Ahab, Jezebel, and Elijah at Mount Carmel
Ahab married Jezebel of Sidon and Baal became Israel's state cult. One man stood against it—Elijah—and on Mount Carmel the people saw who is God.
Ahab, seventh king of Israel, was a capable ruler who married Jezebel, daughter of the king of Sidon—and she brought her religion and her will with her. A temple of Baal rose in Samaria; four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and four hundred of Asherah ate at her table, while she hunted down the prophets of God. Obadiah hid a hundred of them in caves.
Then Elijah the Tishbite told the king: "As the Lord lives, there shall be no dew or rain these years except by my word." Three years of drought followed. Elijah lived by the brook Cherith, then with the widow of Zarephath whose jar of flour never ran out, and he revived her dead son.
In the third year he summoned the nation to Mount Carmel: "How long will you hop between two opinions?" The prophets of Baal cried and gashed themselves from morning to noon; no voice answered. Elijah rebuilt a ruined altar of twelve stones, had it drenched three times with water—and fire fell from heaven. The people fell on their faces: "The Lord, He is God"—the words that still close Yom Kippur. Jezebel swore to kill him, and Elijah fled to Horeb, where he heard not wind or fire but "a still, small voice."
How we know
On the chronology
Academic history dates this event differently. In the age of the kings the divergence is not the one familiar from the Persian period, where Seder Olam runs about a hundred and sixty-five years short. Here academic chronology reckons some reigns as overlapping — father and son on the throne together — so its span from the division of the kingdom to the destruction of the Temple comes out nearly three decades shorter. The gap therefore grows: a hundred and thirty-five years at the division, a hundred and fifty-four at Sennacherib, a hundred and sixty-four at the destruction. The anchors of the academic count are external documents: the battle of Qarqar (853), Jehu's tribute on the Black Obelisk (841), the fall of Samaria (722), Sennacherib's campaign (701), Megiddo and Nebuchadnezzar's campaigns in the Babylonian Chronicles (609, 605, 597). Both dates appear on the timeline when the divergence layer is on.
Sources
Tanakh
- Melachim I 16–19 — Izevel, the drought, Carmel, and Eliyahu’s flight to Chorev
- Melachim I 21–22 — Navot’s vineyard and the death of Achav
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Taanit 2a — the three keys not entrusted to a messenger — and the key of rain in Eliyahu’s hand
- Berachot 6b — Eliyahu’s prayer “answer me” — the folio needs checking (probably 9b)
- Sanhedrin 102b — Achav in the list of kings — and the measure of his repentance
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.
People and places
Elijah the Prophet · Elisha the Prophet · Samaria · Kings · Ahab · Obadiah the Prophet · Jehoshaphat · Jezebel · Nevuah—prophecy · Avodah zarah—idolatry