Elijah’s Contrasting Mountain Tests

Welcome to Bible Project Podcast.

We're continuing to trace the theme of the mountain through the story of the Bible.

We've seen that mountains are an overlapping space of heaven and earth, where humans are asked to ascend.

And when they do, they face a crisis.

Will they surrender everything and trust in God's wisdom in order to gain what is truly life?

Or will they cling to their own wisdom?

In today's episode, we talk about the story of Elijah.

He's a prophet during the time of King Ahaz whose wife is Jezebel.

During Elijah's time, Israel has turned their allegiance to the God Baal.

And so Elijah calls a drought on the land and then he takes the people of Israel up on Mount Carmel to force them into a decision.

Who will they trust?

The true God of all creation or this domesticated God of their own making?

Elijah approached the people and he said, How long will you go limping limping after two opinions?

If Yahweh is God, follow him.

If Baal is God, go after him.

It's a showdown, Yahweh versus Baal.

Elijah calls on God and fire from heaven consumes the altar.

The people repent and they renew their commitment to Yahweh.

Rain falls.

The king of Ahab throws a feast.

It's a high note for Elijah's ministry.

When the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, Yahweh, he is God.

This is a little Eden picture of God meeting his people with the gift of present and rain and life on the mountain.

And so it seems like things are going to go great from here.

Except they don't.

Queen Jezebel threatens to kill Elijah, and instead of Elijah remaining bold, he flees into the wilderness and tells God he wants to die.

He goes to Mount Sinai, and he complains to God.

He does the opposite of what Moses did in this very spot.

He God to take his life, but not for the people, but for himself.

He's accusing the people who just turned back to Yahweh.

It's a portrait of how the same person can become that mediating mountaintop hero to reunite heaven and earth, yet that same person is capable within just a few choices of becoming completely unable to hear from God on the mountain.

Today on the podcast, we'll talk about Elijah's two very different cosmic mountain experiences.

Thanks for joining us.

Here we go.

Hey, Tim.

Hey, John.

Good morning.

Yeah, good morning.

Hi.

We're talking about the mountain.

That's what we're doing, cosmic mountains, in fact.

It's these places that are in-between space.

They're land, so it's where we go.

as humans.

Humans belong.

Humans belong on the land, but it's a part of the land that's elevated so high up towards the skies that the highest places of those peaks that we call mountains, they are described in the Bible as an in-between kind of space, often spaces where people encounter heaven on earth.

The main mountain at the center of the show, there's two in the Hebrew Bible, Mount Sinai, down in the deserts, and then Mount Zion, like the hill of Jerusalem.

So these are places where heaven meets earth.

So that's kind of the basic premise of mountains in the Bible.

And the biblical authors take that for granted.

What the biblical authors do is they place key pivotal moments of the larger biblical story consistently take place on mountains.

And this is kind of the unique biblical take on the cosmic mountain motif is that it's a place where humanity comes to terms with the presence of God in the ultimate reality of human nature and purpose and existence.

It's on the garden mountain where humans are commissioned to rule as God's image and to spread God's order and generosity and goodness out into the land as God's partners.

But humans, you know, really don't trust God and act in really terrible ways as a result towards each other.

But God wants to get people back up the mountain.

And so isn't it interesting that in the stories of Abraham, a key covenant partner of God's, his whole journey of trusting God, failing, and having to reckon with it all takes place on a journey between two mountains, the mountains connected to the tree of Morah in Genesis 12, and then the mountains of Moriah that also has a tree on it in Genesis 22.

The story of Mount Sinai, Israel is going to face a test of whether they'll trust God as God's covenant partners.

They blow that opportunity and

because of what happens with the golden calf, Moses ascends the mountain and puts himself in the vulnerable place before God, even surrenders his life and identifies with these covenant violators of Israel down below.

We looked at the story of David and of how David brought the ark of God's mountain presence up to Jerusalem and he blows it himself with Bathsheba and then all the cascades out of that.

And then the story of Samuel, the Samuel scroll ends with David facing a test on that same mountain that is also called the mountain of Moriah, where Abraham had his test, where he both blows it through a terrible choice that affects the people, but then in the last moment, he inserts himself and like Moses, surrenders his life for his own sins on the mountain.

And that's the place where the temple gets built, and that's the place where David's son is going to face his test.

And at first, he responds well.

He asks God to give him wisdom, but then he uses that wisdom to produce too much toast.

And it corrupts, distorts his sense of right and wrong.

So I'm interested in what the biblical authors want to highlight is that mountains are this place where the crisis, being on the mountain forces you into a crisis of reckoning with who you are, what you define as good, what you think is life.

And mountains are typically places where God forces people to surrender what they think is life.

and the life they've created by their own wisdom and to surrender it only to discover that God wants to give them an even deeper, richer life and vocation, but it requires a kind of death, a death on the passageway up the mountain.

And I think that's the motif that so fascinates me.

And it's the motif that the biblical authors keep putting in front of us when it comes to these mountains.

So as we look at these stories of people journeying up the mountain or having tests on the mountain, or next is a story about Elijah and his throwdown on the mountain.

