1 Kings 18.42β-46
| 18.42 ואליהו עלה אל ראש הכרמל | Eliyahuα goes up to the top of Karmel. |
|---|---|
| ויגהר ארצה | He stretches himself on the ground. |
| [וישם פניו בין ברכו [ברכיו | He puts his face between his knees. |
| 18.43 ויאמר אל נערו | He says to his boy, |
| עלה נא הבט דרך ים | “Go up now; take a good look seaward.” |
| ויעל ויבט | The boyβ goes up and takes a good look. |
| ויאמר אין מאומה | He says, “Not a speck.” |
| ויאמר שב שבע פעמים׃ | Eliyahuβ says, “Look back in seven seconds.”γ |
| 18.44 ויהי בשבעית | It becomes the seventh second. |
| ויאמר הנה עב | The boyβ says, “Look, a cloud fragment— |
| קטנה ככף איש | a little finger, like on a man’s hand— |
| עלה מים | rises up from the sea.” |
| ויאמר עלה אמר אל אחאב | Eliyahuβ says, “Go, say to Achav, |
| אסר ורד | ‘Saddle upδ and go down. |
| The downpour won’t stop you.’ ” | |
| 18.45 ויהי עד כה ועד כה | It becomes, by and by, |
| והשמים התקדרו עבים ורוח | that the skies grow dark with clouds and wind. |
| ויהי גשם גדול | A great downpour comes. |
| וירכב אחאב וילך יזרעאלה׃ | Achav rides off and goes to Itzre’el.ε |
| 18.46 ויד יהוה היתה אל אליהו | Yahweh’s hand is on Eliyahu. |
| וישנס מתניו | He puts his belt on.ζ |
| וירץ לפני אחאב | He runs before Achav’s face |
| until he gets to Itzre’el. |
The contest between God and Ba’al took place on the hill Karmel, but not on the very top of it, which would have been impractical. So while everyone else is celebrating God’s victory, Elijah and his boy go to the summit.
Elijah’s there to pray for rain. This is obviously indicated by his stretching himself out on the ground. Remember when he stretched himself out over the Sidonian boy so that God would raise him? Well, now he’s stretching himself out over the ground so that God would water it. (Or maybe he’s just stretching himself out because that’s how he usually prays, and it has nothing to do with what he stretches himself over. Either idea is possible.)
Then he changes posture, and puts his face between his knees. Because there’s no way you can stretch yourself out and at the same time have your face between your knees. I don’t care how flexible you are. Face between the knees means you’re sitting on the ground, with your legs drawn up; it wasn’t considered a prayer posture. Typically it meant you were waiting. Elijah had prayed. Now he’s waiting for results.
He tells his boy to go look at the Mediterranean. Where’d the boy come from? Elijah didn’t appear to have a boy with him previously. It doesn’t seem he brought one with him to Tsarfatha, otherwise he’d have asked for bread for both himself and his boy. Three possibilities: Either this is the widow’s son, whom Elijah brought to Israel with him; or he bought a slave sometime while he was in Sidon, or Ahab gave or assigned a slave to him. In any event, Elijah has a kid to boss around. But this is the only time we ever hear of this boy.
Elijah tells the boy to go look, and the boy sees nothing. Elijah tells him to wait a few seconds, then look again. Most translations have Elijah say, “Go again seven times.” The word translated “times” is פעם, which means “a beat,” as in music or some kind of regular rhythmic tapping or hitting. Because there’s no ancient Hebrew words for minutes or seconds—the Hebrews didn’t subdivide hours yet—Elijah has to refer to seven beats, a musical term that should be reasonably equivalent to seven seconds. Honestly, I don’t know what tempo the ancient Israelites usually played at, but seven seconds sounds plausible.
“Seven times” is a good translation if you’re thinking of a “time” as a unit of time; otherwise you’ll get the idea that this boy had to get up and look at the sea, then go back and look again, then again, then again, then again, then again, then again before he saw the cloud. What would be the point of this? The boy’s persevering faith? The rain was coming whether the boy had faith or not. Seven isn’t an incantation.
Anyway, seven seconds later, the boy sees a tiny cloud. Elijah recognizes from this that there’s a storm coming. Since Samaria is east of Karmel, the storm will make it to Samaria first, then turn all the roads between there and Karmel—which are all unpaved, you remember—into muck. Realistically, Ahab would do best to just stay there and ride out the storm. But Elijah sends the boy to tell Ahab to go home anyway—that he won’t get stopped by the storm. And as you’ll see in the next verse, Ahab—who, before this day, would probably have told Elijah, “You’re nuts”—has seen some pretty freaky things, and rain wouldn’t surprise him now. He obediently saddles up and rides to his palace in Jezreel.
Much is made of Elijah running with Ahab’s chariot. Actually, much is made of the misinterpretation—that Elijah, under God’s power, actually outruns the chariot. That’s not what this is at all.
In Ahab’s day, kings wanted to show off their power and authority, and the way they did this was to have heralds run in front of their chariots or horses and announce the king was approaching. Usually they’d get a big crowd of them—say, 450 of them, who happened to also be prophets of their favorite god—and have them trot in front of the king, blessing their king in the name of their god.
Well, Ahab used to have 450 prophets to run in front of his chariot... but they were all dead now.
So, in their place—and indicating the new relationship that Ahab now had with God instead of Ba’al—was God’s sole prophet, Elijah, running in front of the king’s chariot.
God’s hand was on Elijah—not in the sense that God gave him any special sort of power to be able to run all the way to Jezreel, faster than a chariot, but in the sense that God’s favor was on Elijah. Running before the king’s chariot was considered an honor. God’s prophets hadn’t been given this honor in a very long time. Now, when the people of Samaria watched the king approach Jezreel, they’d see—by the fact that Elijah was running before the chariot—that their king was no longer honoring Ba’al, but God; that Elijah was no longer persona non grata in the kingdom, but an honored friend of the king; and that—as they’re seeing the rain come, and once they heard the story of the contest at Karmel—God is mighty and Ba’al is not.
Altogether, a nice way to end this chapter.
α. Elijah.
β. Lit. “he.”
γ. Lit. “beats,” (פעם) as in the taps of a bell (פעמן). If it’s the same tempo as bell-ringing usually is, we’re talking seconds. There is no ancient Hebrew word for seconds.
δ. Lit. “harness.” Usually in the sense of “harness your chariot-horses for battle.” Since it’s a colloquialism I went with a similar American colloquialism.
ε. Jezreel.
ζ. Lit. “belts his loins.” Usually one’s cloak would hang loose, but when the belt was tied around it, it meant the cloak wouldn’t flap around when one was fighting or running.
