Elijah (35 page)

“Now,” Macaiah asked, “tell me what has happened to you since Mount Carmel.”

The prophets talked until late in the afternoon, each one sharing his insights of Yahweh’s battle against Baal. The miracle on Mount Carmel was decisive, Macaiah insisted. Many Israelites had turned from worshiping Baal; other Israelites, whose loyalties had been silent, spoke openly now of their allegiance to Yahweh, their fears dispelled by God’s strong proof of superiority on Mount Carmel. The two men wrestled with Yahweh’s pronouncement to Elijah that his preferred was is the gentle voice. Macaiah’s observations were the same as Elijah’s had been. Yet, they agreed, they could not ignore the new revelation. Yahweh had spoken.

Two young prophets arrived at the cave near sunset, sweaty and covered with road dust. They stared at the hairy prophet incredulously until Macaiah assured them that the stranger indeed was Elijah. Overjoyed, they attacked him with their questions with such enthusiasm that they forgot their meal. Macaiah finally had to intervene to insist that they wash and eat. The interruption hardly slowed the fervent conversation, and the questions continued until late into the night.

Elijah’s mind would not be silent, tired as he was from the journey and the long discussions. He lay on his mantle, oblivious to the sounds of sleep around him. The young prophets had stirred in his soul an answer to God’s riddle. To speak gently was to speak in many voices, to speak in the marketplaces of villages and towns and cities, in the homes of Israel’s families, in the streets and paths and highways, to challenge Baal in her groves and at her shrines, to proclaim the message of Yahweh everywhere, to permeate the land with his teachings.

Elijah stayed with Macaiah all through the summer months. The time was good, a time of thought, of reassessment. He did not feel alone in the battle anymore, and the turn of so many hearts to Yahweh and young men to prophecy convinced him of the value of Mount Carmel.

The early rains came in October. Immediately the fields were dotted with men struggling behind wooden, iron-tipped plows to break up the ground. Elijah watched them in the valleys and terraces as he walked the seven miles from Bethel north to Gilgal.
And it is time for me to plow my own fields
, he thought.
Elisha has the qualities of Macaiah, and the distinctive of greatness as well.
The plan had fashioned itself over the weeks of late summer and autumn. He would teach Elisha all he knew; Elisha would establish the schools for prophets.

He spent the night at Gilgal and rose early the next morning. Abel-meholah was twenty-five miles to the north, up the mountain ridge and then down the road that followed the wadi to the Jordan.

The valley bustled with shouting, sweating farmers who grasped their jerking plows with one hand and goaded their oxen with long poles in the other.

Shaphat’s field was among Abel-meholah’s largest. It lay near the wadi, a long, wide strip of some of the plain’s richest land. Elisha was unmistakable. His long hair was well below his shoulders, matted now in long, sweaty strings below his turban. His work tunic was drawn up from his slender legs and tucked into his wide cloth girdle. Elijah laughed as the young man stumbled at a sudden lurch of the plow.

Elisha worked with two oxen. In front of him, laboring in staggered rows, were eleven more teams, each worked by a hired hand.
The man is wise
, Elijah thought.
He keeps them in front of him so he can check on their work.

The prophet approached the working men from behind, each of whom intently watched his oxen, the depth of the plow, and the straightness of the furrow. Elisha’s row was on the outside, the inside man a good distance ahead to set the row the others measured against, each man a few yards behind the one to his left. The prophet removed his mantle and readjusted the pouch straps to his shoulder. He walked up to Elisha. The young man still did not notice. Without speaking, Elijah flipped the mantle to spread widely above Elisha’s head and come down draped onto his shoulders. Elisha jerked the oxen to a halt and spun around, surprised. Elijah glanced at him only for a moment, then turned back toward the road.

“Elijah!”

The prophet ignored the call. He continued toward the road, walking on the level ground beside the new furrow.

