Faith in the Face of Apostasy

The Gospel According to Elijah & Elisha

Raymond B. Dillard

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9781629955117
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Explains the stories of Elijah and Elisha in the context of redemptive history.

1
CHRISTIANS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT

Understanding the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments is perhaps the master key that opens the door to understanding the Bible. Yet Christians often feel disoriented while reading the Old Testament. Somehow it seems less relevant to their lives than the New Testament. After all, we are Christians, and it is the New Testament that speaks to us preeminently and clearly about Jesus Christ, our Savior. The Old Testament seems not only less relevant, but also culturally more distant than the social milieu we encounter in the New Testament. When Christians read the Old Testament, they encounter many genres of literature that are quite different from those of our daily experience. We do not often read law codes, oracles against foreign nations, or rhymeless poetry. In ways that are almost subliminal, the Old Testament seems to communicate to modern Christian readers, “This was not written for you. It was for a different world. This will be hard to read and hard to understand.”

And when we do read the Old Testament, most of us feel more at home with its stories. We identify with the characters in their temptations and struggles, and with the interwoven tangle of sin and obedience, success and failure, that filled the days of those whose lives are reported there. But even when we read stories with which we easily identify in terms of our own experience, there is still the nagging doubt, “Is that all there is? Is this what I am supposed to get from reading this passage?”

Sometimes even the stories are disconcerting. Take a few of the Elijah and Elisha narratives as examples. We instinctively feel that it almost trivializes the power of God when that power is used to make an axhead float in water (2 Kings 6:1–7) or to improve the taste of a pot of soup (4:38–41). Doesn’t this make God look like a carnival magician? What does it tell us about God when he sends bears to maul children who have insulted a prophet (2:23–25)? And why does God sit idly by when his people are reduced to cannibalism (6:24–7:2)?

The net result is that Christians tend to be ill at ease and unfamiliar with the Old Testament. And that is regrettable. The Old Testament makes up about three-fourths of the Bible, and it is important to Christians for many reasons.

1. The Old Testament is part of the Christian canon. It is God’s word—not just for Israel, but also for us. We want to know all we can about God and his purposes for history and our own lives; we cannot neglect the larger part of the Bible and hope to get very far.
2. The Old Testament had enormous influence on the New. The more we study the New Testament, the more we recognize this influence. Jesus’ Bible was the Old Testament, and the New Testament was written by Jews who were thoroughly versed in the Hebrew Scriptures. The apostles continually appealed to the Old Testament to verify and bolster their witness to Jesus Christ; they quoted it and alluded to its themes and motifs. Even if our goal were no more than to know the New Testament better, we could not get very far without devoting attention to the Old Testament.
3. The Old Testament reveals Jesus to us. As Christians, we tend to think that we learn most about our Savior from the New Testament, yet Jesus himself invited us to learn about him from the Old Testament (Luke 24:27, 44). Peter said that all the prophets from Samuel onward spoke of the days and events surrounding the life of Jesus (Acts 3:24). The Old Testament is every bit as much a Christian book as the New Testament.

The God who revealed himself to Israel is the God who was incarnate in Jesus. He is the same, “yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). His character and attributes, his mercy, grace, and holiness, are the same for the new Israel, which is the church, as they were for Israel of old. The character and attributes of God did not change between the Testaments.

It is our goal in this small volume to read the Old Testament in ways that appreciate the unity that exists between it and the New Testament. We want to learn from the Elijah and Elisha narratives, but also to see how those accounts direct us onward toward faith in Christ.

REPRESENTATIVE APPROACHES

It is possible, and even necessary, to read these stories from many different vantage points. There are at least three different historical and literary horizons that intersect in the Elijah and Elisha narratives.

1. The historical background of the incidents: when the stories took place.

THE DYNASTIES OF OMRI AND JEHU

I. Omri

A. Omri, 885–874 B.C.

B. Ahab, 874–853 B.C.

C. Ahaziah, 853–852 B.C.

D. Jehoram, 852–841 B.C.

II. Jehu

A. Jehu, 841–814 B.C.

B. Jehoahaz, 814–798 B.C.

C. Jehoash, 798–782 B.C.

D. Jeroboam II, 793–753 B.C.

E. Zechariah, 753–752 B.C.

The Elijah and Elisha stories span a period from the second quarter of the ninth century to the first quarter of the eighth century B.C. These two prophets were active in the northern kingdom during the dynasties of Omri and Jehu.

