel. but the hand of Yahweh was on Elijah. Where's the Israel? Where did he go there? It's down the hill. Let's see. I need a map to remember if it's due east or if it's a bit northeast. What's the significance of him going there?

00:30:22 Speaker_03
Oh, it was a, I was a major Israelite town in that time. Okay. Um, I would need to do a little more homework on that.

00:30:30 Speaker_03
So Ahab's riding, and then the hand of Yahweh is on Elijah, and he girded up his loins, that is, he tucked in his excess robe into his belt, and he ran in front of Ahab. Like, he beat Ahab. He's like, he's running with God's pleasure. Chariots of fire.

00:30:49 Speaker_03
Pun intended. That's how that scene ends. First test. You're like, great. Yeah. It's a great final scene. It is a great final scene. Like the blessing is provided when God's people surrender their allegiance to anyone else except the Creator.

00:31:07 Speaker_03
When Yahweh meets, sees that trust and, well, sorry, He didn't see their trust. God responded first. When His people weren't trusting Him. Oh, that's an interesting twist. God responded with generosity and that's what compels.

00:31:20 Speaker_03
Having the showdown was an act of generosity. Yeah, Yahweh responding with fire was an act of generosity to compel faith in his people.

00:31:32 Speaker_03
And then the trust of Yahweh's prophet is tested as he waits for the rain and he keeps praying, waiting for the rain seven times over. And so it seems like things are gonna go great from here. Except they don't.

00:31:48 Speaker_03
It seems like we just had a party on Mount Garden and a feast and God provided rain. Sweet. What could go wrong? And that's what the next story is about. But for a moment, let's just pause.

00:32:02 Speaker_03
This is a little Eden picture of God meeting his people with the gift of presence and rain and life on the mountain. It results in the Eden feast on Mount Garden. all that Elijah had done, and how he killed all those prophets with the sword.

00:32:46 Speaker_03
And remember, she sponsored all those prophets. So she just lost on her investment. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, may the gods do to me, and may they do even more, if at this time tomorrow I don't make your life like the one of them.

00:33:03 Speaker_03
I'm coming after you. Tomorrow, I'm gonna come kill you. Which, if you stop and think about it, That's kind of a funny thing to do if you really want to kill somebody. Sure. Yeah. Advanced notice. Yeah. Yeah. Like if she wanted to actually kill him.

00:33:18 Speaker_04
Yeah. It's kind of asking someone to a duel.

00:33:21 Speaker_03
Yeah. Totally. Or telling them like get out of Dodge, you know, which is what he does. Okay. So that's fascinating. Think of what just happened in the previous story. And then look at his response. He was filled with fear.

00:33:38 Speaker_03
So he got up and he ran for his life. He went so far, this is my commentary, he went down to Be'er Sheva, the Well of Seven.

00:33:50 Speaker_03
which is the southern, southern most town in the southern kingdom of Judah, right near the border with the wilderness down there. And he even left behind his servant there, and he went a day's journey into the wilderness.

00:34:06 Speaker_03
And he sat down under one tree. In Hebrew it says one tree. So think just a desolate region with one little broom tree, which is more like a bush with barely any shade. And he asked Yahweh if he could die. He said, it's enough, Yahweh. Take my life.

00:34:31 Speaker_03
I am no better than any of my ancestors. Yeah, this is taking a turn. Yes. This is so different. This is so different. He didn't show any of this insecurity or fear up on the mountain. He was just bold, you know, with the power of God.

00:34:51 Speaker_03
And he was facing 400 Yeah. Like enemies, as it were.

00:34:55 Speaker_04
He took out Jezebel's crew in an act of faith, in alliance with Yahweh, in a duel, and then Jezebel's like, now I want to duel you again. He's like, oh boy, now I'm scared.

00:35:10 Speaker_03
Yeah, that's right. Doesn't really add up. It doesn't add up. And he flees out of the land and then even beyond the ordered realm of the land into the chaos realm in the wilderness. Yeah, and then wants to die.