We're learning about what does it mean, what does it take to be people who exist on the cosmic mountain?

And when we look at David and Solomon, we're seeing tales of the crisis played out for us to get wisdom.

We are

mortal dirt creatures who have this impulse to be protective, to not trust, to not be generous.

But we've been invited.

and placed in an environment, in an atmosphere, where that's just not going to work.

and the way to exist in this atmosphere is trust and generosity and abundance and we've got to learn how to exist in that atmosphere and it feels like a death it feels like to learn to live in that atmosphere is to lose so many parts of ourselves that feel vital yeah yeah but once you've done that if you can do that if you can pass through

then you actually are finding an existence that is more life than you could have imagined.

That actually the atmosphere of the cosmic mountain is a wonderful place to exist.

Yes, yeah.

If you could learn to breathe, it's oxygen, essentially.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.

And that's the idea of heaven and earth uniting in your life, in your communities, anywhere.

Yep, that's right.

Yeah.

And so that process of giving up something that I thought was life, but actually might prevent me from really experiencing the abundant life of God's gift on the mountain.

It feels like a death to give that thing up.

Even if I get it back again, I don't know that I'm going to get it back again.

What I know is that I need to give it up.

And that's what's happening with Isaac.

That's what's happening with David.

And that's what's happening with Solomon, too.

I don't know how to lead these people, Solomon says.

So he puts himself in a vulnerable place before God to say, I don't know what to do.

And then that release of control, he finds, at least for a time,

when he trusts God, he gets an abundant version of life that he had never even imagined.

That's a major theme of these mountain stories: somebody giving up or not giving up the thing that is most precious to them.

What's interesting about the story of Elijah is that two stories with opposite lessons are placed right next to each other: a success story and then a major fail story.

So, to the Elijah story, we go.

Okay.

So We ended our last conversation with Solomon and about how he ended up forfeiting his role as the wise son of David king.

He married hundreds and hundreds of women who drew his heart away in Israel's heart to follow other gods.

The kingdom splits in the next generation.

A bunch of the tribes in the north secede, and that kingdom is typically called Israel.

And then Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, remains in the south.

The author of kings starts alternating back and forth between north and south kings as the generations go by.

And seven generations after the split, the seventh king is a guy named Achav,

otherwise known as Ahab.

Okay.

But Achav.

Ach means brother.

Av means father.

Brother-father.

His name means brother-father.

Which is pretty rad.

And the seventh king is climactically the worst, worst of the bunch.

And he's in the north?

He's in the north.

Yep.

His story begins in 1 Kings chapter 16, verse 29.

And the important thing for the summary is that he's introduced as,

well, Ahab, the son of Omri, did raw, bad in the eyes of Yahweh, more than all who came before him.

Okay.

This is a new low.

If it wasn't enough that he imitated the sins of Jeroboam, that was the king that broke off way back after Solomon.

Okay.

So now the

seven kings.

Yeah.

And what he did was build two alternate temples and put golden calves in them.

That's what's being referred to.

So not only did he continue like the worship of the golden calves in those temples, he also took as his wife Ezeel,

the daughter of Ethbaal, the king of Sidon.

He went and he served Baal or Baal and bowed down to him.

So he marries the princess of Sidon, which is a kingdom connected with Phoenicia right up north, whose patron deity is Baal,

the god of thunder, and a storm god

and a fertility god.

Whose mountain is...

His mountain is either, depends, I think for Sidonians, it would have been Yabal-Akra, the cosmic mountain way up in the north.

And in the library of literature...

that comes from this culture called the Ugaritic Library.

Baal is one of the names of their chief deities.

And there's all these stories about him slaying the dragon and defeating the waters and ascending the mountain to build a temple and a castle up there and reigning forever

and providing food for everybody and rain from the mountain.

So he's the rain provider.

And this is a big deal because

for

God's people, the Israelites, it's like the main thing is don't worship other gods.

Yeah, no other god liberated you from slavery in Egypt.

Yeah.

Just Yahweh alone.

So don't give your allegiance to other gods.

It won't lead to life.

It's the first

commandment.

You shall have no other gods before me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep, that's right.

Okay.

And so what's interesting is because Baal is associated with rain in particular,

what happens next is clearly a jab.

at the religious culture and thought of Baalism.

And that story begins in 1 Kings 17, verse 1, which just begins with saying, there was a guy named Eliyah,

the Tishbite.

Elijah.

Elijah, yes.

Eliyah means my God is Yah, short for Yahweh.

And so Elijah said to Ahab, as Yahweh lives, the God of Israel before whom I stand, There will be no dew and no rain for years except by my word.

I'm the the rain god.

Yeah, Yahweh's the rain god and he and Elijah is his spokesman.

Okay.

Yep.

So this whole story then of Elijah and Ahab and their tension takes place in the course of a drought.

The whole thing's set in a drought.

And that's a crisis for anybody who worships Baal.

If there's no rain,

then Baals must be ticked off at you.

We're not in the right relationship with Baal if there's no rain.

So the drama is about how God provides food and water for his prophet in the midst of this drought.

And we don't have time to go through 1 Kings 17, though it's amazing.