We first hear of Elijah during the reign of Ahab (1 Kings 17:1); Elisha died during the reign of Jehoash (2 Kings 13:20). Much of the action is set against the backdrop of the reign of Ahab and his notorious wife, Jezebel.

Prior to this period, Israel had always been in danger from the gradual assimilation of Canaanite religious influence into the worship of Yahweh.¹ Canaanite sanctuaries had proliferated in the land before the Israelite conquest, and the religious practices of the Canaanites continually threatened to infiltrate and adulterate the proper worship of God in spite of the strong warnings in the Law and from the Prophets. The northern kingdom was already set on this course from its inception. Shortly after the break-up of the united kingdom under David and Solomon, the first king in the north, Jeroboam, rehabilitated the Canaanite shrines and introduced the worship of Yahweh under the symbol of a bull (1 Kings 12:25–33). The God who called Israel into existence demanded the exclusive allegiance of the nation. His first commandment was that Israel was to have no other gods (Ex. 20:3). Israel was always in danger of losing this antithesis between her God and all the pretenders.

However, during the reign of Omri, there was a noticeable change in royal religious policy in the north. Omri had been seeking a commercial and political alliance with Tyre in order to gain a share of the lucrative trade that moved through that Mediterranean port and to secure an ally against threats from a traditional enemy to the north, the Arameans in Damascus. Such alliances were often sealed in the ancient Near East through a diplomatic marriage, in which a member of one royal household would wed a member of the other (compare 1 Kings 11:1–4). Omri concluded his alliance with Ethbaal of Tyre by arranging the marriage of his son Ahab to the Tyrian princess Jezebel. When Jezebel arrived in Israel, she was not content to worship her own deity in private (1 Kings 16:32). She sought to remove the worship of Yahweh from Israel and to substitute the worship of foreign deities. Jezebel included in her entourage 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah, the queen mother of the gods (1 Kings 18:19). Under Ahab and his successors in the dynasty, largely due to the tutelage and influence of Jezebel, the religious life of the northern kingdom became a war between the ruling dynasty, which promoted the worship of Baal, and those who adhered to Israel’s ancestral faith in Yahweh. Jezebel, in her relationship with Ahab, appears almost to have chosen for herself the role of Anat, the warlike and capricious goddess who was the consort of Baal.

Baal was worshiped under many names throughout the ancient Near East. The Baal that Jezebel introduced was probably Baal Melqart of Tyre. Archaeological discoveries have greatly enhanced our knowledge of Baalism. The mythological texts discovered in the ruins of ancient Ugarit have been especially helpful. Ugarit was a city north of Tyre on the Mediterranean coast that flourished between 1400 and 1200 B.C. In the texts discovered there, Baal was depicted as a nature deity whose primary function and powers in the pantheon encompassed weather and fertility. Baal was the storm deity; he was called the “Rider of the Clouds.” He was often portrayed with a lightning bolt in one hand, and thunder was identified as his voice. Ancient Syro-Palestine was an agrarian society, and because Baal gave the rains, he was worshiped to insure the fertility of the land and the production of crops. Since all of life was tied to the fertility of the land, it is not hard to see why it was so tempting to Israel to worship Baal. Describing the impact of Baalism in Israel, Hosea likened Israel to an adulterous wife who said, “I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink” (Hos. 2:5; cf. 2:2–13). Because the fruitfulness of the land was attributed to Baal, he was often associated with motifs of life, healing, and death.

Ugaritic mythology tied the life cycle of Baal to the annual crop cycle: Baal was defeated by the god Mot (“death”), and, as a result, the crops died and the land became unproductive. Then, after a battle in which his consort, Anat, played a prominent role, Baal returned victorious in the autumn, and the fall rains that signaled his return restored fertility to the earth.

Understanding a bit about the Baalism that was sweeping Israel in the ninth century helps to set the Elijah and Elisha stories in sharper focus. Time and again the theological tenets of Baal worship were challenged by these prophets. Yahweh would demonstrate through them that he was the giver of life, rain, and fertility, and that Baal was nothing. We will return to these themes as they are relevant in the chapters that follow.

