THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF ELIJAH THE TISHBITE
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
1 Kings 17:1. Elijah the Tishbite—This is the first mention of him in Scripture; an abrupt introduction, which seems to imply that already he was known as a prophet; or the startling development of national apostasy under Ahab may have called out Elijah into sudden protestation. Tishbite—Not an Israelite, therefore, but a Gentile, whose employment in the prophetic ministry was itself a rebuke to the nation. Was there none in all Israel to speak for Jehovah? The name “Elijah,” אֵליָּה signifies, My God is Jehovah. Israel was rejecting HIM for idols, but this Gentile had rejected idols for HIM. “Tishbite,” from Tisbe, a place east of Jordan. Tob. 1:2 refers to Θίσβε as being “at the right hand of the city properly called Naphtali, in Galilee above Aser.” Said unto Ahab—It is suggested that this penal prediction proved the closing application of an unrecorded speech. All reasoning being ineffective, the prophet leaves the king with this prophetic sentence. Yet Elijah’s manner was to accost the guilty with few, yet significant words, and then depart.
HOMILETICS OF 1 Kings 17:1
THE TRUE PROPHET AND HIS SIGNIFICANT MESSAGE
ISRAEL had gone from bad to worse, and the cup of her iniquity was fast filling to the brim. Religion was little more than a name. Jehovah was no longer worshipped as a living person, but was only thought of as a far distant and but dimly comprehended being. Faith darkened into a grim unbelief, and virtue wallowed in the filth of a royalty-sanctioned sensuality, or hid itself in solitude with fear and trembling. The nation had revolted from the beneficent sway of Jehovah, and rushed with reckless haste into the embrace of a she-fiend, who held it as with a grip of iron, while she tantalized it with her voluptuous wiles, and goaded it to despair with her heartless cruelties. Surely the spell of the vile enchantress could not last for ever. The end must be at hand: the iniquity of the land cried to heaven for vengeance. A sense of approaching doom took possession of many minds; and it seemed as if a strange, mysterious stillness, like that which sometimes precedes the terrific tempest, settled on the nation—a stillness broken only now and then by the murmur of the idolatrous worshippers in the groves, or the loud, coarse laughter of the licentious priests as they feasted at Jezebel’s table. Suddenly—like a meteor newly kindled in the heavens, or like a thunderbolt hurled from the clouds by the hand of the Almighty—Elijah bursts upon the scene. The revellers tremble and the king grows pale, as the bold and fearless prophet denounces their wickedness, and warns them of the sufferings which their sins would inevitably bring. Thus the dankest night of Israel’s spiritual declension was broken by the appearance of that bright luminary Elijah, the greatest of all the prophets since Moses, and the type of that great preacher of repentance who was the forerunner of Christ.
I. That the true prophet is often called to his work out of comparative obscurity. “Elijah, the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead.” It seemed very unlikely that a reformer would spring from the midst of the rough, uncouth inhabitants of Gilead. It was a wild, rocky, mountainous region, a country of chase, and the favourite haunt of robbers—something like what some parts of Palestine are rendered by the Bedouins of the present day; or, in relation to the rival kingdoms on the west side of the Jordan, very much what the Highlands were to the Lowlands of Scotland in the days of chieftain feud and foray (vide Macaulay’s England). And yet it was just the place where the very qualities that were so essential in a prophet who would successfully contend with an Ahab and a Jezebel would be likely to be nurtured—the capacity of endurance, the fleet action, the intrepid boldness, the sternness of reproof amounting almost to fierceness. How true is it that God is not limited to locality in the choice of His servants! There was an Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees, a Moses in the land of Midian, a Nicodemus in the Sanhedrim, a Joseph of Arimathea among the aristocracy of Jerusalem, a Cornelius in the Roman camp; there were saints in Cæsar’s household, and in half-heathen Gilead there was found an Elijah.
II. That the true prophet hears unmistakable testimony as to the character of the only True God. “As the Lord God of Israel liveth.” Jehovah is the living God. This truth was uttered by the fearless prophet with an abruptness, a solemnity, and a ringing vehemency that must have startled the guilty Ahab, and have reminded him that the dumb, dead idols to which he was yielding homage were incomparable with the All-powerful and Ever-living Jehovah whom he and his people had so wickedly forsaken. Elijah means God-Jehovah, so that even in his name the great reformer carries a rebuke to the Baal-serving king. The great need of Israel at this time was a revival among them of just ideas concerning God. Notwithstanding the special privileges they had enjoyed in becoming acquainted with the True God, they were now in danger of losing all faith in Him, and of sinking down into a worse state of heathenism than that of the idolatrous nations by which they were surrounded. All true reform must begin by restoring to the mind clear and exalted conceptions of the character of God. This Elijah did, not so much by eloquence of speech, as by picturesqueness and significance of action. He was the prophet of action—the great hero—prophet of the kingdom of the ten tribes: “the grandest and most romantic character that Israel ever produced.” His whole career was one of intense activity, during which he wrote, as if in fiery hieroglyphics, the awful character of the God he so diligently served. His mission was to proclaim the living God in opposition to Ahab’s dead, senseless idols.
