The object of Elijah’s irony was two-fold;
(1) to stimulate the priests to greater exertions, and so to make their failure more complete, and
(2) to suggest to the people that such failure would prove absolutely that Baal was no God.
The force of the expressions seems to be, “Cry on, only cry louder, and then you will make him hear, for surely he is a god; surely you are not mistaken in so regarding him.” He is “talking,” or “meditating;” the word used has both senses, for the Hebrews regarded “meditation” as “talking with oneself;” “or he is pursuing;” rather, perhaps, “he hath a withdrawing,” i. e., “he hath withdrawn himself into privacy for awhile,” as a king does upon occasions. The drift of the whole passage is scornful ridicule of the anthropomorphic notions of God entertained by the Baal-priests and their followers (compare Psalms 50:21). The pagan gods, as we know from the Greek and Latin classics, ate and drank, went on journeys, slept, conversed, quarrelled, fought. The explanations of many of these absurdities were unknown to the ordinary worshipper, and probably even the most enlightened, if his religion was not a mere vague Pantheism, had notions of the gods which were largely tainted with a false anthropomorphism.