What I want to focus on is chapter 18.

Chapter 18 begins, and many days later, the word of Yahweh came to Elijah in the third year.

So sequences of three are almost always associated with the test.

There's going to be some test of someone's trust in this story.

And God said, go present yourself to Ahab so that I can give rain on the face of the land.

So Yahweh is showing his role as creator by withholding rain, and now he's showing his role as creator by giving rain.

So Elijah went to present himself to Ahab, and the famine was very severe in Samaria, which became the capital city of the north.

So when

Ahab and Elijah meet, Ahab saw Elijah and said to him, Is that you?

You who have thrown Israel into confusion?

This whole drought's your fault.

Like, this is your fault.

Elijah responds, no, no, no.

I didn't throw Israel into confusion.

You and the house of your father have by forsaking the commands of Yahweh and following after Baal.

So send word and assemble all of Israel to me on Mount Garden.

Mount Carmel.

It's called Mount Carmel.

Carmel is a Hebrew word for a cultivated plot of land where you grow fruit trees and grapevines.

Okay.

Garden Mount.

So on Mount Garden,

so in the third year on Mount Garden,

I want you to get 450 prophets of Baal.

So get the equivalents of who I am for Yahweh.

Okay.

Get 450.

And are these Israelites because it's Ahab's been worshiping Baal?

Oh, that's a good question.

You know, it doesn't say.

Okay.

So probably

it's a whole mix.

Yeah.

Some Sidonians came down and

450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah, who was a female Canaanite fertility goddess, a female goddess.

All those prophets who eat at the table of Jezebel.

So Jezebel's the key sponsor for this new religious order in Israel.

She's the connection to the Sidonians and

the way they worship.

Yeah.

So the whole introduction of Baal allegiance in Israel is connected to his marriage to her.

But she's the real engine of it.

So Ahab sent word among the Israelites and he assembled all the prophets to Mount Garden.

Elijah approached the people and he said to all the people, so just imagine, it's just as if all of Israel is now on Mount Garden.

How long will

you go limping after two opinions?

That's a deep rabbit hole.

We don't have time.

Okay.

But that word limping is really interesting.

But it's the idea of you've got two paths in the road and you can't decide.

You're trying to worship.

And you're like wavering between the two.

And he says, if Yahweh is God, follow him.

If Baal is God, go after him.

You can't worship both.

You're trying to do both.

And it's a contradiction in terms.

So choose one.

Time to choose.

Time to choose.

Then Elijah said to the people, I alone am left as a prophet of Yahweh, but the prophets of Baal are 450.

Now here's something that's really interesting.

That's actually not true.

Elijah is not the only prophet of Yahweh.

He's not.

This chapter begin

with Elijah going to Ahab's right-hand

courtier servant, a guy named Obadiah.

And what we're told is that Obadiah feared Yahweh.

So he's like, he's pro-Yahweh, working in the court of Ahab, who's pro-Yahweh and Baal.

And when Jezebel was going around killing the prophets of Yahweh, you're like, oh my gosh,

she's on like a assassination spree.

Obadiah took a hundred Yahweh prophets and hid them by 50s in a cave and sustained them with food and water.

So Elijah's the only one not hiding?

So he's the only one not hiding.

Now, you could say, well, it's just ignorance.

He doesn't know those prophets exist because they're in hiding.

On Mount Garden.

I'm the only one.

I'm the only one here.

There's 450 of you.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because he's going to take this kind of true insight and like inflate it big time in the next chapter.

So famously, what he says is, let's get two bowls and build two altars.

You pray to Baal, but note, don't set it on fire.

You pray to Baal.

I'll pray to Yahweh.

The God who answers with fire from heaven, a lightning bolt that sets the altar on fire.

That's God.

Yeah.

It's a pretty simple test.

But notice the test is for the people.

So the people are there.

They are wavering between two opinions about who is the true God.

And Elijah's going to force this to a test.

So really, this is a drama about the people's wavering loyalty.

Who do they think is God?

That's the test.

Well, okay, except that

the people are going to decide based off of which God shows up.

So in a way, the test is also for.

Oh, I understand.

Yes, that's right.

Yeah.

Which God is real.

Which God is real.

Let's test.

Yeah.

And then based on that, your loyalty should logically follow what happens as a result of this test.

You're right.

Actually, it's as much a test for Yahweh

as it is for the people.

Do we have a hint here that like Elijah?

Because it seems like testing Yahweh is not

cool?

Yeah,

not a typical kind of move.

Yeah, well, he's presented as being so in with Yahweh

that he's putting forth is apparently God's down with this.

Yeah, that's what it seems like.

That's the assumption of the narrative.

Right.

And, well, as we'll see, that assumption gets itself kind of problematized as the story develops.

But it seems like God's down for this because God responds.

So he lets the prophets of Baal go first.

Yeah.

I'm going to summarize.

They pray and cry out.

They dance.

They end up doing self-mutilation, which is apparently some kind of cultural practice.

And multiple times, the narrator just says, there was no voice.

There was no response.

There was no answer to their prayers or to their cry.

He jokes, perhaps Baal's on a journey.