00:35:22 Speaker_03
And then he wants to leave the land of the living. So he leaves his people, he leaves his servant behind, he leaves the land of his ancestors, and now he wants to leave the land of the living. Just like solitude, isolation, despair.

00:35:36 Speaker_05
Yeah.

00:35:36 Speaker_03
Despair. And what he says is, it's enough. Too much, Yahweh. You've put too much on me. He is saying to Yahweh, the situation you put me in as your prophet is too much. The queen wants to kill me. Well, she's not a queen, but she's the princess.

00:35:54 Speaker_03
Yeah, she is the queen. She's the queen. Yeah, so he's kind of- I mean, that's intense. The queen wants to kill you. It is intense, but just such a contrast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just feels like something's not connecting. I've gone too far, Yahweh.

00:36:05 Speaker_03
I'm tapping out. I'm tapping out. Take my life. I'm no better than my ancestors.

00:36:10 Speaker_03
Meaning, listen, like, if I can't accomplish a transformation among the people by the thing that just happened, so he's appealing back to the prophets who came before, a guy named Ahya and Samuel. If I can't lead the people back to you Yahweh.

00:36:29 Speaker_03
But he did lead the people back to Yahweh. Exactly. Okay. That's exactly right. It seems like he's lost touch with reality. Okay. So what happens is God feeds him under this tree.

00:36:41 Speaker_03
He sends an angel and he's fed with food that has all the vocabulary of God feeding Israel manna in the wilderness. Even the name of the jar that's provided for him is the name of the jar that the manna got put in in Exodus.

00:36:59 Speaker_03
So it's like he's providing for his faithless people or person in the wilderness. And what he says is, get up, eat this food, because the journey is greater than you are. So God acknowledges, like, you have a task before you that is too great for you.

00:37:17 Speaker_03
But I'm asking you to do it. So God graciously feeds him in the wilderness. And then what we're told is he got up, ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food 40 days and 40 nights. And you're like, oh, just like Moses.

00:37:31 Speaker_03
And he went to Horeb, the mountain of God, which is otherwise known as Mount Sinai. So we are really just, we're doing the wilderness.

00:37:41 Speaker_04
We're doing the Moses thing. We're doing the Moses thing. The Moses thing. Yeah. He's all of Israel in a way, because he's Israel that's fled, well, stuck in the wilderness. Yeah. Being nourished by God.

00:37:54 Speaker_03
And then now being asked to go up the mountain. And he was already a Moses figure on Mount Garden when he built that 12 stone altar, right? Put a choice before Israel, follow Yahweh or not. So he's like Moses already, but now he's like Moses.

00:38:11 Speaker_03
Moses asked God to take his life once in Numbers chapter 11, when the people complained about not having enough food. And he was like, I can't do this. I can't carry these people. Just take my life. So now he's like Moses in his despair.

00:38:26 Speaker_03
And so he goes to Mount Sinai. So now he's going to another mountain and it's just him. This story is so rad. It's a little riddle. He came to the cave. So you're just supposed to know what cave. He goes to the cave, and he spent the night there.

00:38:46 Speaker_03
And you're like, well, there's only one other person who's been on this mountain in the story of the Bible who stayed the night in a cave up there.

00:38:54 Speaker_04
Okay, so this is Moses' cave.

00:38:56 Speaker_03
Yeah, it's Moses' cave. When he was up there, what was he doing? As he talked with Yahweh, spending the night in the cave, he was interceding, asking for God's mercy on the faithless people, identifying himself with the people.

00:39:11 Speaker_03
So much so that he said, if you don't go with us, if you don't forgive the people, then I'm not going and take my life. How different is what Elijah is going to do, sleeping in the cave on the same mountain?

00:39:29 Speaker_03
The word of Yahweh came to him and said, Elijah, why are you here?

00:39:38 Speaker_04
What are you doing here? This is not... This is an important spot. Yeah, this is an important spot. I can kind of... you think Yahweh could kind of be... put the pieces together. He's trying to do the Moses thing.

00:39:51 Speaker_03
The question is, where did God feed Elijah to go? When he said the journey's too great for you, where was he supposed to go? Was he supposed to go back? Like it didn't say, it just said he ate the food and then he went to Mount Sinai.

