1 Kings 19:11

_AND HE SAID, GO FORTH, AND STAND UPON THE MOUNT BEFORE THE LORD. AND, BEHOLD, THE LORD PASSED BY, AND A GREAT AND STRONG WIND RENT THE MOUNTAINS, AND BRAKE IN PIECES THE ROCKS BEFORE THE LORD; BUT THE LORD WAS NOT IN THE WIND: AND AFTER THE WIND AN EARTHQUAKE; BUT THE LORD WAS NOT IN THE EARTHQUAKE:_ The Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains. He is not a physical agent, great or small. The wind the fire, the electricity, are ministers that do His pleasure, but they do not constitute a part of the nature, nor bear any resemblance to Him who is Lord. God is a spirit; and though the common mass of the Hebrew people might not have realized this great conception, yet there were certain individuals who, like Elijah, had more refined and elevated notions in regard to the pure spirituality of the divine nature. Progress had been made in religious knowledge from the tim...

9-13 The question God put, What doest thou here, Elijah? is a reproof. It concerns us often to ask whether we are in our place, and in the way of our duty. Am I where I should be? whither God calls me, where my business lies, and where I may be useful? He complained of the people, and their obstinacy in sin; I only am left. Despair of success hinders many a good enterprise. Did Elijah come hither to meet with God? he shall find that God will meet him. The wind, and earthquake, and fire, did not make him cover his face, but the still voice did. Gracious souls are more affected by the tender mercies of the Lord, than by his terrors. The mild voice of Him who speaks from the cross, or the mercy-seat, is accompanied with peculiar power in taking possession of the heart....

Verse 1 Kings 19:11. _STAND UPON THE MOUNT BEFORE THE LORD._] God was now treating Elijah nearly in the same way that he treated Moses; and it is not unlikely that Elijah was now standing on the same place where Moses stood, when God revealed himself to him in the giving of the law. See Exodus 19:9; Exodus 19:16. _THE LORD PASSED BY_] It appears that the _passing by_ of the Lord occasioned the _strong wind_, the _earthquake_, and the _fire_; but in none of these was God to make a discovery of himself unto the prophet; yet these, in some sort, prepared his way, and prepared Elijah to hear the _still small voice_. The apparatus, indicating the presence of the Divine Ma

AND BEHOLD, THE LORD PASSED BY - The remainder of this verse and the whole of the next are placed by the Septuagint, and by the Arabic translator, in the mouth of the Angel. But it seems best to regard the vision as ending with the words “before the Lord” - and the writer as then assuming that this was done, and proceeding to describe what followed....

EXPOSITION ELIJAH'S FLIGHT THE THEOPHANY OF HOREB AND THE CALLING OF ELISHA.—We can readily understand with what a sense of humiliation and shame the weak and excited king, who must have been awed and impressed by the strange portent he had witnessed, would recount the day's proceedings to his imperious and headstrong consort, and with what intense mortification and rage she must have heard of the triumph of the proscribed religion and of the defeat and death of the priests of Baal. One might almost have expected that the testimony of an eyewitness, and that her husband, to the greatness and completeness of Elijah's victory; that his unprejudiced, and indeed unwilling, account of the sacrifices, of the descent of the heavenly fire, of the cries it wrung from the people, etc; w

AND HE SAID, GO FORTH AND STAND UPON THE MOUNT BEFORE THE LORD,.... Who would appear there as he had to Moses formerly, though not in the same manner: AND, BEHOLD, THE LORD PASSED BY; or was about to pass, for as yet he had not; his messengers first went before him: AND A GREAT AND STRONG WIND RENT THE MOUNTAINS, AND BRAKE IN PIECES THE ROCKS BEFORE THE LORD; strong enough to do all this, and so it might: BUT THE LORD WAS NOT IN THE WIND; as he sometimes is, Nahum 1:3, he spake to Job out of a whirlwind, Job 38:1, AND AFTER THE WIND AN EARTHQUAKE; that shook the earth all around, and the mountain also, as it did when the law was given on it, Psalms 68:8...

3. ELIJAH IN THE WILDERNESS AND UPON MOUNT HOREB CHAPTER 19 _ 1. Elijah's flight and despondency (1 Kings 19:1)_ 2. Upon Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:9) 3. Elisha called (1 Kings 19:10) Elijah perhaps stopped at the very door of the palace where wicked Jezebel dwelt. He would remain with Ahab to the very last before he went in to face the queen. Should not Elijah have remained and gone even before Jezebel to bear his testimony? Instead he becomes terrified of wicked Jezebel. Had he hoped that what had taken place on Carmel would result in bringing not alone Ahab back to Jehovah, but also influence Jezebel? If such was his expectation he must have been bitterly disappointed. Jezebel s

1 Kings 19:1. ELIJAH'S FLIGHT TO HOREB. HIS COMMISSION. Jezebel, it will be noticed, can do no more than threaten Elijah: her power is limited. Elijah escapes to the southern extremity of Judah, to Beersheba, a sacred place of pilgrimage frequented (Amos 5:5; Amos 8:14) even by N. Israelites. In the desert, under a juniper or broom tree, he received his vision (1 Kings 19:5), and went to Horeb, the Mount of God. Horeb is Sinai: the name is employed in the N. Israelite Hexateuchal narrative E and in Deuteronomy. It was supposed to be Yahweh's special dwelling-place (Judges 5:4;

GO FORTH. Septuagint adds "to-morrow". WIND. Hebrew. _ruach_. App-9....

_Go forth_ The LXX. here adds αὓριον, _to-morrow_, and the narrative in Josephus (_Ant_. VIII. 13. 7) represents the prophet's going forth as taking place on the day following the divine questioning. But these variations from the text may be, and probably are, due to a desire to assimilate the narrative to Exodus 34:2, where Moses is told to -be ready in the morning." _stand upon the mount before the Lord_ Elijah does not go forth (see 1 Kings 19:13) until he recognises the presence of the Lord in the still small voice. The violence of the wind and the earthquake and the devouring rage of the fire, he was made to feel, were not the proper manifestations of Jehovah, were not those tokens by which He would be known to His people, and consequently he abode still in the cave while they were rag