Elijah (24 page)

He called out loudly, “Where are the prophets of Melkart?”

A spokesman stepped out from the group and answered in a voice that equaled Elijah’s in force, “We are here.”

“And where are the prophets of Asherah?” Elijah called.

There was no response.

“Where are the prophets of Asherah?” Elijah called again.

No one moved. The Melkart prophets murmured among themselves in low, surprised tones.

“King Ahab of Israel,” Elijah shouted, “where are the prophets of Asherah?”

Ahab stepped into the clearing, his bearish head held regally high, and walked slowly toward the prophet until he was a few yards away. “Elijah, I did as you asked,” he said in a normal tone. “They knew of the assembly. I cannot explain their absence.”

Elijah turned slowly in a circle to look at the crowd which was gathering quickly at the sound of his challenge. “Let all Israel know,” he shouted as he turned, “that Asherah is not God, and her prophets are cowards. Nor do they dare test her power against Yahweh’s.”

The people did not answer. They continued to take their places as near the holy ground as they could, the lesser personages giving way to the greater. The Melkart spokesman stepped forward. “But we are here, Elijah, prophet of Yahweh.” He wore a prophet’s mantle, closely woven of fine wool and dyed with the purple of Tyre. “We are four hundred fifty gathered her to show that Baal is as much stronger than Yahweh as we are superior to you in numbers.”

“So be it,” Elijah answered. “You shall stand, all of you, for Baal, and I shall stand alone for Yahweh.” He turned to the crowd, his arms outstretched, his mantle hanging in a triangle from each forearm to drape to a point below his knees. “People of Israel,” he shouted, “how long will you limp from one crippled leg to another, as a lame man who faces a fork in the road and cannot decide which way to go? Make your decision now. If Yahweh is God, follow him. But if Baal is God, follow him.”

The people were silent. Some of them smiled, satisfied that the entertainment promised to be worth the journey.

Elijah lowered his arms, but his voice rose in crescendo. “I stand alone, one man, the only living prophet of Yahweh. Only I remain, one, to stand for the God of Israel.” His arm swept toward the men of Melkart. “But there, Baal has four hundred prophets. Yet Yahweh dares to challenge Baal.”

Still looking at the unimpressed crowd, turning to address all the people, he pointed at the cluster of prophets. “Let those prophets furnish two small bulls. Of the two, they shall take first choice, so their sacrifice will surely be acceptable to Baal. Let them cut it into pieces as the ritual requires and lay it on the wood of the altar. They shall not set the wood afire, but rather call on their gods to send fire. Afterward, I shall do the same. The God who answers by sending fire from heaven, he is the true God.”

The people murmured among themselves, many heads nodding in approval. Obadiah had joined him. A voice called out from the crowd, “Well spoken, Elijah.” The leaders of Israel, gathered closer by rank, echoed the call. “Yes, Elijah, it is a good test. Well spoken.” Voices came more loudly from the crowd, and laughter, until Elijah’s voice pealed above the tumult.

“Choose then, you prophets of Baal. Choose a young bull for yourselves. Call first on your god, for there are many of you. Dress your sacrifice and call on the name of your gods. But do not put fire into the wood.”

Elijah turned and went to the edge of the clearing. He threw his mantle on the ground, sat on it, and pulled its folds over his legs. The people near him drew back to avoid being close to the strange man.

The Baal prophets, certain that animals would be required for some sort of sacrifice before the day was out, had brought several young bulls with them. Their spokesman called to his servants to fetch two of the best ones. Quickly, the two were brought forward, both of them well-muscled, with shiny coats. It would not do to give Elijah a poor specimen, for the people surely would react to any unfairness on their part. The spokesman looked the animals over carefully, feeling the withers and flanks, checking the skin for imperfections, inspecting the eyes and mouth. He made his choice.

At his signal, six prophets came forward. One of them struck the animal hard between the ears with the flat edge of an axe. The animal dropped to its knees without a sound. Another prophet thrust his sword into the bull’s heart. While the seven priests dressed him, other prophets arranged wood on the stone altar.