III. That the true prophet receives his commission from the Highest Authority. “Before whom I stand.” How honourable, how sublime, how awful the position of him who stands to minister in the presence of God as His servant and ambassador! He receives his commission direct from the throne, he speeds on his errand with ready obedience, he is oppressed with the responsibility of his office, he utters his message as if standing in the presence of God. Elijah was “the loftiest, sternest spirit of the True Faith raised up face to face with the proudest and fiercest spirit of the old Asiatic paganism, against Jezebel rose up Elijah the Tishbite.” Whenever the powers of darkness appear incarnate in some such ruling personage as Jezebel, with her hosts of Baal and Asherah prophets, then God provides an incarnation of his Divine Spirit and power, with suitable signs and wonders to confuse and confound the ministers of Satan. Such an incarnation was Elijah. The power that may be exerted by an individual life is something appalling, especially when it derives its inspiration direct from heaven. Lord Rochester fled from Fenelon, crying, “If I stay here any longer, I shall become a Christian in spite of myself.” The greatest power over humanity to-day is spiritual power.
IV. That the true prophet is commissioned to announce the judgments of God against prevalent iniquity. “There shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word.”
1. Jehovah has absolute control over all the elements of nature. The worshippers of Baalim invested their deities with the lordship over the processes of nature; and the time had come when they must be undeceived. The prophet demonstrates that the dew and rain-clouds are not of Baal’s giving, but are wholly in the hands of God, who can bestow or withhold their blessings according to His will.
2. Jehovah can make the elements of nature the instruments of a nation’s punishment which have been the means of its sin. Israel had ignored God in nature and ascribed all power to Baal: nature is now to wield the rod which is to punish them for their apostasy and sin. It is to be shown how utterly fictitious is the control of their deities over the dew and the rain, and how terrible is the judgment which Jehovah can impose by drying up the moisture of earth and sky. Drought was a punishment threatened against idolatry (Deuteronomy 11:16-17); and in this particular instance the obstinacy of Ahab continued it for three years and a half. To Eastern and Southern nations the withholding of rain is the withholding of pleasure, of sustenance, of life itself. It is only in abject distress and suffering that man can see the falseness and vanity of the idols in which he has so blindly trusted.
LESSONS:—
1. In the worst times God can raise up faithful men to do the most difficult and most needed work.
2. They who dare to be bold for God may safely trust to him for protection.
3. We learn how great may be the power of an individual life.
THE LIFE AND LESSONS OF THE GREAT HEBREW REFORMER
No story so bewitches us as the story of Elijah’s life. His meteoric appearances, his lonely life spent hermit-like for the most part in caves and deserts, his fearlessness in the presence of Ahab and hostile priests, his sublime translation, his appearing 900 years after with our Lord; these and other circumstances invest his memory with a romantic interest such as belongs to no other prophet. He is a prophet, and some of the events in his life can only occur in a prophet’s; but he is also a man, a man struggling against weaknesses like our own. His life will touch ours in many parts. Consider
I. The abruptness of his appearance on the arena of action. Where does the wild, stern-looking being come from? Who knows anything of his parents? What is his trade? But we wait in vain for an answer. This throws such a weirdness over him. There was design in sending the prophet with such abruptness into the presence of the king. Ahab had become hardened in sin. For a long time the prophets had been silent; Jehovah dumb. No stern protest had been lifted up; and, his conscience drugged, the man a mere puppet of his imperious queen and her fawning priests, Ahab can be aroused only by shattering peals of thunder, or a bursting volcano. Into his palace rushes the wild solemn man of the desert, and at the drowsy idolatrous king flings his stern threat. Thus God has to act still. To many a man the tenderest utterances of the Gospel have become as opiating drugs. A fire-brand, a thunderbolt, only will wake him up. Fingers of forked lightning must write fiery words of doom on his chamber walls. Ahab needed an Elijah.