“Elijah!” The young man looked down at the cloak. It was woven thick and tightly of camel’s hair, with a mild odor of perspiration. The significance of the prophet’s action flooded over Elisha. He gazed at the prophet’s retreating figure. The mantle was as much Elijah’s mark of identification as his hairy body. He broke into a run, the mantle corners flapping between his legs. “Elijah!”

He caught the prophet at the road that ran along the wadi bed up to the western range. “Elijah. I am astonished,” he puffed. “But I do not question the word of Yahweh. Let me but kiss my parents good-bye and I will follow you.”

Elijah nodded. “Certainly. I would not restrain you from saying good-bye.”

“Will you come with me?”

“No. The decision is yours to reconcile with your father and mother as you will. You are on your own.”

“I will catch up with you. Are you going toward Samaria?”

Elijah nodded. Elisha bowed from the waist and ran back into the field. The prophet recalled his own decision to leave the Rechabites and Jonadab. Even God’s people find good reasons why their friends and children should not heed God’s call. Shaphat, Elijah was certain, would prove more difficult than his young friend surmised.

The workmen had reached the edge of the field. They stopped to watch their young overseer’s actions with growing surprise. Elisha pulled the plow piece from its hole to let the beam end fall to the ground, then he tied the piece flat to the beam. He moved to the front of the team and tapped the leader on the side of its head to turn the oxen toward the stable. Sensing the coming rest, the team broke into a trot, Elisha running behind to goad them to a faster pace.

He did not remove the yoke and plow from the team, but simply turned them into the pen, then ran to the house. He burst through the door, still wearing the mantle. Without speaking, he stood in front of his father.

“Elisha, isn’t that Elijah’s mantle? What is wrong? Is he here?”

“No, he is not here, father.”

Shaphat stared at his son, his eyes narrowing. “What does this mean? Why have you left the field?”

“Elijah has called me to follow him, father.”

Shaphat rose from his comfortable chair. “Deborah, come here.” The wife entered wide-eyed from the kitchen, alarmed by her husband’s voice. “Look at your son,” he directed.

She stared at the prophet’s mantle.

“You son says he is to follow Elijah.”

Deborah walked to the young man. With her head tilted back to meet his eyes, she asked, “Is it true, Elisha?”

“It is true, mother.”

Tears began to form in her eyes. Shaphat put his arm around her waist. She buried her face in his shoulder. “Elijah is a good man. We love him. But he does not know what he asks. Nor do you.”

“Yahweh calls me. Elijah is but his mouth.”

“The field, son, the farm. I cannot run it without you. I am growing old.”

“You can hire an overseer.”

“Serve Yahweh, Elisha, as we do and as we have taught you, but do not take this course. Elijah’s life hangs like a dying leaf in the autumn. The wind will sweep you away with him.”

“The safest place on earth is in God’s will.”

“I forbid you to go.”

“Yahweh has called me. I cannot refuse.”

The two men faced each other without speaking. Deborah broke away from Shaphat’s arms and clutched at her son. “Elisha, do not go. Do not defy your father.”

Surprised at the ferocity of their objections, Elisha pulled away from his mother. He walked into the kitchen and picked up an iron axe and a long-bladed knife. An oblong oil lamp stood on a table, its small flame flickering from its pinched end. He picked it up and walked back into the main room.

Deborah raised a hand to her mouth. “Elisha?”

He went out the door and toward the oxen he left untended in the pen. Shaphat hurried after him. Elisha set the oil lamp and tools on the fence and began to unfasten the thick wooden yoke. He dragged it and the plow to the fence, slipped the knife into his girdle, and picked up the axe.

Not until he raised the axe over the head of one of the oxen did Shaphat realize what he was about to do. “Elisha!” he called too late. The flat end of the axe came down hard on the ox. It slumped immediately to its knees and rolled onto its side. The other ox watched uncomprehending as Elisha moved toward it. Shaphat called out again, “Elisha! Stop!” He ran toward his son, but already the second ox lay dead on its side. “What’s wrong with you, Elisha? Have you gone mad?” The father grabbed the axe from his son’s hand, but its use was past.