He's on a work trip.

Maybe he's asleep and needs to wake up.

Yeah, it gets sassy.

But there was no voice, no response, no answer.

Elijah said, everybody, all the people, come near to me.

Then he rebuilds a Yahweh altar right there on top of the mountain.

He rebuilds it from 12 stones according to the number of the tribes of Jacob.

Now that's interesting because the tribes are split right now.

He has a vision of all Israel reunited

on the mountain, experiencing the presence of God.

This is also what Moses did when the covenant with Yahweh was made on Mount Sinai.

He built a 12-stone altar.

So this big hyperlink.

He's like a new Moses.

Then he built the altar.

Then he arranged the wood and had the bowl cut into pieces.

And then he ups the ante, this famous.

He says, get four jars, fill them with water.

And this is during the famine, during the drought.

This is the most precious thing.

He's surrendering the water that is life.

So get four jars.

This isn't just showing off.

No.

He's making a point.

He's surrendering what to them is the most precious thing they have at the moment.

Pour it on the wood.

Do it again.

Do it a third time.

So in the third year of the drought, three times.

Yeah.

Three times four.

That is the four jugs.

So twelve

jugs of water poured three times.

So it's all the test imagery.

Okay.

And the test is for the 12 tribes of Israel.

Anyway, it's a great number symbolism.

And then he prays.

He says, Yahweh, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that goes back to the ancestors, let it be known today that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things by your word.

Answer me, Yahweh, answer me, so this people will know that you, O Yahweh, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back again.

Then the fire of Yahweh fell down, and it ate up the burnt offering, it ate up the wood, it ate up the stones.

It ate up the dust and it ate up the water that was in the trench.

It licked it all up.

Wow.

When the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, Yahweh, he is God.

Yahweh, he is God.

That's a hot fire.

Yeah.

I've been on a camping trip where we've made like a really hot fire and it'll just burn anything up.

Easy.

You know, you think like aluminum doesn't burn?

Oh, yeah.

Aluminum fires can burn.

They'll burn.

Yeah.

So it's like that kind of meaning be reduced to ash.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So basically you're like anything will get reduced to ash, but not the stones.

Yeah, the stones.

I've never seen the stones reduced to ash.

I guess that would, from our vantage point, it would be like turning them back into molten

material.

Yeah.

Wow.

It's hot fire.

This is super hot fire.

So the people respond.

Yahweh's God.

Great job, Elijah.

And great job, Yahweh.

And great job, people.

Like, it seems like it works.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interestingly, after this passing of the test and the people make the right choice, Elijah, he gets a little, something like a cane impulse.

He gets a violent impulse.

And he says, seize all those prophets of Baal.

Don't let any of them escape.

They seized them.

Elijah brought them down to like a stream.

And he slaughtered them all there.

The word slaughter, it's shachat.

It's usually used of animals, how you prepare an animal for sacrifice.

So that's gnarly.

He's pulling like a, what Phineas did.

He was a priest from a priestly family in the wilderness.

He speared an Israelite and a non-Israelite woman through, it seems like when they were having sex in a tent, because this guy, this Israelite, had given his allegiance to another God by wanting to marry this woman.

Is that in Judges?

It's in the book of Numbers.

That's the book of Numbers.

Yeah.

And he's said to have zeal.

Oh, yeah.

Zeal forever for Yahweh.

And Elijah's following that same tradition here.

Now,

seems like you kind of have this undertone here of Elijah went rogue.

Well, I don't want to go that far.

I just want to notice...

Also at the golden calf, when Moses enacts the killing spree of the Levites to kill the idolaters of the golden calf.

There, the narrative is really ambiguous of whether that was God's idea or Moses' idea or Moses claiming that it's God's idea, but the narrator never explicitly says so.

There's this motif within Israel's story about the use of violence to coerce Israel into following Yahweh.

And it seems to not really work.

And it's this interesting study of religious violence that keeps not working.

That's a theme in the Hebrew Bible that I want to learn more about.

But it's happening here.

Yeah, because you could read this and easily just be like, Elijah's on Team Yahweh.

They're in cooperation this whole time.

And Yahweh shows up.

And so when Elijah makes this move,

Why would you not consider that Yahweh and him are still tag team anonymous?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

my point is just that it's ambiguous.

But what's interesting is it does set in most of the time.

You have made it feel ambiguous, but I don't see it in the text where the ambiguity,

the ambiguity is hyperlinking it to all these other things.

The ambiguity would be through the hyperlinks.

Okay.

Yeah.

When God's representatives employ violence to coerce religious devotion to Yahweh, it doesn't work.

Like the outcome of it is almost always it backfiring.

And so you have to stop and say, what's the purpose of that motif?

That religious violence actually doesn't generate trust and faith among God's people.

Yeah, so that's the little, that's the rabbit hole.

Okay.

The zeal rabbit hole.

Yeah, the zeal rabbit hole.

So what follows is Elijah goes, tells Ahab.

So we're not told if Ahab made this confession of Yahweh as God.

Ahab is an Israelite, and we're told that all the people of Israel were up there, and all the people saw and said, Yahweh is God.

