The sound of a low whisper...

I'm going to share now an entry from my journal from this past summer. Sometime, I'll share my whole story from the summer. But for now, just one entry will do. Some back ground information: I went on a trip to the Holy Lands, so this is an entry from when I was in Israel. We had spent the day wandering around different parts of Galilee.

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My favorite part was Mt. Carmel. So that's what I'll talk about here. We, of course, went through the story of Elijah defeating the prophets of Baal. Now the story has a lot more context for me. So I'll go through it again here.

The Jezreel Valley, in the time of Elijah, was consumed by Baal worship. After the kingdom split, the northern kingdom - Israel - went astray and ended up worshipping Baal profusely. The Jezreel Valley is in the north. Right on the edge of the Jezreel Valley is Mt. Carmel. This also happens to be a sacred place of Baal. (Oh, I forgot to mention that the Jezreel Valley is very fertile - it is beautiful, lush, and green. Baal is a fertility god and a god of rain - well, rain brings fertility, so it makes sense.) Anyway, so Elijah comes along and says, "it's not going to rain until I say so - when Yahweh says so, actually." So, there's a drought. This is throwing Yahweh in the face of those Baal worshipers who think Baal controls the rain. Eventually, Ahab is fed up with this. Elijah challenges him to a duel. Elijah and 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Ashera (Baal's consort) went up to Mt. Carmel. First, the prophets of Baal build an alter, sacrifice meat on it, and pray to Baal to set it aflame. They even resort to some weird ritual of slashing themselves. Elijah smack talks them some, saying that maybe Baal is sleeping or going to the bathroom. Then it's Elijah's turn. He builds an alter and does the whole sacrificial meat thing. And he digs a trench around it as a moat. He pours a ton of water on it. (Where he gets the water because of the drought, I'm not totally sure.) Then he prays to Yahweh to set it on fire. Now, on image of Baal is him holding up a bolt of lightning. Another name for lightning is the fire from heaven. After Elijah prays, 'fire from heaven'
comes down onto the alter and everything is engulfed in flames and is burnt to ashes. Yahweh just totally owned Baal at his own game, on Baal's home court.

Here's the thing, a melding of Yahweh and Baal had been occuring in those days. Remember me writing about the two standing stones in the temple at Arad? [I'll be sure to write about that later in another blog.] Yahweh and "his wife" - Ashera. That's right - the wife of Baal. So there was this intermixing of Yahweh and Baal. This thought could explain what happens next.

Jezebal - king Ahab's queen - was mad at Elijah for killing all the prophets of Baal after defeating them. She vowed to slaughter Elijah as he had slaughtered the prophets. This scared Elijah, so he ran away. But he had just defeated all of those prophets of Baal because Yahweh had his back! Why should he be afraid now? Perhaps it's because he had just seen Yahweh act as Baal would, and he was starting to question the reality of Yahweh being the one and only true God overall or if there was just some blend that was a coverall for the truth. So Elijah ran away. He ran to Beersheva - which is all the way in the south! I'm guessing it was one of those thinking-runs. So he just kept running. Now he is in the Negev - a desert wilderness far away from Baal worship. And it is here that Elijah encounters God most profoundly. The LORD, Yahweh, had Elijah stand out on a mount before Him. A mighty wind tore through the mountains, then there was an earthquake, then a fire, but Yahweh was in none of those. All of those are Baal images of being strong and mighty, tearing through mountains. After all that had passed, there was the thinnest silence - that was where Yahweh was. All of a sudden, Yahweh removed Himself as far away from Baal as possible. He is geographically as far away as he can be from Baal worship. Then, in all the physical imagery, Yahweh has made Himself the exact opposite of Baal - completely distinguishing Himself from Baal. That is when Elijah learns what his name actually declares.

Yahweh is God.
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What a profound thing to have God come to you in the thinnest silence. Some translate that as a low whisper.

I think I need that low whisper.

...a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke 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. And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire, the sound of a low whisper. -- 1 Kings 11-12