II. The words suggested some idea of his previous training. Gilead must have had much to do with the character of the man. When he stood amid the crags of Mount Sinai unappalled by the bursts of thunder that shook the foundation of the hills, and shrunk not when the sheets of flame lit up the ravines, it was because he had been accustomed to similar impressive scenes in his own rugged land. It was a fitting cradle for such a spirit. The Highlands of Scotland have produced a race of men stern, hardy, daring; quite a contrast to the Lowlanders. The wide prairies of America tend to produce a race of Indians swift of foot, passionate in the chase, stealthy, and spurning settled abodes. Jehovah has found His Elijah in the right country. Very little is said about his personal aspects, but we shall always recognise him when he appears—the tawny, shaggy-haired man; around his shoulder the loose cape or mantle of sheep-skin, fastened at his breast with a leathern girdle. The appearance of the hitherto unknown prophet suggests—
III. How God had been steadily preparing an instrument for His work. His eye rested upon the nation’s sin, and away in the solitude of Gilead He was shaping the man who would be as a sweeping tornado in the land, who would be the Regenerator of His people, the mighty Reformer in Israel. The world’s history illustrates the principle. Israel needs to be led out of Egypt. In the very palace of the Pharaohs is young Moses being prepared as the future leader of Israel. God looks with holy anger upon the corruption of the Church of Rome, but in secret He is fitting the brave, heroic miner’s son to shatter the huge fabric of superstition. To turn this principle round, and look on the other side, it conveys encouragement to God’s people. To them, when in trouble, an Elijah of deliverance shall appear. A soldier whipped for a trifle, leaped from his ship into the heavy sea. A large albatross swooped like magic down at the man. In his death struggle, he seized the monstrous bird, and was thus kept afloat until aid arrived. Overwhelmed in the water, there may be an albatross overhead to help the Christian. God may be preparing in secret an Elijah, not to speak words of fire as to Ahab, but to be a deliverer. This mention of Thisbe and Gilead suggests—
IV. From what obscurity the Lord brought the mighty prophet. No rabbi or learned doctor does God produce as the great instrument to effect His purpose, but a “Lay Preacher from the Highlands of Gilead.” One likes to think how God employs the lowly, and works out his plans through the obscure. He is constantly rebuking us for thinking a place must be so many miles square, a man must have such an amount of brain, or wealth, before he can work. A rock in mid ocean may prove a cage large enough to contain the proud eagle of France. A small smithy in Micklefield can produce a Sammy Hick, whose name shall be known and influence felt to the extremities of the land. Bethlehem is large enough for the Redeemer of a world to be horn in. A fisherman’s craft is respectable enough to produce a Peter. Even an insignificant obliterated Thisbe can send forth an Elijah!—(The Lay Preacher for 1874).
GERM NOTES ON 1 Kings 17:1
—A strange speech, certainly, to be reported of a man of whom as yet we have heard nothing. What had been passing in his mind up to that day, what he had to do with Ahab, how he came to think that dew or rain would obey his Commands, we are not told. We are to judge of these things as we can. Our only help for judging of them lies in the words themselves. And there is the secret—“As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand.” Here we have the key to the education and faith of Elijah, as well as to his relation with the king of Israel. “I have learnt that there is a Lord God of Israel, and that He lives, and that I am in His presence. I am sure that He is my Guide, and Teacher, and Judge; I am sure that He is the Guide, and Teacher, and Judge of this land and of its king. And this, Ahab, is just what thou dost not believe, just what thou, by thine acts, art denying. Thou believest in a Lord, or in many lords, far off from thee, exercising no government over thy actions, enforcing no duties upon thee towards thy subjects; a lord seated somewhere in the clouds, or on the summit of some hill; a cloud-compeller, a giver of dew or rain when your offerings please him, or when of mere sovereignty he chooses to do it. And I tell you that it is not this lord or these lords who send rain and dew; but that it is the God of you and of your fathers, the God who has ordained the course of seasons, who has appointed summer and winter, seed-time and harvest; who has appointed you to till the land upon which His rain descends and His sun shines; who claims first of all your trust and your obedience, since though you stand, as I stand, before Him, it is not your eyes that will tell you of Him; you must believe in Him if you would know Him. And as a sign and witness that it is even so, I declare to you, that the rain and the dew shall not come except at the word of me, a poor, insignificant, unknown man, by whom it pleases God to declare what He is, and what the being whom He has formed in His image is meant to be.” Herein consists the force of this audacious sentence. It at once proclaims that relation between the unseen God and the spirit of man which Jezebel’s priests by their services, and Ahab by his tyrannical acts, were alike setting at nought.—Maurice.
—Men in general have never been willing to recognize, and are still unwilling to recognize the fact, that need and misery upon earth stand in the closest relation to their conduct towards God; that through their need they may be called back to Him whom they have forsaken, and feel what it is when God withdraws His hand, when they are left to themselves, when the Almighty withholds His gifts and blessings, and sends His punishments and plagues. The God of Israel is the living God, because He has spoken to Israel and has, through His Word, revealed Himself to them (Psalms 147:19-20). God has spoken unto us by His son, the image of His being, and has revealed Himself in Him much more gloriously to us; therefore Christendom knows no other living God than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who can venture to say that he stands before God? He who, like Elijah, has firm faith, is unconditionally obedient to the Word of God, and fearlessly and courageously pursues the path God has prescribed for him.—Menken.
