Elijah mocked them. — The mockery of Elijah — apparently even blunter and more scornful in the sense of the original — has been with over-ingenuity explained as applying to various supposed actions of Baal. It is merely the bitter irony of sheer contempt, calling Baal a god only to heap upon him ideas most ungodlike; “He is busy, or he is in retirement; he is far away, or in the noon-day heat he is asleep.” Characteristic of the fierce indignation of Elijah’s nature, in this crisis of conflict, it is yet not unlike the righteous scorn of the psalmists or the prophets (see Psalms 115:4-8; Psalms 135:15-18; Isaiah 44:9-20; Isaiah 46:1-7; Jeremiah 10:2-10, &c.) for the worship of “the vanities” of the heathen. There was no place for toleration of prejudice, or tender appreciation of a blind worship feeling after God, like that of St. Paul at Athens (Acts 17:22-23). The conflict here was between spiritual worship and a foul, cruel idolatry; and the case was not of heathen ignorance, but of Israel’s apostasy.
Related Commentaries of 1 Kings 18:27
1 Kings 18:27
27 And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud:d for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.