So I think we're meant to see Ahab as among

those who choose the lane.

Yep.

Elijah said to Ahab, hey, go up to the top of the mountain and eat and drink, for I hear the sound, the noise of rain.

So let's go have an Eden feast and celebrate God's blessing that's returning.

because God's people have acknowledged him as God.

So Ahab went up and he had a big feast.

And Elijah went to the very tippy top of garden, Carmel, and he kneeled down to the ground.

He put his face between his knees.

He is praying.

He's in intercession mode.

And he said to his servant, please go look towards the sea.

Mount Carmel exists today.

Yeah.

And there's a park on top of it.

And you can go up and look at the sea?

Yeah, it's cool.

It's great.

I had a picnic up there once.

It's a great spot.

Go look in the direction of the sea.

He went up and looked, and the servant said,

I don't see anything.

And then Elijah said, go back.

This happened seven times.

So now this servant's faith, Elijah's faith is being tested,

right?

Because he's like, I said that there was going to be rain.

Oh.

But there's not, where's the cloud?

Okay.

So the rain hasn't showed up.

Yeah, it's like everybody's getting tested in the story.

Yahweh had to show up.

The people had to show up and make a choice.

And now Elijah's prediction of the rain is being tested.

And it happened at the seventh time.

The servant said, well, I see a small cloud.

It's about the size of, well, a human hand coming up from the sea.

That is a small cloud.

It's a very small cloud.

Elijah said, okay, go tell Ahab, harness your horses, get ready.

Rain's coming.

Rain's coming.

You're going to be riding in the mud, buddy.

So get on your chariot and beat the rain.

Because in no time, the heavens grew dark with clouds and wind, and there was rain.

Ahab rode to Jezreel.

But the hand of Yahweh was on Elijah.

Where's Yezreel?

Where'd he go there?

It's down the hill.

Let's see.

I need a map to remember if it's due east or if it's a bit northeast.

What's the significance of him going there?

Oh,

I was a major Israelite town in that time.

Okay.

I would need to do a little more homework on that.

So Ahab's writing, and then the hand of Yahweh is on Elijah, and he girded up his loins.

That is, he tucked in his excess robe into his belt,

and he ran in front of Ahab.

Like he beat Ahab.

He's like, he's running with God's pleasure.

Chariots of fire.

Chariots of fire.

Pun intended.

That's how that scene ends.

First test.

Cool.

You're like, great.

Yeah.

It's a great final scene.

It is a great final scene.

Like the blessing is provided when God's people surrender their allegiance to anyone else except the Creator.

When Yahweh meets, sees that trust and well, sorry, he didn't see their trust.

God responded first when his people weren't trusting him.

Ooh, that's an interesting twist.

God responded with generosity, and that's what compels the having the showdown was an act of generosity.

Yeah, Yahweh responding with fire was an act of generosity to compel

faith in his people.

And then the trust of Yahweh's prophet is tested as he waits for the rain and he keeps praying, waiting for the rain seven times over.

And so it seems like things are going to go great from here.

Except they don't.

It seems like we just had a party on Mount Garden and a feast and God provided rain.

Sweet.

What could go wrong?

And that's what the next story is about.

But for a moment, let's just pause.

This is a little Eden picture of God meeting his people with the gift of present and rain and life on the mountain.

It results in the Eden feast on Mount Garden.

Chapter 19.

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he killed all those prophets with the sword.

And remember, she sponsored all those prophets.

Yeah.

So she just lost on her investment.

So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, May the gods do to me and may they do even more if at this time tomorrow I don't make your life like the one of them.

I'm coming after you.

Tomorrow, I'm going to come kill you.

Yeah.

Which, if you stop and think about it, that's kind of a funny thing to do if you really want to kill somebody.

Sure.

Yeah.

Advance notice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like if she wanted to actually kill him.

Yeah.

It's kind of asking someone to a duel anymore.

Yeah, totally.

Or telling them, like, get out of Dodge, you know, which is what he does.

Okay.

So this is fascinating.

Think of what just happened in the previous story, and then look at his response.

He was filled with fear.

So he got up and he ran

for his life.

He went so far, this is my commentary, he went down to Be'er Shava, the well of seven,

which is the southern, southernmost town in the southern kingdom of Judah, right near the border with the wilderness down there.

And he even left behind his servant there, and he went a day's journey into the wilderness.

Oh, wow.

And he sat down under one tree.

In Hebrew, it says one tree.

One tree.

So think just a desolate region

with one little, a broom tree, which is more like a bush with barely any shade.

And he asked Yahweh if he could die.

He said, It's enough, Yahweh.

Take my life.

I am no better than any of my ancestors.

Yeah, this is taking a turn.

Yes.

This is so different.

Yeah.

This is so different.

Yeah.

He

didn't show any of this insecurity or fear up on the mountain.

He was just bold, you know, with the power of God.

Yeah.

And he was facing 400.

Yeah.

Like enemies, as it were.

He took out Jezebel's crew

in an act of faith, in alliance with Yahweh, in a duel.

And then Jezebel's like, now I want to duel you again.

He's like, oh, boy.