Elisha pulled the knife from his girdle and began to skin the animal. The men arrived from the field just in time to see the second animal fall. Elisha called to them, “Tell the villagers there is a meat feast. Tell them to come now. Everyone is invited.”

Shaphat, struck dumb by the quickness of Elisha’s actions, did not object. He stared unbelieving at the two dead oxen.

Elisha worked with feverish quickness. He cut a long line down the ox’s underside and along its legs to lay open the hide, gutted the animal, then began to cut sections of meat from the carcass. He carried each piece to the stable area and hung it by a hook to drain. Last, he cut the head from the ox and dragged the carcass on its hide, tied a rope to its hind quarters, and winched it over a beam to hang neck down.

Shaphat stood in his path as he approached the second ox. “Elisha, you are destroying my property.” He said simply.

Elisha walked around him. “Take it from my inheritance, he answered.

Shaphat tried to talk to his son as Elisha carved the ox. The son worked swiftly, as before, ignoring the pleadings of the father. A few early arrivers stared wide-eyed across the fence, jesting with one another and calling for Shaphat to explain the occasion. Other villagers approached from three directions. The eleven workers who had been with Elisha in the field stalled their oxen securely and joined the crowd. Immediately they were assailed with questions they could not answer. Shaphat, at last, walked through the crowd, ignoring their questions and shaking off their friendly tugs, to make his way to the house.

Elisha retrieved the axe his father had dropped. He picked up the heavy end of the plow and moved between the pen and the house. He heard his name called amid the gasps of the crowd as he raised the axe and brought it down the first time on the precious plow. Someone in the crowd noticed that his mantle looked like Elijah’s.

The new prophet chopped the plow into eighteen-inch pieces, which he stacked into a pile. He went to the pen, picked up the yoke, and placed it across his shoulders, his arms outstretched to balance it by each end. He dropped it to the ground near the newly cut wood and looked toward his friends. “As I shed this yoke,” he said softly, “so I shed this life.”

The announcement revealed to the crowd the seriousness of the feast. The people grew quiet, watching with wonder as the thunk of Elisha’s axe into the thick yoke set a somber pattern of sound.

Perspiration had soaked through the shoulders of the mantle by the time he completed the task. He dropped the axe and walked into the house, to return in a moment with a long spit and its braces. Shaphat and Deborah followed him to the door and watched, arms around each other’s waist. Their son set the spit properly, then arranged the wood under it. He ignited some thorn twigs from near his mother’s outdoor oven, stuffed them under the wood, fetched the oil lamp from the fence, and ignited the twigs. The fire spread quickly along the dry wood.

Elisha waited until the flames passed their high point and a hot bed of ashes began to form underneath. He returned to the stable to select three large, choice cuts for the spit. Only when the meat was set in place to roast did he speak again.

The men, each one his friend, stood in the foreground, the women in a semi-circle behind them. “My friends,” he began, “all of you know that I swore a Nazirite vow not to touch a razor to my hair or wine to my lips so long as the temples to Baal stand in Samaria and Jezreel. My heart has been heavy for Yahweh. My greatest dream has come true this day.” He grasped the mantle at arms’ length to hold it out. Its shape formed a triangle from each hand to a point at his knees. His long black hair and beard set his face out fearsomely at the top of the straight line of his arms and shoulders. “This is the mantle of Elijah,” he said. He lowered his arms. “Today, while I plowed in the field, Elijah cast his mantle over me. Yahweh has called me to follow the prophet, to be his disciple. I go gladly.” He gestured toward the roasting meat and fire. “The flames burn away the yoke and the plow, and the meat of my ox team will pass into your bodies. They are symbols of my life. Now that life is ended. I will return to it no more.”

His friends were silent, each one embarrassed that he could think of nothing to say. Most of them had worshiped at Baal shrines; some of them no more after Carmel. All of them knew well of Elisha’s zeal for Yahweh. At last, a young man eased from the crowd and embraced Elisha tightly. He pulled away gently, bowing from the waist as he returned to the crowd. The act of endorsement and reverence brought tears to Elisha’s eyes.