1 Kings 18:28

_AND THEY CRIED ALOUD, AND CUT THEMSELVES AFTER THEIR MANNER WITH KNIVES AND LANCETS, TILL THE BLOOD GUSHED OUT UPON THEM._ Cut themselves ... with knives and lancets - (see Grotius.) [The scenes of Carmel are transacted daily before the eyes of our missionaries. An account is given ('Missionary Herald,' p. 1005) of the rites of the Hindu goddess Matha.: 'There was a multitude of ten or twelve thousand people assembled. In a short time a man advanced into the center of the group, pretending that the goddess had entered into him; pulling off his turban and tossing his long hair over his face, he began to leap and shake, uttering a noise occasionally like the bark of a dog. As his excitement increased, he beat himself with a chain, and made incisions in his tongue with a sword. Having taken the blood, he rubbed it on the foreheads of the spectators. By and by the infection spread, and oth...

21-40 Many of the people wavered in their judgment, and varied in their practice. Elijah called upon them to determine whether Jehovah or Baal was the self-existent, supreme God, the Creator, Governor, and Judge of the world, and to follow him alone. It is dangerous to halt between the service of God and the service of sin, the dominion of Christ and the dominion of our lusts. If Jesus be the only Saviour, let us cleave to him alone for every thing; if the Bible be the world of God, let us reverence and receive the whole of it, and submit our understanding to the Divine teaching it contains. Elijah proposed to bring the matter to a trial. Baal had all the outward advantages, but the event encourages all God's witnesses and advocates never to fear the face of man. The God that answers by fire, let him be God: the atonement was to be made by sacrifice, before the judgment could be removed...

Verse 28. _THEY CRIED ALOUD_] The poor fools acted as they were bidden. _AND CUT THEMSELVES AFTER THEIR MANNER_] This was done according to the _rites_ of that barbarous religion; if the blood of the bullock would not move him they thought their _own blood_ might; and with it they smeared themselves and their sacrifice. This was not only the custom of the idolatrous Israelites, but of the Syrians, Persians, Greeks, Indians, and in short of all the heathen world....

Elijah’s scorn roused the Baal-priests to greater exertions. At length, when the frenzy had reached its height, knives were drawn, and the blood spirted forth from hundreds of self-inflicted wounds, while an ecstasy of enthusiasm seized many, and they poured forth incoherent phrases, or perhaps an unintelligible jargon, which was believed to come from divine inspiration, and constituted one of their modes of prophecy. The practice of inflicting gashes on their limbs, in their religious exercises, was common among the Carians, the Syrians, and the Phrygians. We may regard it as a modification of the idea of human sacrifice. The gods were supposed to be pleased with the shedding of human blood. LANCETS - Lancets, in our modern sense of the word, can scarcely have been intended by our translators. The Hebrew word is elsewhere always translated “spears,” or “lances;” and this i

EXPOSITION ELIJAH'S RETURN AND THE ORDEAL OF MOUNT CARMEL.—The preceding chapter having been exclusively occupied with the fortunes of Elijah during his enforced absence of three and a half years from the land of Israel, we are left to conjecture what the course of events in the northern kingdom during this period of drought and suffering must have been. But it is not difficult to picture in our minds the steadily increasing alarm and distress which the solemn ban he had pronounced must have occasioned. At one time, it may be, especially if the prophet up to that period had been unknown, both king and people, under the malign influence of Jezebel, professed to regard his threatening with contempt, the more so as the priests of Baal would not fail to assure them of the protection and blessing of "the Lord" of nature. But as the

AND THEY CRIED ALOUD,.... Trying to make him hear, if possible: AND CUT THEMSELVES AFTER THEIR MANNER WITH KNIVES AND LANCETS, TILL THE BLOOD GUSHED OUT UPON THEM; so the priests of Heathen deities used to slash themselves on their shoulders, arms, and thighs, in their devotions to them, as many writers observe z, fancying their gods were delighted with human blood; particularly the priests of Bellona a, and the worshippers of the Syrian goddess b, and of the Egyptian Isis c. z Vid. Kipping. Antiqu. Roman. l. 1. c. 10. p. 202. a Tertul Apolog. c. 9. Lactant. Institut. l. 1. c. 21. b Apulei Metamorph. l. 8. c Herodot. Euterpe, c. 61. Manetho. Apotelesm. l. 1. ver. 243, 244. Seneca de vita beata, c. 27....

2. ELIJAH ON CARMEL: THE ANSWERED PRAYER CHAPTER 18 _ 1. The command to see Ahab (1 Kings 18:1)_ 2. Elijah's response (1 Kings 18:2) 3. Ahab and Obadiah (1 Kings 18:3) 4. Elijah and Obadiah (1 Kings 18:7) 5. Elijah meets Ahab (1 Kings 18:16) 6. Elijah's demand (1 Kings 18:19) 7. The events on Carmel (1 Kings 18:20

ELIJAH'S MEETING WITH AHAB AND HIS CONTEST WITH THE PRIESTS OF BAAL. The history of Ahab's reign must have been something like the following: On his marriage with Jezebel he must have allowed the worship of the Baal of Tyre and been met with the remonstrances of the prophets. Furious at their opposition, Jezebel had massacred a large number, but the king's steward had supported the cause of Yahweh (1 Kings 18:4); so Ahab cannot have been wholly ill-disposed to those who were faithful to the God of Israel. But he had no mercy for the leader of the whole movement, Elijah, who had prophesied the drought. He was sought in every neighbouring kingdom as the author of all the agitation, the troubler of Israel. In the meantime Jezebel had organised the worship of the Baal, and supported at her own. cost four hundred and fifty prophets ...

LANCETS. lances. Done by Dervishes to the present day....

_And they cried aloud_ Not recognizing the mockery of Elijah, but admitting that Baal might be overtaken by the necessities or occupations implied in the prophet's words. _after their manner_ For devotees to wound and mutilate themselves in the worship of their divinities was common in other cults beside that of Baal and Ashêrah. _with knives and lancets_ R.V. LANCES. The former of these nouns is commonly rendered -sword," though it is also used of other instruments for cutting, as of a razor (Ezekiel 5:1), and an axe (Ezekiel 26:9). The second is constantly employed for -spear" in connexion with -shield" of a fully-armed soldier. The Baal-dance was most likely performed by the chief devotees with weapons in their hands, and with these it was that in their frenzy they wounded themselve