Yeah.

Now I'm scared.

Yeah, that's right.

It doesn't really add up.

It doesn't add up.

And he flees out of the land and then even beyond the ordered realm of the land into the chaos realm of the wilderness.

Yeah.

And then wants to die.

And then he wants to leave the land of the living.

So he leaves his people.

He leaves his servant behind.

He leaves the land of his ancestors, and now he wants to leave the land of the living, just like solitude, isolation, despair.

Yeah.

Despair.

And what he says is, it's enough.

Too much, Yahweh.

You've put too much on me.

He is

saying to Yahweh, the situation you put me in as your prophet

is too much.

The queen wants to kill me.

Well, she's not queen, but she's the...

Princess.

Yeah, she is the queen.

She's the queen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So he's kind of.

I mean, that's intense.

The queen wants to kill you.

It is intense.

But just such a contrast.

Yeah.

It just feels like something's not going to fall.

Yahweh.

I'm tapping out.

I'm tapping out.

Take my life.

I'm no better than my ancestors.

Meaning, listen, like, if I can't accomplish a transformation among the people by the thing that just happened.

So he's appealing back to the prophets who came before.

Guy named Achyah and Samuel.

If I can't lead the people back to you, Yahweh.

Well, he did did lead the people back to you.

Exactly.

Okay.

That's exactly right.

It seems like he's lost touch with reality.

Okay.

So what happens is God feeds him under this tree.

He sends an angel

and he's fed with food that has all the vocabulary of God feeding Israel manna in the wilderness.

Even the name of the jar.

that's provided for him is the name of the jar that the manna got put in in Exodus.

It's really interesting.

So it's like a reap, he's providing for his faithless people or person in the wilderness.

And what he says is, get up, eat this food, because the journey is greater than you are.

So God acknowledges, like, you have a task before you that is too great for you, but I'm asking you to do it.

So God graciously feeds him in the wilderness.

And then what we're told is he got up, ate, and drank, and went in the strength of that food 40 days and 40 nights.

And you're like, oh, just like Moses.

And he went to Koreb,

the mountain of God, which is otherwise known as Mount Sinai.

Okay.

So we are really just, we're doing the wilderness thing.

We're doing the Moses thing.

We're doing the Moses thing.

The Moses thing.

Yeah.

He's all of Israel in a way, because he's Israel that's

fled.

Well, stuck in the wilderness.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Being nourished by God.

And then now

being asked to go up the mountain.

And he was already a Moses figure on Mount Garden when he built that 12-stone altar, right?

Put a choice before Israel, follow Yahweh or not.

So he's like Moses already.

But now he's like Moses.

Moses asked God to take his life once in Numbers chapter 11 when the people complained about not having enough food.

And he was like, I can't do this.

I can't carry these people.

Just take my life.

So now he's like Moses in his despair.

And so he goes to Mount Sinai.

So now he's going to another mountain and it's just him.

This story is so rad.

It's a little riddle.

He came to the cave.

So you're just supposed to know what cave.

He goes to the cave

and he spent the night there.

And you're like, well, there's only one other person who's been on this mountain in the story of the Bible who was...

stayed the night in a cave up there.

Okay.

This is Moses' cave.

Yeah, it's Moses' cave when he was up there.

And what was he doing?

As he talked with Yahweh, spending the night in the cave, he was interceding,

asking for God's mercy on the faithless people,

identifying himself with the people.

So much so that he said, if you don't go with us, if you don't forgive the people, then I'm not going and take my life.

How different

is what Elijah is going to do sleeping in the cave on the same mountain.

The word of Yahweh came to him and said, Elijah, why are you here?

What are you doing here?

This is an important spot.

Yeah, this is an important spot.

I can kind of, you think Yahweh could kind of be

put the pieces together.

Yeah.

He's trying to.

It raises the question is, where did God feed Elijah to go?

When he said the journey is too great for you, where was he supposed to go?

Ah, yeah, yeah.

Was he supposed to go back?

Like, it didn't say.

It just said, he ate the food and then he went to Mount Sinai.

Right.

You're like, why did he go there?

Why did he go there?

Why'd he go there?

Yeah.

So this clues you in, Yahweh doesn't seem to think that's where he needs to be.

Elijah's like, why did you come here?

Yeah.

What are you doing here?

Got it.

Here it is.

Elijah said, I have been so zealous for you, Yahweh, God of armies.

Listen, the Israelites have forsaken your covenant.

They've torn down your altars and they've killed all your prophets with the sword.

I alone am the one left and they are trying to kill me.

Yeah.

Well, Jezebel is.

Okay, let's notice that.

Yeah.

He is taken what Jezebel said and made it as if all the people are trying to kill him.

So it's not quite true.

I alone am left over.

Well, that's not true.

Right.

In fact, there are 100 prophets.

living in a cave.

Yeah.

That that guy Obadiah.

Yeah.

So it's kind of surely ironic.

Ahab's chosen Elaine, those prophets could be out and about.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's not true, that he's alone.

They have killed your prophets with the sword.

Well, Jezebel did.

They have demolished your altars.