—National apostasy and national chastisement. Far away among the craggy glens of Gilead the prophet has become acquainted with the wickedness of the court and the people. Ah! there was one faithful heart who mourned over a nation’s sin, and took it, where we ought to take our country’s sins, into the presence of God. I. National chastisement following upon national apostasy. Does this surprise us? If an individual commit an infamous crime and escape punishment here, there awaits him a stern avenger among the shadows of the world to come. But there cannot be a wholesale retribution dealt out to a nation or tribe in that future state. Prosperity attends upon a virtuous nation, or fell-ruin overwhelms a degenerate one here. No kingdom ever perished through its high-toned morality.
1. This punishment was not arbitrary and prejudiced. The law pronounced it ages before this threat, if the people forsook God (Leviticus 26:19; Deuteronomy 11:16). No calamity came from spite or caprice. Jehovah knows nothing of the despicable venom of some human hearts when He deals in severity with men.
2. The punishment threatened was adapted to the special character of the nation’s sin. Baal was worshipped as the source of fruitful harvest. Now there is to be a test of strength between God and His rival Baal. If drought and barrenness succeed the prophet’s words, that will be a tangible proof of the impotence of their favourite idol. This is God’s method still. The punishment sent often suits with terrible appropriateness the sin committed. II. These words reveal the source of the prophet’s holy boldness. “As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand.” He has a deep conviction that he is the servant of Jehovah. He is powerfully conscious of the continual presence of the Divine Being. Every Christian should have a conviction of being summoned to his particular work in the church. Here was the prophet’s incentive to faithfulness. Moving about in the presence of the Holy One would have a salutary effect upon him. To one conscious of standing, living before the Holy God, as if he were always in the Holy of Holies, irreverence, unfaithfulness, would be exceptionally aggravated. Let the thought of “standing before God,” in the home, behind the counter, and in the exchange, be an incentive to faithfulness.
LESSONS:—
1. The influence of a man in position. Ahab’s idolatry had led the nation astray.
2. Learn to identify yourself with the nation’s conditions, and make it a subject for prayer.—The Lay Preacher.
—The unusual efflux of miraculous energy at this time is suitable to the unusual energy and—may we not say, evoked by it?—God mercifully adapting His gifts to men’s needs. It is not here as in legendary histories. There the supernatural diminishes as the writer descends the stream of time and comes nearer to his own day. Here miracles are abundant or scanty without any reference to time; but in very evident proportion to the spiritual necessities of the people.—Speaker’s Comm.
—Suddenly Elijah appears before us in the narrative as he appeared in his lifetime before Ahab and the children of Israel. Suddenly he appears, like Melchizedec, and suddenly he disappears, “without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life.” Not unnaturally did the ancient rabbis believe him to be the fiery Phincas returned to earth, or an angel hovering on the outskirts of the world. Not unnaturally have the Mussulman traditions confounded him with the mysterious being, the Immortal one, the Eternal Wanderer, who appears ever and anon to set right the wrongs of earth and repeat the experience of ages past. Not unnaturally did the mediaeval alchemists and magicians strive to trace up their dark arts to Elijah the Tishbite, the Father of Alchemy. The other prophets—Moses, Samuel, Elisha, Isaiah—were constantly before the eyes of their countrymen. But Elijah they saw only by partial and momentary glimpses.—Stanley.
—Peculiar and hopeless as the exigency in Israel appeared, the Lord found a man fit for it—a man fitted beyond all others, by the force of his character, his grasp of faith, and his fearless spirit, to “stem the torrent of a faithless age.” This man was Elijah the Tishbite. He was one of the most extraordinary characters mentioned in the Bible. Great evils require great remedies; extraordinary diseases, extraordinary physicians; gigantic corruptions, gigantic reformers. And such was Elijah, who in his gifts and qualities assumes a figure scarcely human from its gigantic proportions, and towers aloft like one of the sons of Anak among common men. He was such stuff as the heathen made their gods of; and had he appeared in a heathen country he would have come down to us as scarcely less than a god, side by side, perhaps, with Hercules, instead of being only something more than a prophet. There are two sorts of prophets—prophets of deeds, prophets of words. Of the latter the greatest is doubtless Isaiah; of the former, there has not been among men born of women any greater than Elijah.—Kitto.
—Israel had never such a king as Ahab for impiety; never so miraculous a prophet as Elijah. He comes in like a tempest, who went out in a whirl wind. I do not so much wonder at the boldness of Elijah as at his power. Yea, who so sees his power, can no whit wonder at his boldness: how could he but be bold to the face of a man, who was thus powerful with God? While he knows himself a prophet, he remembers to be a man. He doth not therefore arrogate his power as his own, but published it as his master’s. This restraint must be “according to his word,” and that word was from a higher mouth than his. Man only can denounce what God will execute, which, when it is once revealed, can no more fail than the Almighty Himself.—Bp. Hall.