People of the Bible

Elijah

Prophets · Around 870 BC · Appears in 1 Kings 17 through 2 Kings 2

Elijah is the fiery prophet who stood against King Ahab and the worship of Baal, calling down fire from heaven on Mount Carmel to prove that the LORD is God. He was fed by ravens, raised a widow's son, heard God in a still small voice, and was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind without dying.

And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.1 Kings 18:21 (KJV)

The prophet who appeared from nowhere

Elijah the Tishbite bursts onto the scene without introduction in the reign of Ahab, the most wicked king Israel had yet seen, who with his queen Jezebel had led the nation into the worship of Baal. Elijah stood before the king and announced that as the LORD lived, there would be neither dew nor rain these years but according to his word, and then he vanished into hiding as a devastating drought gripped the land, a direct challenge to Baal, whom his worshippers hailed as the god of storm and rain.

During the drought God cared for his prophet in strange and tender ways. By the brook Cherith, ravens brought Elijah bread and flesh morning and evening. When the brook dried up, God sent him to a poor widow in Zarephath, whose last handful of meal and little oil did not run out through all the famine because she fed the prophet first. When her son fell sick and died, Elijah stretched himself over the boy and cried to God, and the child's life returned to him, and the widow knew that the word of the LORD in Elijah's mouth was truth.

Fire on Mount Carmel

After three years God sent Elijah back to Ahab, and the prophet threw down a public challenge that would settle once for all whom Israel would serve. On Mount Carmel, before all the people, he faced the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and cried, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. Two altars were built, two sacrifices laid out, and the God who answered by fire would be shown to be the true God.

The prophets of Baal cried out and leaped and cut themselves from morning to noon, but there was no voice, none to answer. Then Elijah repaired the broken altar of the LORD, arranged the wood and the sacrifice, and, to leave no doubt, drenched it all with water three times until it filled the trench around it. He prayed a simple prayer that God would show himself, and the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the dust, and the water, and all the people fell on their faces and cried, The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God.

The still small voice

The mountaintop triumph did not last. When Jezebel swore to kill him, Elijah, the man who had faced hundreds of false prophets alone, was suddenly overwhelmed by fear and despair. He fled into the wilderness, sat down under a juniper tree, and asked to die, saying he was no better than his fathers. It is one of Scripture's most honest pictures of exhaustion and depression in a servant of God, and how gently God dealt with it: he let his prophet sleep, and sent an angel to feed him, twice, for the journey was too great for him.

Strengthened, Elijah traveled forty days to Mount Horeb, the mountain of Moses, and there God asked him what he was doing. A great wind tore the mountains, then an earthquake, then a fire, but the LORD was not in them; and after the fire came a still small voice. In that gentle whisper God met his weary prophet, corrected his despairing sense that he alone was left faithful, told him seven thousand had not bowed to Baal, and gave him more work to do. God is as truly in the quiet whisper as in the fire on Carmel.

Taken up in a whirlwind

Among the tasks God gave him, Elijah was to anoint his successor, and he found Elisha plowing in the field, cast his mantle over him, and Elisha left everything to follow. For the rest of Elijah's ministry he trained the younger man, and Elisha would not leave his side as the end drew near. Elijah still spoke God's word fearlessly to kings, confronting Ahab over the murder of Naboth and pronouncing judgment on a dynasty that had sold itself to do evil.

At the end of his life, as the two prophets walked and talked together, a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and parted them, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven, never tasting death. Elisha saw it and cried out, and took up the mantle that fell from Elijah, receiving the double portion of his spirit he had asked. Elijah's departure was as extraordinary as his life, a sign that the God he served held even death and the heavens in his hands.

Justice against a king: Naboth's vineyard

Elijah was not only the prophet of Carmel's fire but the voice of God's justice against the powerful. When King Ahab coveted the vineyard of a man named Naboth, and Queen Jezebel had Naboth falsely accused and stoned to death so the king could seize it, Elijah was sent to meet Ahab in the very vineyard he had stolen. Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? he demanded, and he pronounced God's judgment on the house of Ahab for the shedding of innocent blood.

It was a fearless word, spoken to a murderer on his throne, and it shows that the God of Israel cares for the poor man's small inheritance against the greed of kings. Yet even here mercy appeared: when Ahab humbled himself in sackcloth, God noted his repentance and delayed the judgment. Elijah stands in the great line of prophets who spoke truth to power, defending the defenseless and reminding rulers that they too must answer to a higher King.

His character and where he points to Christ

Elijah is bold, zealous, and utterly fearless before kings, yet Scripture shows him human enough to collapse in exhaustion and despair after his greatest victory. He is the towering prophet of the northern kingdom and the great defender of the worship of the true God in an age of idolatry, so central that the last of the Old Testament prophets promised he would come again before the great and dreadful day of the LORD. The New Testament holds him up as an example of the power of earnest prayer by an ordinary man of like passions with us.

Jesus said that John the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elijah, preparing the way of the Lord, so that Elijah's calling to turn hearts back to God was fulfilled at Christ's coming. And on the mount of Transfiguration Elijah himself appeared, speaking with Jesus in glory alongside Moses, the prophets and the law together bearing witness to him. Elijah called down fire to consume a sacrifice, but Jesus became the sacrifice; and where Elijah was carried up alive to heaven, Jesus first went down into death and rose again, opening the way to heaven for all who trust him.

A note on the sources: everything above is drawn from the biblical text itself. Where a detail comes from later tradition rather than Scripture, it is named as tradition. Dates for the earliest figures are traditional and approximate, and Scripture does not always give them. The aim is to tell each life honestly, and to let it do what the whole Bible does, point to Jesus Christ the Lord.

Related: Elisha · John the Baptist · All the people of the Bible