How Long Halt Ye

Three and a half years without rain, a king who blamed the prophet for it, and a mountain with eight hundred and fifty priests of Baal on one side and one man on the other. Elijah proposed a test that no sane man proposes: two altars, no fire, and whichever god answers is God. Then he poured twelve barrels of water on his own. What happened at the time of the evening sacrifice is the loudest thing God did in the Old Testament, and the question Elijah asked before it is still the only question.

Art thou he that troubleth Israel?

Elijah had walked into Ahab's court out of nowhere and said, "As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word" (1 Kings 17:1), and vanished. Now, in the third year, God sends him back: "Go, shew thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth" (18:1). And the king's first words are the words of every man who has ever blamed the one who told him the truth: "Art thou he that troubleth Israel?" (18:17). And Elijah: "I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the LORD, and thou hast followed Baalim" (18:18). Then the challenge: all Israel to Carmel, and "the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel's table" (18:19). Eight hundred and fifty, on the queen's payroll. And one.

How long halt ye?

Halt: limp. The word is what a man does with two crutches of different lengths. Israel had not abandoned the LORD; they had added Baal, the rain god, because the rain had stopped, and they were hobbling between the two, a little of each, in case. And the people answered him not a word. Nobody argued. Nobody agreed. That silence is the sound of a crowd that would like to keep both. So Elijah proposes the test, and the crowd, which will not choose, will happily watch: "the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken" (18:24).

The prophets of Baal go first, and go all morning. "O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar" (18:26). At noon Elijah, who has been watching four hundred and fifty men shout at nothing for six hours, starts to enjoy himself: "Cry aloud: 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" (18:27). Maybe he is on the toilet, is what the Hebrew is closest to. And they cut themselves "till the blood gushed out upon them" (18:28), and it goes on until the evening, and "there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded" (18:29). Three verbs of silence. That is what it is to call on what is not there, and the Bible lets it run all day so nobody can say it was not given a fair chance.

Twelve stones and twelve barrels

"And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me" (18:30). Come near. He wants them close enough to see there is no trick. He "repaired the altar of the LORD that was broken down" (18:30), with twelve stones, one for each tribe of a nation that had split in two a century before; he is rebuilding Israel with his hands before he prays. And then the thing that makes the crowd think he has lost his mind: "Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood… Do it the second time… Do it the third time" (18:33-34). In a drought. Twelve barrels of the most precious thing in the country, poured over the wood until the trench around the altar is full. He is not making it easy for God. He is making it impossible for anyone else.

And then, at the hour of the evening sacrifice, the hour when the lamb was being offered in the temple in Jerusalem, one prayer, and it is short:

No shouting, no cutting, no leaping. Thirty seconds, and every word of it about God and the people, not about Elijah. That thou hast turned their heart back again: he is praying for the crowd that would not answer him. And the fire fell, and took the sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and the water. Stones do not burn. It ate the altar. "And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God" (18:39). The people who would not say a word at noon are saying it twice on their faces at dusk. Athanasius, hunted by an emperor, remembered the day:

A little cloud like a man's hand

Then the part that is usually left off. Elijah tells Ahab to go and eat, "for there is a sound of abundance of rain" (18:41), and there is not a cloud in the sky. And the man who has just called down fire in front of a nation goes up to the top of the mountain and "cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees" (18:42), and sends his servant to look at the sea. "There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times" (18:43). Seven times. The fire came in thirty seconds. The rain took seven trips to the ridge. "at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand" (18:44). A hand's breadth of cloud, and Elijah tells the king to run before the rain stops him, and "the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain" (18:45). James, writing to ordinary Christians, chose this of all the stories to tell them what prayer is: "Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly… And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain" (James 5:17-18). Like passions as we are. James's point is not that Elijah was special. It is that he was not.

Where this lands

How long halt ye between two opinions. That is the question, and the crowd's silence is the answer most of us give. Not no; just not yet, and a little of each in case. Joshua had asked it a hundred years before on the far side of the Jordan, "choose you this day whom ye will serve" (Joshua 24:15), and Jesus asked it on a hillside in Galilee, "No man can serve two masters" (Matthew 6:24), and the writer of Hebrews said what Carmel proved: "our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29). Baal never answered because Baal was never there. The LORD answered by fire at the hour of the evening sacrifice, on a repaired altar, over a drenched offering, so that nobody could credit the man.

And the fire that fell on Carmel fell once more, at the hour of the evening sacrifice, on a hill outside Jerusalem, on an offering no one could have kindled, and consumed it, and the people who watched said nothing, and then, seven weeks later, three thousand of them fell on their faces and said it. The LORD, He is the God. The next day, Elijah ran from a woman's threat and lay down under a juniper tree and asked to die, which is the story told elsewhere on this site, and God fed him and let him sleep. The man who called down fire was subject to like passions as we are. That is why James told us about him. Not so we would call down fire. So we would pray again, and go and look at the sea seven times.

Related: Abide, day three: Elijah under the juniper, Prayer, The Counterfeit, and Open His Eyes. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of God are marked in gold, the words of Christ in purple.