The heart and kidneys were placed on the altar, along with all of the choice cuts of meat. Then the spokesman began to pray. With no memorized prayer available for such an occasion as calling down fire from heaven, he called for Baal to have mercy on the people who served him, to show to all Israel that Baal was God. Other prophets joined him, and soon all four hundred fifty prophets crowded in a cacophony of sound into the clearing and around the altar.

The people watched with easy acceptance, for all of them had seen sacrifices before, when voices rise as long fingers from the earth to point to the sky, when blood runs full over an altar to entice the life force of water from the skies to join the life force of living things to wet the earth, when the prophets or priests cry to the gods to accept the dead sacrifice as though it were the people themselves who laid on the altar to die for the gods.

But the heavens did not answer. The prayers droned on, now loud and demanding, now pitiful and begging. The prophets’ eyes soon were rimmed with the dark earth, which they threw in handfuls onto their hair, and the ground grew powdery under their constant pacing. The sun hung at midday. It glared down through white circles in the blue sky to draw upward the stench from spoiling meat. The prophets called to the silence through hoarse throats. When the silence did not answer, some leaped onto the altar itself. They lay across the meat and heart and kidneys and wood until one man was pushed off by another, while those who fell rolled with their blood-stained cloaks in the choking dust.

And still the sky was silent.

Elijah watched. Occasionally he laughed quietly but audibly to the people around him, who moved still farther away from this wild-haired man who dared defy the Baal, this unruly prophet under some exotic protection of Yahweh.

Finally, the prophet rose to his feet. Bare-armed in his tunic and standing on his mantle, he shouted at the men of Baal, “Cry louder, you prophets of Baal, for Baal is a god, is he not! Cry louder, for surely a god can hear!” He laughed derisively, a wild laugh that knifed its edges in horror through the crowd. “Perhaps he is thinking through some new invention for the people of Tyre, or talking over some new idea with Asherah. Perhaps you need to cry louder to draw him away from his work.”

Elijah walked along the edge of the clearing. As he passed the people who had managed to gain the favored vantage points, they moved back instinctively from him, catching their breath at the brazen blasphemy of his words.

“Cry louder,” he yelled toward the already screaming prophets. “Cry louder. Perhaps Baal is excreting and he cannot hear you for the strain.” He laughed as the prophets turned toward him in righteous, frustrated anger. “Cry louder,” he shouted, leaning toward their contorted faces. “Perhaps he has gone on a journey to Spain with Tyre’s new colony. You will have to cry louder for him to hear you from across the waters.” Elijah’s own laughter now was as loud as the wails of the men of Melkart. “Cry louder. Perhaps he is asleep and needs to be awakened.”

Elijah’s taunts, coupled with frustration of three hours of frenzied prayer, goaded the prophets to greater displays. Their voices rose, until not even Elijah’s loud laugh could be heard. As they screamed out their prayers, they began the whirling dervish dance of Baal. Knees bent, with thighs outstretched, crouching, they leaped high, whirling into the air. Disorganized, yet moving in a circle around the altar as though some force stirred them like heavy brew in a caldron, they danced. Some rocked in slow rhythm from one bent knee to the other, crouching on one leg at a time, while at the same time they flailed their arms fiercely and shrieked out their prayers. Some in the audience pressed fingers into ears to gain relief from the awesome cries that rose in a deafening mass above the four hundred fifty prophets. Others in the audience joined in the cries and prayers, raising their arms upward, shaking them in rhythm to the ecstatic chants until they were hypnotized.

Then one prophet leaped onto the altar and drew his knife, sharpened on two sides. He screamed, then drew the knife diagonally across his chest. A ribbon of blood instantly appeared and he shrieked in homage to Baal. Again he drew the knife against his flesh to mark an
x
, which quickly was obliterated in the red flow. Again he raised his arms and screamed allegiance to Baal. Then his knife arm moved more quickly. He drew it across his abdomen, and across his arms, and across his legs, shrieking rather in ecstasy than in pain as his blood flowed from the shallow cuts to redden the dark, dried blood of the sacrifice.

His devotion was infectious. Other prophets drew knives and leaped onto the altar to join their companion, until no room was left and the altar itself could not be seen for the press of bodies.