00:40:05 Speaker_04
You're like, why'd he go there?

00:40:06 Speaker_03
Why'd he go there?

00:40:07 Speaker_04
Yeah. So this clues you in. Yahweh doesn't seem to think that's where he needs to be.

00:40:11 Speaker_03
It's like, why did you come here? What are you doing here? Here it is. Elijah said, I have been so zealous for you, Yahweh, God of armies. Listen, the Israelites have forsaken your covenant.

00:40:25 Speaker_03
They've torn down your altars and they've killed all your prophets with the sword. I alone am the one left and they're trying to kill me. Yeah, well Jezebel is. Okay, let's notice that.

00:40:37 Speaker_03
Yeah, he is taking what Jezebel said and made it as if all the people are trying to kill him. So it's not quite true. I alone am left over. Well, that's not true. Right.

00:40:52 Speaker_03
In fact, there are a hundred prophets living in a cave that that guy Obadiah... So it's kind of surely ironic.

00:40:58 Speaker_04
And now that Ahab's chosen a lane, those prophets could be out and about. Right.

00:41:03 Speaker_03
Yeah. So that's not true, that he's alone. They have killed your prophets with the sword? Well, Jezebel did. They have demolished your altars? Well, I guess more Jezebel did, but he just rebuilt one on Mount Carmel. And he killed all of their prophets.

00:41:23 Speaker_03
They have forsaken your covenant? Well, yes, but they just Yeah. Reannounce their allegiance.

00:41:29 Speaker_04
I was going to say, this story makes more sense if it was the story before.

00:41:33 Speaker_03
Right? Yeah.

00:41:34 Speaker_04
The story we just read.

00:41:36 Speaker_03
Literally, the only thing honestly, transparently truthful in his speech is, I have been zealous for Yahweh. Everything else is distorted, and it's not like it's a lie, but it's a distorted vision of reality. Yeah, interesting.

00:41:49 Speaker_03
Where he has interpreted everything that's happened as if He's the center of the drama. And notice what he doesn't do. He's accusing the people who just re-signed up for the covenant. And he does the opposite of what Moses did in this very spot.

00:42:07 Speaker_03
In this spot, when the people were faithless and idolatrous, Moses says, I will be the covenant keeper for my people, even though the people are not down. And so he offers his life in the place of the people.

00:42:23 Speaker_03
Here, Elijah goes to the same spot, and not only does he not do that, he asks God to take his life, but not for the people, but for himself. And now here, he's accusing the people who just turned back to Yahweh.

00:42:36 Speaker_04
That they're not. Yeah, oh wow.

00:42:38 Speaker_03
It's a total distortion. Yeah, dude. This is a fascinating portrait of despair, of like the strange ways that we distort reality in our minds when we spiral and become over-isolated, but also I think a little over-focused.

00:42:59 Speaker_03
on thinking that my story is the only story of what God is up to in the world. He clearly thinks that the whole story of God and Israel hangs on him. And he's like, it's hopeless, it's over, take me now.

00:43:14 Speaker_04
I mean, he did just play a pivotal role. Yeah, that's what's so puzzling. But things went well. I know, yeah, totally. The only problem right now is he still has an enemy with Jezebel.

00:43:25 Speaker_03
Exactly, yeah. And somehow that pivotal moment, I want to be empathetic here, because I think most of us know some kind of moment like this, where something really hard happens, and it spins you out, and it's so hard to know what is reality anymore.

00:43:44 Speaker_03
So I want to be sympathetic. But at the same time, the jarring contrast between the Elijah of chapter 18 and this Elijah, and the contrast with Moses. Somebody really wants us to compare him to Moses and contrast him with Moses. So Yahweh responds.

00:44:01 Speaker_03
He says, go out and stand out on the mountain before Yahweh. So what's interesting is standing before Yahweh is a key phrase. That was the first thing Elijah said.

00:44:16 Speaker_03
He says in chapter 17, as Yahweh, the God of Israel, before whom I stand, says, there will be no dew or rain. So God's response is essentially, listen, stand before me. Meaning, like, you're my guy.

