Elijah (26 page)

Jezebel walked to two conversation couches set close together in the center of the room. She stretched out and propped herself on one elbow. Her face bore the look of casual nonchalance. “And Yahweh?” she asked. “Did Yahweh answer with fire?” She laughed. “I would like to have seen Elijah dancing around the altar. His frightful hair must have been a sight indeed.”

Ahab slipped a tunic over his head and straightened it at his shoulders. “Yahweh did answer, and never have I seen a prophet so calm as Elijah.”

The queen still feigned an attitude of polite interest, as though she were being given a report of some sporting event. She asked, smiling, “And how did Yahweh answer?”

“
He answered with fire.” Ahab’s hands were on his hips and he stood squarely in front of the queen. “Jezebel, your prophets are beaten. Yahweh answered Elijah in an extraordinary way, a magnificent way. Never since the Exodus has our God spoken so clearly. The people fell on their faces and proclaimed their allegiance to Yahweh. Then, at Elijah’s command, they slaughtered your prophets. Every one of them. Their bodies lie at this moment in the water of the Kishon River.”

Jezebel rose to a sitting position. She nervously twisted a fold of her dress. Ahab watched her quietly, half amused at the efforts she expended to maintain her control, but distressed that this queen he loved dearly must face the crushing of her dream. When he finally spoke, she could not keep her shoulders from shaking. “All right,” she said, “tell me what happened.”

Ahab sat on the opposite couch and leaned toward her. He started from the beginning.

When finally he ended the account, Jezebel asked quietly, “Where is Elijah now?”

“
He stood by the gate to greet me when I entered Jezreel.” The king walked to his wife and stood behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her hair. “Jezebel, to continue your battle with Yahweh is insane. The close alliance of Israel and Tyre is important to me, but this effort to unify our religions has gotten out of hand. I swore to you once that I would not allow you to persecute the prophets of Yahweh. Yet you have killed every one of them. Only Elijah is left. I let you have free rain because of their strong opposition to your building of the temples here and at Samaria. They could not be allowed to infringe on your right granted by marriage.” He turned the queen to him. “Jezebel, I know little of gods. But I know from today that Yahweh is and always will be the god of Israel. You must be content to worship Baal alone, only with your court. That is all the marriage treaty requires. You must give up your efforts to convert Israel to Melkart and Asherah.”

Jezebel gently pulled Ahab’s hands to her face. She kissed his fingers, then pushed away. “I must think, Ahab. I want to be alone.” She turned to the door.

Meor-baal, having heard the news from Carmel, waited for the queen outside her chambers. He dropped to the floor on his hands and knees as she approached, touching his head to the cold stone of the floor.

“
Meor-baal, arise,” she said quickly.

The priest stood. Jezebel turned to her two attendants, who stood respectfully behind her, and beckoned them to wait in her chambers. Alone with Meor-baal, she dropped her controlled pretense. She grabbed his arm fiercely and spoke through clenched teeth, her eyes burning. “Get this message to Elijah,” she said. “Tell him that I swear by my Gods that I will have him dead and butchered by this time tomorrow. Tell him that his body will be thrown into the Kishon just as he did to my prophets.” She pushed Meor-baal’s arm, as if to propel him on his errand, but before he had time to move she grabbed his sleeve. “Wait, priest of Baal. Tell him I swear this. Tell him that I vow the Gods to do to me and more, what has been done to my prophets if I do not have his life by this time tomorrow.”

The priest, trained in the art of royal manners, did not reveal his concern. “I will do as you command.” He nodded in a partial bow.

Elijah was at dinner with one of the wealthy men of Jezreel when the word came. Meor-baal, afraid that the victorious prophet would call for his death, sent a neutral messenger to reveal the queen’s oath. Elisha had arrived only moments before, wet and shivering, delayed first by the need to retrieve his master’s mantle, then by his search for Elijah.