2. The historical background of the author: when the stories were written. Although the Elijah and Elisha stories are largely set in the ninth century B.C., this was not the period in which the author of the book of Kings (which was later divided into two books, 1 Kings and 2 Kings) lived. The book of Kings is anonymous. We know that the author used many sources in writing his history, and the literary development of the book may be rather complex. The final editor/writer must have lived at a point later than the last events he reports. The book ends by recording the release of Jehoiachin from prison in Babylon during the reign of Amel-Marduk (562–560 B.C.) (2 Kings 25:27). Since the writer does not report the return from captivity to Jerusalem, he probably lived during the later part of the Babylonian exile, sometime between 560 and 540 B.C.

It is valuable for readers today to ask about the Elijah and Elisha stories, not just in terms of the historical significance of the events that they relate, but also in terms of their literary function in the book of Kings. Why did the author choose to include this material in his report? How do these stories fit the overall purpose and interest of the book as a whole? How were they relevant to a writer during the period of the Babylonian exile?

The book of Kings is often called “Deuteronomic history.” This is because the writer chose a set of laws unique to Deuteronomy to provide the perspective from which he evaluated Israel’s history. Deuteronomy warns Israel about the seductive threat of the foreign religions and foreign gods that the nation would encounter as it entered the land; the book is much concerned that foreign religion not be found among the Israelites (Deut. 12:1–3, 29–32). During Israel’s captivity in Babylon (586–539 B.C.), the nation was once again confronted with the seductive tenets of foreign religions and foreign gods. For the writer of Kings, these stories of Israel’s encounter with a foreign religion in the past would provide important reminders that in spite of appearances, foreign gods were a delusion.

Have you ever noticed the disproportionate amount of attention given to the Elijah and Elisha stories in Kings? The largest part of 15 out of the 47 chapters in the book (1 Kings 17–2 Kings 9) covers the lives of these two prophets. Almost a third of the history is given to the roughly 80-year period during which they lived, even though the book itself covers over 400 years. Many other prophets are mentioned in Kings, but only here do prophetic stories and miracles cluster with such frequency. The book of Kings, again taking its cue from Deuteronomy (18:9–22), is very much concerned with the power and fulfillment of the words of the prophets. The prophets who followed Moses would also perform signs and wonders (Deut. 34:10–12). Their words would come to pass (Deut. 18:21–22).

Deuteronomy also authorized Israel to have a king (Deut. 17), and the “Deuteronomic history” (Joshua-Kings) traces the history of that institution. The king was charged with maintaining the basic religious orientation of the nation (Deut. 17:18–20), and the well-being of the nation was tied to his faithful obedience to divine law. The entire section of the Elijah and Elisha narratives is introduced by the statement that Ahab exceeded all other kings in his wickedness (1 Kings 16:30–33), and the writer of Kings uses the Elijah and Elisha stories to illustrate this fact. Since the continuation of a dynasty was tied to its fidelity to God (Deut. 17:20), the writer of Kings makes a point of the wickedness of Ahab and his successors and demonstrates how their rule came to an end in the coup d’état staged by Jehu (2 Kings 9–10). The emphasis on Baalism leads naturally to the destruction of Baal’s ministers and priests (2 Kings 10:18–31).

The writer of Kings is much concerned to demonstrate that God rules over kings and kingdoms, and that he raises them up and disposes of them as he sees fit. From his vantage point in the sixth century B.C., the writer of Kings is showing how God could also bring judgment and exile on both the northern kingdom (722 B.C.) and the southern kingdom (586 B.C.). In the same way, the God who had raised up the Babylonian armies that destroyed Jerusalem could also bring an end to the Babylonian kingdom.

The Elijah and Elisha stories have a somewhat different atmosphere than most of the rest of Kings, largely because they concentrate so much on the lives of the two prophets, whereas accounts of the prophets are more sporadic and less extended in the remainder of the book. We can only speculate about what sourc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1. Christians and the Old Testament
• 2. The Lord, Our Provider
• 3. Yahweh Versus Baal: The Ultimate Contest
• 4. The Further Adventures of Elijah, the Servant of the Lord
• 5. Elijah Versus the Kings
• 6. Elisha Succeeds Elijah
• 7. Déjà Vu
• 8. More Miracles
• 9. God in the Little and the Big Things
• 10. The Power of God and the Power of the Prophet
• 11. The Death of Elisha
• Notes
• For Further Reading
• Index of Scripture