00:44:35 Speaker_03
Like, it's an invitation for Elijah to stand once again before Yahweh. It's a shorthand for stand in my presence. Let's do this. Suddenly, Yahweh passed by. Oh, I know this. I know this story. With Moses. Yeah.

00:44:54 Speaker_03
With a great strong wind ripping the mountains, crushing rocks in front of Yahweh. But Yahweh wasn't in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but Yahweh wasn't in the earthquake. After the earthquake, fire, but Yahweh wasn't in the fire.

00:45:11 Speaker_03
And after the fire, there was, and this is the famous line in the King James, it's translated as a still small voice.

00:45:22 Speaker_04
Oh, that's King James.

00:45:23 Speaker_03
Still small voice. Still small voice. It's not quite, it's not quite right on. The phrase is kol de ma dakah. kol means the sound, demama means silence or a void of sound such that the silence itself feels like a sound.

00:45:46 Speaker_03
Have you ever been in somewhere that's so silent that it actually, your eardrums are experiencing something. They're kind of ringing. Yes, but what they're ringing with is the sound of the absence of sound. Right. That's demama. Okay.

00:46:01 Speaker_04
There's a Hebrew word for that.

00:46:02 Speaker_03
Yeah, demama. It's a very precise word. Yeah. And then daka, which means, refers elsewhere to something that has been so pulverized or crushed into powder that it's like, it's almost transparent. It's a thing, but not a thing.

00:46:18 Speaker_03
Wait, what's that word again? That's the last word, dakah. Dakah. So the phrase is kol dimamah, the sound of a sheer silence, a thin silence. Okay.

00:46:29 Speaker_03
In other words, in the story of Moses, when Yahweh showed up, what he said, he passed by in fire and wind, and he spoke saying, Yahweh, Yahweh, gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loyal love and faithfulness. Yahweh says this.

00:46:47 Speaker_03
That's what Yahweh says. Here, in this story, with a prophet who doesn't want his job anymore, Yahweh shows up in wind and fire and earthquake, but don't mistake those things for Yahweh himself.

00:47:03 Speaker_03
And then right at the moment you think Yahweh's going to say something, he just says nothing. Then after that, Yahweh repeats his question, what are you doing here? And Elijah repeats The thing he just said, his distortion of reality.

00:47:22 Speaker_03
And then Yahweh's speech is, all right, I need you to go back to the land, and you are gonna appoint all of your replacements. So go appoint Hazael, the king over Aram. I'm gonna use that guy to do my purpose.

00:47:37 Speaker_03
Go appoint Jehu, the son of Nimchi over Israel. He's gonna accomplish a bunch of stuff for me. And then go anoint Elisha, and he's gonna be a prophet in your place. And listen, I have remaining in Israel 7,000 who haven't bowed their knees to Baal.

00:47:57 Speaker_03
You're actually not the only one, Elijah. I've got a whole crew. And if you're going to withdraw from my service, and you're going to refuse to listen, then go appoint your replacements. And that's how the story ends.

00:48:13 Speaker_03
So he has a success on the mountain, and then he has this personal failure to trust God on the mountain. And he forfeits his role as God's prophet. Isn't that fascinating? Such a fascinating story.

00:48:27 Speaker_04
Yeah. So hearing the silence, it feels like in context of all these stories now, it feels like that moment is about Elijah stuck in his own delusion that he can't hear Yahweh.

00:48:42 Speaker_03
That's right, yes. Yeah, even when Yahweh's showing up. and all the things that are classic Yahweh, the fire, like he just did on Mount Carmel. But now Elijah can't hear, sense God.

00:48:57 Speaker_03
It's just like he's closed any accessibility to God out on the mountain. On the very, like, we're playing with the contrast here.

00:49:07 Speaker_03
So here's a guy who can't experience the heavenly presence of God on the mountain anymore, because he's so living in his own head.