Well,

I guess more Jezebel did, but he just rebuilt one on Mount Carmel.

And he killed all of their prophets.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They have forsaken your covenant.

Well, yes, but they just

reannounced their allegiance.

I I was going to say, this story makes more sense if it was the story before.

Right?

The

story we just read.

Literally, the only thing honestly, transparently truthful in his speech is, I have been zealous for Yahweh.

Everything else is distorted, and it's not like it's a lie, but it's a distorted vision of reality.

Yeah, interesting.

Where he has interpreted everything that's happened as if

he's the center of the drama.

And notice what he doesn't do.

He's accusing the people who just re-signed up for the covenant.

And he does the opposite of what Moses did in this very spot.

In this spot, when the people were faithless and idolatrous, Moses is...

Moses says, I will be the covenant keeper for my people.

Yeah.

Even though the people are not down.

Yeah.

And so he offers his life in the place of the people.

Here, Elijah goes to the same spot, and not only does he not do that, he asks God to take his life, but not for the people, but for himself.

And now here, he's accusing the people who just turned back to Yahweh.

That they're not.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

He's a total distortion.

He is.

Yeah, dude.

This is a fascinating portrait of despair.

Yeah.

Of like the strange

ways that we,

right, distort reality in our minds when we spiral and become over-isolated.

And also, but also, I think, a little over-focused

on thinking that my story is the only story of what God is up to in the world.

He clearly thinks that the whole story of God and Israel hangs on him.

And he's like, it's hopeless.

It's over.

Take me now.

I mean, he did just play a pivotal role.

Yeah.

That's what's so puzzling.

But things went well.

I know, yeah, totally.

The only problem right now is he still has an enemy with Jezebel.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And somehow that pivotal moment.

That spun him out.

I want to be empathetic here.

Okay.

Because I think most of us know some kind of moment like this

where something really hard happens.

Yeah.

And it spins you out.

Totally.

And it's so hard to know what is reality anymore.

Yeah.

So I want to be sympathetic.

But at the same time, the jarring contrast between the Elijah of chapter 18 and this Elijah and the contrast with Moses.

Somebody really wants us to compare him to Moses and then contrast him with Moses.

Interesting.

So Yahweh responds, he says, go out and stand out on the mountain before Yahweh.

So what's interesting is standing before Yahweh is a key phrase.

That was the first thing Elijah said.

Yes,

he says in chapter 17, as Yahweh, the God of Israel, before whom I stand,

says there will be no dew or rain.

Oh, okay.

So

God's response is essentially, listen, stand before me.

Yeah.

Meaning, like, you're my guy.

Like, it's an invitation for Elijah to stand

before Yahweh.

It's a shorthand for stand in my presence.

Let's do this.

Suddenly, Yahweh passed by.

Oh, I know this.

I know the story.

With Moses.

Yeah.

With a great strong wind ripping the mountains, crushing rocks in front of Yahweh.

But Yahweh wasn't in the wind.

After the wind, there was an earthquake, but Yahweh wasn't in the earthquake.

After the earthquake, fire, but Yahweh wasn't in the fire.

And after the fire, there was,

and this is the famous line in the King James, it's translated as a still small voice.

Oh, that's King James.

Still small voice.

Still small voice.

It's

not quite right on.

The phrase is kol dema daka.

Kol means the sound.

Demama means

silence

or a void of sound such that the

silence itself feels like a sound.

Okay.

Have you ever been in somewhere that's so silent

that it actually your eardrums are experiencing something?

They're kind of ringing.

Yes.

But what they're ringing with is the sound of the absence of sound.

Right.

That's demama.

Okay.

There's a Hebrew word for that.

Yeah, demama.

It's a very precise word.

Yeah.

And then daka, which means

refers elsewhere to something that has been so pulverized or crushed into powder that it's like, hmm, it's almost transparent.

It's a thing, but not a thing.

Wait, what's that word again?

That's the last word, daka.

Daka.

So the phrase is kol demama, the sound.

of a sheer silence, a thin silence.

Okay.

In other words, in the story of Moses, when Yahweh showed up, what he said, he passed by in fire and wind, and he spoke, saying, Yahweh, Yahweh, gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loyal love and faithfulness.

Yahweh says this.

This is what Yahweh says.

Here in this story with a prophet who doesn't want his job anymore, Yahweh shows up in wind and fire and earthquake, but don't mistake those things for Yahweh himself.

And then right at the moment you think Yahweh is going to say something,

he just says nothing.

Then after that, Yahweh repeats his question.

What are you doing here?

And Elijah repeats the thing he just said, his distortion of reality.

And then Yahweh's speech is, all right, I need you to go back to the land, and you are going to appoint all of your replacements.

So go appoint Hazael, the king over Aram.

I'm going to use that guy to do my purpose.

Go appoint Jehu, the son of Nimchi

over Israel.

He's going to accomplish a bunch of stuff for me.

And then go anoint Elisha, and he's going to be a prophet in your place.

And listen, I have remaining in Israel 7,000.

who haven't bowed their knees to Baal.

You're actually not the only one, Elijah.

I've got a whole crew.

