The Story of the Chosen People (Yesterday's Classics) (17 page)

THE PROPHET KILLED BY THE LION

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spite of all the warnings which he had received, Jeroboam went on in his evil ways. Another punishment, therefore, soon befell him; for he lost his favorite son, the only good member of his family, and the one upon whom rested his greatest hopes.

Then, after a reign of twenty-two years, Jeroboam himself died, leaving the kingdom of Israel to be ruled by his son Nadab.

But as this new ruler led a bad life, he was killed two years later by one of his own captains during a war with the Philistines.

To get the crown, this captain, whose name was Baasha, killed all the other members of the royal family. Thus, by a wholesale murder, he became the third king of Israel, and during his reign of twenty-four years, he followed all the evil ways of the kings who went before him.

He was reproved for his sins and idolatries by a prophet of the Lord, and was punished by a war with Judah, and one with the King of Syria, who marched into his kingdom and took several of his cities.

Baasha's son Elah was murdered at the end of two years by Zimri, the commander of his chariots, who also killed all the other members of the royal family. But Zimri himself died, a victim of the hatred of his rival, Omri, just seven days after he had come to the throne.

Omri, the sixth king of Israel, is especially noted because, during his short reign of twelve years, he built the city of Samaria, which became the capital of his kingdom. When he died, he left the throne to his son Ahab, the best known of all the kings of Israel.

In the mean while, Asa had reigned quietly over Judah, and, as his "heart was perfect with the Lord all his days," he was allowed to rule forty-one years. During this time Asa rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, and gathered together a large and well-trained army. As soon as he was all ready, he proudly refused to pay tribute to the Egyptians, although they had forced the people of Judah to make a yearly payment ever since they had entered Jerusalem during the reign of Rehoboam.

The armies of Judah and of Egypt met on the southern border of Palestine, where Asa, in answer to his fervent prayer, was rewarded by a great victory over his foes. When he came back to his capital in triumph, with all the spoil he had won, the people's hearts were full of thanksgiving and joy; so God seized this favorable moment to make a solemn appeal to them through a prophet.

This holy man bade the king and people to be strong, heart and hand, in seeking God, and told them not to worship idols. They were so strongly moved by this speech that they sent away all the idols from their land, and purified their altars. Next they assembled in such large numbers for the worship of the Lord that Baasha, who was then King of Israel, was frightened, and decided to march against them before they could come and attack him.

When Asa heard that the King of Israel was coming to fight him, he quite forgot that he needed no other helper than God, and sought the alliance of the King of Syria. This he managed to get by giving him in exchange all the temple treasures. But a prophet soon came to reprove Asa for this lack of faith in God's help. The prophet told the king that as he had sought the help of a stranger, instead of trusting the Lord, he would have war all the rest of his life.

Asa was so angry when he heard this prophecy that he had the prophet put into prison and persecuted. But he could not forget the words which this unfortunate man had spoken.

Then, too, the prophecy was soon fulfilled, and Asa's last years were made very unhappy by constant warfare and much sickness. He died in the forty-first year of his reign, after having lived long enough to see the first seven kings of Israel.

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was succeeded by his son Jehoshaphat, a pious and energetic king, under whose rule the little kingdom of Judah reached its highest point of prosperity. The new king began his reign by pulling down many of the heathen groves and altars, and because he thus tried to stop the worship of idols he was rewarded with great power.

In the course of time, however, Jehoshaphat forgot that God had forbidden his Chosen People to make friends among those who worshiped idols. Not only did he enter into an alliance with Ahab, the idolatrous King of Israel, but he even encouraged his son to marry the daughter of this ruler.

Ahab, the King of Israel with whom the pious Jehoshaphat had thus made an alliance, is known as the greatest, but at the same time the most wicked, of all the rulers of the ten tribes. He began to reign in Samaria while Asa was yet King of Judah, and from the time of his marriage he was completely under the influence of his wife, Jezebel.

This woman is well known as one of the cleverest, but most wicked, women that ever lived. She brought the worship of the heathen god Baal into her husband's kingdom, set up altars and groves at Samaria, and had no less than eight hundred and fifty heathen priests who were fed at her own table.

Moreover, Jezebel persecuted the prophets of the true God with such fury that they were soon obliged to flee from her, and take refuge in neighboring caves, where they staid hidden. Here they were for a while secretly fed by Ahab's steward, who did not dare to support them openly, because he was afraid of the anger of his haughty mistress.

The Israelites, during the past sixty years, had little by little yielded to the worship of idols, and there were now only seven thousand men among them who had not bent the knee to Jezebel's favorite god, Baal. The Lord, touched by the suffering of these few servants who had thus been faithful to him, now interfered in their behalf.

To help them, he sent Elijah, the greatest prophet since the time of Samuel. Elijah was very tall, his features were rugged and stern, his long hair flowed over his broad shoulders, and he wore a rough robe or mantle of sheep's hair.

Directed by God, this prophet suddenly came to the king's court, where his rough clothes and manners must have made a startling contrast with Ahab's courtiers, who were dressed in costly silks. As soon as he arrived there, he abruptly gave his message: "As the Lord God of Israel liveth, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word."

When Ahab heard these words, he shuddered; for, although Jezebel and her priests thought that Elijah was nothing but a madman, Ahab knew very well that he was a prophet of the Lord. Before the astonished king could collect himself enough to bid his guards seize the prophet and put him to death, Elijah had disappeared, and no one could find any trace of him.