Many of the prophets were naked now, their mantles long since thrown aside and their tunics cut loose from their bodies by the frenzied handling of the knives. With sticks picked up from the altar, some of them beat themselves, swinging alternately across their shoulders to pound their slashed backs until the blood flowed even more freely, until the skin and rough clubs were red with the liquid of their lives.

Even more loudly they screamed, in volume that was beyond the power of normal men. For three more hours beyond noon, until the time of afternoon sacrifice, they screamed, until they fell to cover the sacred clearing in exhausted, bleeding, earth-caked heaps, until only five remained, who still opened their mouths that uttered only throaty hoarseness. The five moved around the altar still, their muscles refusing to obey the dancing command of their frozen minds, their throats cauterized by the screaming and chill air and dust, their legs shuffling where they should be leaping, their arms limp where they should be flailing.

Elijah left them and moved to the edge of the cliff. He gazed down on the latecomers and women and poorer classes who could not get to the slopes, who could only listen to the cries from high above and catch reports that were passed down from the more fortunate who could see the spectacle.

He turned to face the audience. All but a few sat in stony silence, their senses seared by the display, their minds unable to register the horrors any longer. They were mute. Heads lay bowed into knees. Backs were turned to the scene. Unseeing eyes stared at the altar. A few were drunk, blessedly drunk.

Elijah called to the stupored crowd. “Come,” he called. “Come closer to me.” Eyes looked his way, and heads shook loose from their hypnotic stares. “Come near. Come close to me,” the prophet repeated.

Ahab was the first to respond, followed by Obadiah. The king’s stoic look had melted into shocked disbelief, disbelief at the excesses of the Baal prophets. He was a military man, an administrator. He had seen less of the Baal religion than the common man, and what he had seen was tempered by the dignity of the court. He wondered about Jezebel.

The people followed their king and clustered close around Elijah. He looked at them for a moment. Then, without a word, he turned to Yahweh’s broken-down altar and selected a large undressed stone. Grunting under its weight, his muscles straining against the thin cloth of his tunic, he moved it to a level place near the cliff but still on the soft earth. He laid it flat and straight. Then he moved to another stone of equal size. Then to another. And another. Finally, he had arranged twelve stones side by side and end to end to make a low, flat altar. He looked at the crowd. Twelve tribes of Israel, divided now politically but never to be divided spiritually. They quickly caught the significance of the number.

The prophet called to Obadiah to fetch a digging tool. Elisha watched his mentor work hard at the menial task and wished he could help. But Elijah dug the trench himself, several inches deep into the soft earth, all the way around the improvised altar.

This task completed, as the people watched in rapt silence, Elijah gathered armloads of wood. This time he beckoned Elisha to help. Together, they arranged the wood on the altar. Then, on command from the prophet, Elisha brought forward the young bull he had tied to a tree. Elijah killed the bull, cut it into pieces in much the same way of the Baal prophets, and laid the proper pieces on the wood.

“
Now,” he said to the audience, “fill four large pots with water.” At his first spoken word in over an hour, several young men hastened to obey. They found the jars among the supplies of the Baal prophets and clambered down to a pool at the bottom of the cliff. In a matter of minutes they returned, sweating from the strain of carrying the jars up the steep ravine that led from the pool. Word had reached the throngs of people below, who now craned their necks toward the cliff even though they could see nothing of the activities on top.

The men looked at Elijah, waiting for his word. “Pour the water onto the sacrifice.”

They glanced at one another, not believing they had heard the command rightly. “Onto the sacrifice?” one asked.

“
Onto the sacrifice,” Elijah answered quietly.

The men obeyed. In teams of two, the men lifted the large jars. The water splashed on the sacrificial meat and wood and ran down into the cracks between the altar stones. The next team followed, and the water ran onto the ground. Then the next team followed, and the next. The sodden meat lay red on the wood; and the wood, pink-tinged from the watered blood, lay dark on the wet altar. The soft dry ground below quickly soaked up the excess water. Elijah’s act was so extraordinary that no one thought to question the impropriety of pouring out precious water during the drought.