Mount Carmel #16

Mount Carmel, a wooded ridge overlooking the Mediterranean coast, is the dramatic setting for one of the Old Testament’s most vivid contests of faith. During the reign of the idolatrous King Ahab and his wife Jezebel, who had brought the worship of Baal into Israel, the prophet Elijah summons the king, all Israel, and 450 prophets of Baal to the mountain for a public test of whose god is truly God. Elijah challenges the wavering people directly: “How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him” (1 Kings 18:21).

Fire from Heaven

Each side prepares a bull for sacrifice but lights no fire; whichever god answers by consuming the offering will be acknowledged as the true God (1 Kings 18:22-24). The prophets of Baal cry out and cut themselves with knives from morning until evening, and nothing happens. Elijah then repairs the Lord’s broken-down altar with twelve stones, digs a trench around it, and has his own offering drenched with water three times until the trench itself is full. At the hour of the evening sacrifice, he prays a brief prayer, and fire falls at once: “the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench” (1 Kings 18:38). Seeing it, the people fall on their faces and cry out, “The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God” (1 Kings 18:39).

Judgment and Rain

Elijah has the prophets of Baal seized and put to death at the brook Kishon below the mountain, ending their influence over Israel’s worship. He then climbs back up Carmel and bows to the ground in prayer for rain, sending his servant to look toward the sea seven times. On the seventh, the servant reports, “there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand,” and Elijah warns Ahab to hurry before the coming storm; within moments the sky grows black with clouds and a great rain ends a three-year drought (1 Kings 18:41-45). Mount Carmel appears elsewhere in the ministries of Elijah’s successor Elisha as well, who both departs from and returns to the mountain in the course of his own prophetic work (2 Kings 2:25; 4:25-27).

Today

Mount Carmel, near modern Haifa, retains strong associations with Elijah across Jewish, Christian, and Muslim tradition. A Carmelite monastery, Stella Maris, stands near the traditional cave associated with the prophet, and the order of Carmelite friars traces its origins to hermits who settled on the mountain in the twelfth century, taking their name directly from the site. A statue of Elijah slaying the prophets of Baal marks a spot traditionally associated with the biblical contest, though, as with many such traditional markers, the precise location of the altar itself cannot be verified archaeologically.