The host answered the knock, then called Elijah to the door. “A messenger for you, Elijah. He says he has a word from the royal court.” The messenger, wide-eyes, whispered his message into Elijah’s ear, then stepped back in fear that the unpredictable prophet might call down a curse from God. Elijah listened I shocked surprise. He closed the door slowly and turned to his host. “I must go,” he said.

“
Now?” the man asked. “Food is ready to serve. You must eat first.”

“
I must go now.” Without explanation, the prophet threw his mantle over his shoulders and walked out the door.

The host stared after him. “Your master is a strange man,” he said to Elisha.

Elisha did not answer. Without a backward glance, he grabbed up his own mantle and hurried outside.

Chapter Thirteen

Elisha, exhausted from the hard run, stared at his master as they both lay panting under the partial protection of an olive grove. Elijah had not yet acknowledged his presence, nor had he seemed to notice when his servant caught up with him just outside Jezreel’s gates. They had run together, sometimes side by side, sometimes with Elisha a step behind. The stout prophet ran with his short-stepped, pumplike gait, needing three strides to his servant’s two, yet even after running from Mount Carmel to Jezreel he had set the pace on their flight.

The fury of the storm abated only moments before the men sought shelter and rest under the thick, heavily-leafed grove of trees. They had run seven miles, around the foot of Mount Gilead, with the lava-red soil of the valley already marshy underfoot. They were at Engannim now, a respectable head start on any search party that might start out in the morning. Elisha could only speculate about his master’s fearful and uncommunicative flight after his victory on Mount Carmel. Jezebel could be the only possible cause, unless the prophet had yet another miracle to perform, a possibility that Elisha discounted because of the look on Elijah’s face when he bolted from the house.

The thick limbs above them tempered the force of the still steady downpour but did not stop the wetness. The limbs gathered the water to loose it in large drops that made irregular plopping sounds, as though the yellow grass beneath them were hollow. Elijah lay on his back, his thick chest heaving, his blank, immobile face catching the weight of the thick drops without flinching. His eyes were open, unblinking except when a drop landed directly on target, then he shook his head sharply and resumed his entranced stare upward.

Several times Elisha started to call the prophet’s names, but Elijah’s unfamiliar strangeness cautioned him each time against intrusion. Finally, he rose and took off his mantle. Carefully, he maneuvered its edge through the twigs and over a larger branch to form a tent over his master. The activity loosed a sudden and heavy shower only Elijah, who shook his head violently and sat up. He rubbed the wetness from his face and looked at his servant, seeing him for the first time. Elisha finished attaching the edges of his improvised tent and sat down under the small covering.

Elijah did not speak, nor did he return Elisha’s smile. He shook his head slightly as though unable to formulate his feelings. The prophet pulled off his mantle and gestured to the servant to share his cover, looking now more despondent than Elisha ever could have imagined any real prophet to be. The two men lay down together, still without speaking. Elijah fell asleep on his back, but he grunted and mumbled throughout the night, waking Elisha time and again with his twitching muscles and nervous sniffing.

The rain stopped before dawn, but a heavy mist obscured the valleys. The two men walked toward Dothan, crossing over the low hill that descended gently into the plain controlled by the city, and arrived on its outskirts well before noon. There they turned southeast up the road to Tirzah. Elijah still was untalkative, and Elisha walked silently, pondering the extreme change in his master and mentor.

At Tirzah, Elijah stopped and motioned toward the road he had traveled to Elisha’s house only a few days before. He spoke with finality, the first full sentence since leaving Jezreel. “You must leave me now, Elisha, and go to your home.”

The servant looked down the narrow valley, then turned to look into the despondent face of his master. “And where will you go without me, prophet of Yahweh?”

“
I go south.”

“
South?”

“
Into the wilderness, where Israel found its God. It is fitting.”

“
What will you do?”

Elijah did not answer. He nodded good-bye and turned south on the Way of the Diviners’ Oak. Elisha, without so much as looking toward his home, followed his adopted master. For nearly two miles he walked behind Elijah. Elijah stopped at a point where the road topped the mountain crest. He stared down a long, well-traveled wadi that ran east to the Jordan. He could see the deep cleft of the Jabbock River that flowed into the Jordan from the other side. That river marked the southern boundary of his homeland, Gilead. The high, rolling pasturage of the land was not visible, only the bluffs that rose much higher on the east of the Ghor than on the west where the two men stood.