And if you're going to withdraw from my service and you're going to refuse to listen, then go appoint your replacements.

And that's how the story ends.

So he has a success on the mountain, and then he has this personal failure to trust God on the mountain.

And he forfeits his role as God's prophet.

Isn't that fascinating?

It's such a fascinating story.

Yeah.

So hearing the silence, it feels like, in context of all these stories now, it feels like that moment is about Elijah stuck in his own

delusion

that he can't hear Yahweh.

That's right.

Yes.

Yeah.

Even when Yahweh is showing up and all the things that are classic Yahweh, the fire, like he just did on Mount Carmel.

But now Elijah can't hear, sense God.

It's just like he's closed any accessibility to God out on the mountain.

On the very, like, we're playing with the contrast here.

So here's a guy who can't experience the heavenly presence of God on the mountain anymore because he's so living in his own head.

It's the guy who just brought down Yahweh fire

and turned all of Israel back to Yahweh on a mountain, on the garden mountain.

I know.

Just did that.

You just did that.

And now the same guy

is so lost now

that he can't hear the voice of God on the mountain.

Yeah.

So it's a portrait of how the same person can become that mediating mountaintop hero to reunite heaven and earth and turn faithless people back to God.

Yet that same person is capable within just a few choices of becoming completely unable to hear from God on the the mountain.

And not just that, it has to do with this, he has a selfish turn where he begins accusing the people instead of mediating on their behalf.

So the portrait of Elijah is really complicated.

Yeah.

He's a positive and a negative figure.

But that's true of Abraham.

That's true of David.

It's true of Solomon.

It's true of all these biblical characters.

Right.

Because, yeah, we've just come off of David and Solomon.

And what struck me with those is how it's the same kind of whiplash.

Yeah, a total total whiplash, yes.

And that's part of the narrative effect, I think, that keeps driving the messianic portrait or plotline forward in the history.

You hear it so tightly, like

it almost doesn't feel real.

You're like, could somebody really go through that?

But actually,

think about it.

You think about how fragile we are, really.

Yes.

Our psyches really are.

Yes.

And our ability to

keep a grasp on what's true that we could all see parts of our own life that make sense of the story.

That's exactly right.

Yeah.

The stories, you can, at a distance, be critical of him, just like you can of Israel in the wilderness.

Right.

But then the moment you think about your own life journey and see yourself in the mirror of these characters, you're like, oh yeah, I know this.

I've been there.

I've been there.

And yeah.

So both of these are depictions of the crisis of the mountain, the heavenly mountain coming down to meet people.

And sometimes it goes awesome and sometimes it doesn't.

And these two

positive and negative portraits are right next to each other with the same guy.

And that's the puzzle and the power, I think, of the Elijah story.

So there's a puzzle here about just the crisis of humanity's calling.

Yeah.

And there's also then at the center of this driving theme of who can ascend?

Who can ascend?

So we've got Adam and Eve, and we had Abraham, and we have Moses and David, Solomon, Elijah, and they're all problematic.

Yeah.

And so that's where I want to take our attention next, then, is in the portrait of the cosmic mountain in the Psalms, which is going to take all of these narrative themes and wrap them up in a handful of poems that we'll look at.

But one of them, the first line, is, Who then can ascend the mountain of the Lord?

Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast.

Next week we'll continue the theme of the mountain in the scroll of Psalms.

Specifically we'll look at Psalms 15 through 24.

And there we'll find the hope for a mountaintop intercessor who creates a cosmic feast.

This whole collection is about the arrival of a king who has suffered, been vindicated by God out of his suffering, holds a feast on Mount Zion that summons the righteous and the nations and even the dead.

Even the dead?

Well, that's next week.

Bible Project is a crowdfunded nonprofit and we exist to help people experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus.

And everything that we make is free because of the generous support of thousands of people just like you.

Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.

Hi, this is Fatima and I'm from Los Angeles, California.

This is Ryan Hughes.

I'm from Jonesboro, Tennessee.

I first heard about Bible Project back in the early days days of the YouTube series.

I first heard about Bible Project through a podcast that I listened to called The Bible Recap.

I use Bible Project for studying and for just getting to know God a little bit more each day.

And the videos make it easier to get to know him.

Plus, the artwork is just really great to look at.

I use Bible Project to lead small group discussions and my own personal contemplation.

My favorite thing about Bible Project is the animation.

The graphics are great and it's very appeasing to the eyes.

My favorite thing about Bible Project is the way Tim and John break down high concepts in a way that is approachable for people of all ages and backgrounds.

We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads us to Jesus.

We're a crowdfunded project by people like me.

Find free videos, study notes, podcasts, classes, and more.

Over at BibleProject.com.

Hey everyone, this is Tyler from the podcast team.

I'm going on three years here at Bible Project and I have the honor of getting to mix and edit this podcast for you all.

I love getting to learn with you all as I edit and also one of my favorite things about what I get to do is actually the music breaks and sound design in these podcasts and I hope you guys find those to be meaningful to you as well.

There is a whole team of us that makes the podcast come to life every week.

For a full list of credits check out the show notes of this episode wherever you stream your podcast and you can also find those on our website.