1 Kings 18:40

_AND ELIJAH TOOK TWELVE STONES, ACCORDING TO THE NUMBER OF THE TRIBES OF THE SONS OF JACOB, UNTO WHOM THE WORD OF THE LORD CAME, SAYING, ISRAEL SHALL BE THY NAME:_ No JFB commentary on these verses....

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 40. _LET NOT ONE OF THEM ESCAPE._] They had committed the highest crime against the state and the people by introducing idolatry, and bringing down God's judgments upon the land; therefore their lives were forfeited to that law which had ordered every idolater to be slain. It seems also that Ahab, who was present, consented to this act of impartial justice....

Elijah required the people to show their conviction by acts - acts which might expose them to the anger of king or queen, but which once committed would cause them to break with Baal and his worshippers forever. Elijah is said to have slain the “prophets of Baal,” because the people killed them by his orders. Why they were brought down to the torrent-bed of Kishon to be killed, is difficult to explain. Perhaps the object of Elijah was to leave the bodies in a place where they would not be found, since the coming rain would, he knew, send a flood down the Kishon ravine, and bear off the corpses to the sea. Elijah’s act is to be justified by the express command of the Law, that idolatrous Israelites were to be put to death, and by the right of a prophet under the theocracy to step in and execute the Law when the king failed in his duty....

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 ELIJAH SAID UNTO THEM, TAKE THE PROPHETS OF BAAL,.... The four hundred and fifty that were upon the spot; for the number of the people of Israel, now gathered together, were equal to it; nor was it in Ahab's power to hinder it, and he might himself be so far surprised and convicted as not in the least to object to it: LET NOT ONE OF THEM ESCAPE: that there might be none of them left to seduce the people any more: AND THEY TOOK THEM; laid hold on them, everyone of them: AND ELIJAH BROUGHT THEM DOWN TO THE BROOK KISHON; which ran by the side, and at the bottom of Mount Carmel, into the sea; Judges 4:7 Judges 5:21. AND SLEW THEM THERE; intimating, that it was owing to the idolatry they led the people into that rain had been w

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 ...

TAKE. seize, lay hold of. ONE. a man. Hebrew. _'Ish._ App-14. KISHON. Compare Judges 4:13; Judges 5:21. SLEW. Hebrew idiom, caused them to be slain....

_Take the prophets of Baal_ Elijah avails himself of the newlykindled enthusiasm to put an end, as far as he may, to the false worship. Josephus explains -they seized and slew the prophets, Elijah exhorting them so to do." Although the text may be taken to signify that Elijah put the priests to death with his own hand, we can hardly suppose this to have been so. He is only said to do himself what he caused others to do. _the brook Kishon_ This is at the foot of Mount Carmel on the side towards the sea. It was the spot where Sisera was overthrown by Barak (Judges 4:7) and the stream then was pictured as sweeping away the dead bodies of those who had been slain by the Israelite forces (Judges 5:21)....