The prophet turned to Elisha, who now stood silent beside him. He did not question Elisha’s presence. “It seems a lifetime ago that I came out of those hills. A lifetime.” He jerked his hand toward the valley floor. “And two years ago I walked that valley at night to avoid Ahab’s search.”

“
Elijah,” the servant ventured, “the years have been worth the cost. Why are you now so troubled? What message could break the victory of Carmel?”

“
Yes, the victory,” the prophet said softly. He squatted, groaning as the effort pulled his aching thigh muscles, then sat on the ground, his legs out in front of him. “The message, my friend, was from Jezebel. She promised to kill me by tonight.”

Elisha knelt, facing Elijah’s side. “Would she do such a thing? The people would not allow it. The act would be striking at Yahweh himself.”

“
Yes, she means to do just that.”

“
But Yahweh will protect you. He has protected you through these terrible months.”

Elijah did not want to explain the realities of a prophet’s life to the younger man; he did not just now feel like a teacher. “How many prophets of Yahweh are left, Elisha?” he asked.

The servant shook his head, his face blank with disbelief. “But you are Elijah. You are different. Yahweh protects you miraculously. And Mount Carmel. Elijah, that was one of the greatest victories for Yahweh in Israel’s history. Can you walk away from such a victory?”

Elijah picked up a stone and threw it carelessly toward the valley. “Jezebel is a fanatic for Baal, even more fanatic than I imagined. The great victory did not turn her heart.”

“
You are weary, Elijah. You need rest. Then you will think more clearly.”

“
Perhaps.”

“
What are your plans now?”

“
I’m not sure. I think I shall go into the land of our nation’s birth.”

“
You still are determined to go into the wilderness?”

“
Yes.”

Elisha nodded in agreement, shaking off his first feeling of concern. “That may be well. The wilderness has a way of renewing a man’s soul, though it seems to me that you leave at a strange time.”

Elijah smiled wryly and did not respond. He moved to rise and grunted with the effort. Elisha sprang quickly to his feet and caught his master’s hand to pull him up.

“
Thank you,” the prophet said simply.

The two men started down the hill, walking silently side by side. They arrived at beautiful, well-watered Shechem just before noon. Elisha went to buy food, with instructions to meet Elijah at Jacob’s well.

The prophet found the well easily, and sat down on its rock-lined edge to rest. Deep rope marks were etched into the large stones where for centuries shepherds and women had drawn water for their flocks and families. Mount Ebal rose imposingly to the north, Mount Gerizim to the south. He thought of the Blessings and Curses read in solemn assembly down from the twin hills during Israel’s earlier days
. Even then
, Elijah thought,
four hundred years ago, this well was ancient.
How many times had the rope-scarred stones been replaced since Jacob dug the well another four hundred years before Moses?

The meal revived both men. Elijah had not eaten a full meal since the night before the Mount Carmel contest. They resumed their southward journey as far as Lebonah, some twelve miles farther, then left the main road on Elisha’s impulse to sleep the night at the broken shrine of Shiloh. The impulse was a mistake. Elisha thought the touch with Israel’s past would serve to revive his master’s spirits, but the night was grim. The cloud-covered sky was dark, and the random array of stones reminded Elijah of the dark days of Israel’s commitment. Shiloh, once one of Israel’s most hallowed shrines, had been destroyed by the Philistines during Samuel’s day, never to be rebuilt. Other shrines, more convenient, had taken Shiloh’s place. Now other gods, more convenient, were replacing Yahweh himself.

With the experience of the night at Shiloh, Elisha dreaded the effect Bethel would have on the prophet, that ancient and holy shrine city where Jacob built an altar to Yahweh after his dream of the golden stairs. Jeroboam had placed a golden calf there to lure the newly seceded Israel from Jerusalem.