00:49:14 Speaker_04
It's the guy who just brought down Yahweh fire and turned all of Israel back to Yahweh on a mountain, on the garden mountain. He just did that. And now the same guy is so lost now that he can't hear the voice of God on the mountain.

00:49:37 Speaker_03
So it's a portrait of how the same person can become that mediating mountaintop

00:49:45 Speaker_03
hero to reunite heaven and earth and turn faithless people back to God, yet that same person is capable, within just a few choices, of becoming completely unable to hear from God on the mountain. And not just that, it has to do with his selfish turn.

00:50:04 Speaker_03
where he begins accusing the people instead of mediating on their behalf. So the portrait of Elijah is really complicated. He's a positive and a negative figure. But that's true of Abraham. That's true of David. It's true of Solomon.

00:50:19 Speaker_03
It's true of all these biblical characters.

00:50:22 Speaker_04
Right. Yeah. We've just come off of David and Solomon. And what struck me with those is how it's the same kind of whiplash.

00:50:29 Speaker_03
Yeah. The total whiplash. Yes. And that's part of the narrative effect, I think, that keeps driving the messianic portrait or plot line forward in the Hebrew Bible. Here it's so tightly constructed. It almost doesn't feel real.

00:50:42 Speaker_03
You're like, could somebody really go through with that? But actually. Think about it.

00:50:48 Speaker_04
Think about how fragile we are really. Yes. Our psyches really are. Yes, yes. And our ability to keep a grasp on what's true, that we could all see parts of our own life that makes sense of the story. That's exactly right.

00:51:04 Speaker_03
Yeah, the stories, you can at a distance be critical of him, just like you can of Israel in the wilderness.

00:51:11 Speaker_03
But then the moment you think about your own life journey and see yourself in the mirror of these characters, you're like, oh yeah, I know this. I've been there. I've been there.

00:51:23 Speaker_03
Yeah, so both of these are depictions of the crisis of the mountain, the heavenly mountain coming down to meet people. And sometimes it goes awesome and sometimes it doesn't.

00:51:36 Speaker_03
And these two positive and negative portraits are right next to each other with the same guy. And that's the puzzle and the power, I think, of the Elijah story.

00:51:46 Speaker_04
So there's a puzzle here about just the crisis of humanity's calling. And there's also then at the center of this driving theme of who can ascend.

00:51:58 Speaker_03
Who can ascend? So we've got Adam and Eve and we had Abraham and we have Moses and David, Solomon, Elijah, and they're all problematic. And so that's where I wanna take our attention next then is in the portrait of the cosmic mountain in the Psalms.

00:52:16 Speaker_03
which is going to take all of these narrative themes and wrap them up in a handful of poems that we'll look at. But one of them, the first line is, who then can ascend the mountain of the Lord?

00:52:32 Speaker_04
Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast. Next week, we'll continue the theme of the mountain in the scroll of Psalms. Specifically, we'll look at Psalms 15 through 24.

00:52:42 Speaker_04
And there we'll find the hope for a mountaintop intercessor who creates a cosmic feast.

00:52:49 Speaker_03
This whole collection is about the arrival of a king who has suffered, been vindicated by God out of his suffering, holds a feast on Mount Zion that summons the righteous and the nations and even the dead. Even the dead?

00:53:04 Speaker_04
Well, that's next week. Bible Project is a crowdfunded nonprofit and we exist to help people experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus.

00:53:13 Speaker_04
and everything that we make is free because of the generous support of thousands of people just like you. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.

00:53:20 Speaker_02
Hi, this is Fatima, and I'm from Los Angeles, California. This is Ryan Hughes. I'm from Jonesboro, Tennessee. I first heard about Bible Project back in the early days of the YouTube series.

00:53:31 Speaker_00
I first heard about Bible Project through a podcast that I listened to called The Bible Recap. I use Bible Project for studying and for just getting to know God a little bit more each day, and the videos make it easier to get to know Him.

00:53:45 Speaker_02
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00:53:53 Speaker_00
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00:53:59 Speaker_02
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00:54:12 Speaker_00
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00:54:22 Speaker_01
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00:54:30 Speaker_01
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00:54:41 Speaker_01
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