The prophet, in leaving the palace, had merely obeyed God's orders. After warning Ahab of the coming drought, he speedily went to a quiet valley far from the houses of men. In this little valley flowed a tiny stream, which emptied its waters into the river Jordan. Here Elijah staid, quenching his thirst in the little stream, and living on the food which the ravens brought to him.

He lived in the valley until the time of the rainy reason came; but, although the ground was very dry, there were no signs of the usually abundant rainfalls. Little by little, even the stream at the bottom of the valley dried up, and then the prophet, in obedience to God's command, left this lonely place and went down into Phœnicia.

Elijah came at last to a village near the seashore, where the famine brought about by the drought was beginning to make itself bitterly felt. Here he saw a poor widow picking up a few sticks to cook her last food; for she had no money, and her whole stock of provisions was a handful of meal and a few drops of oil.

The prophet, whose garments were faded, dusty, and torn, drew near this woman and asked her for a drink. Then, when his thirst was slaked, he looked up at her with imploring eyes and said: "Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand."

Now, although this man was a complete stranger, and although he had come and asked her for what was most precious to her, the woman felt so sorry for him that she led him into her house, and generously shared with him the small amount of food which was all she had to keep herself and her son alive.

In reward for this good deed, the widow was favored by a miracle. During the next three years, which Elijah spent in her house, the meal and oil never failed her, and she and her son and her guest had plenty to eat.

Some time after, the poor woman's son died, and then the prophet further showed how thankful he was for her former kindness, by bringing the boy back to life. This is the very first time in the story of the Bible that we hear of such a miracle as bringing the dead back from the tomb. But, as you will learn from reading the Bible, a like miracle is mentioned several times in the Old, as well as in the New, Testament.

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was only at the end of the third year of drought, that God bade Elijah leave the widow's house and go to Ahab, King of Israel. The prophet did not find the king at his palace, as usual; for Ahab was traveling around the country in search of pasture for his horses, which were suffering sorely from the long drought.

The moment that Elijah appeared, the king remembered his former visit, and, thinking that the prophet was to blame for all the suffering of his people, he angrily cried: "Art thou he that troubleth Israel?"

But Elijah stood fearlessly before the king, and boldly answered:

"I have not troubled Israel, but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim."

Then, to show the king the power of God, and to convince him that the idols which he worshiped could really do nothing at all, Elijah invited him to bring all his priests to Mount Carmel. There, he said, the four hundred and fifty priests of Baal might build an altar to their god, while he himself, the only believer in the true God who still dared make his faith known, would erect an altar for Jehovah (the Hebrew name for the Lord).

All the people gathered together on the mountain, where they knew that a test of the powers of God and of Baal was to be made. Then Elijah boldly addressed the multitude, saying: "How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him."

Next, Elijah went on to say that they would now call upon the true God to make himself known by sending down fire from heaven to burn up the sacrifice laid upon his altar. Not daring to refuse this test, the priests of Baal built their altar, and made use of all their arts, prayers, incantations, and magic, to make Baal hear them.

But the hours passed on without any sign of their prayers being answered. The heathen priests became more and more excited, and danced, and screamed always louder. Elijah, who stood by, watching their antics, mockingly spoke to them from time to time, saying that perhaps their god was out hunting, or that he was talking, sleeping, or away on a journey. He also advised them to make more noise, so that their prayer might be sure to reach Baal's ear.

But when all the efforts of Baal's priests were seen to be vain, and their strength was quite exhausted, Elijah stepped quietly forward and built an altar in his turn. He dug a deep trench all around it, and poured water on his fuel until it was soaked through, and until the ditch around it was full. Then he placed his sacrifice on top of the pile, as usual.

When all was ready, the prophet stood calmly near the altar; and, instead of the wild cries and dances which the priests of Baal had used, he said this simple prayer: "Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word."

The prayer was scarcely out of his mouth when the fire of heaven came down upon the altar from a cloudless sky, burned up both fuel and sacrifice, and even dried all the water in the trench. When the assembled people saw this miracle, they were afraid, fell down upon their faces, and cried aloud: "The Lord, he is the God."

Elijah now took advantage of the people's admiration for the power of the true God to make them seize the priests of Baal, who were all slain on the very spot where the uselessness of their prayers had been made known.

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the sacrifice upon Mount Carmel Elijah had publicly made known the power and majesty of the God whom he served. When the massacre of the priests of Baal was ended, he turned to Ahab, who had watched all these deeds in awestruck silence, and told him that plenty of rain would soon fall.

This news pleased Ahab so much that he went into his tent to hold a great feast, while Elijah climbed up the mountain, and sat there, his head bowed down upon his knees, in silent prayer. His servant, in the mean time, had orders to watch the sky closely so as to tell him of the first signs of rain.

Six times the servant came back to the place where Elijah was sitting, and reported that the sky was as blue as ever; but the seventh time, he came back, saying: "Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand."

This small sign of coming rain was quite enough for Elijah. He now sent word to the king to prepare his chariot and hasten home. The skies quickly grew black with clouds, and the rain fell in torrents, all over the parched and thirsty land, as Ahab drove quickly back to his home at Jezreel, accompanied by Elijah, who ran ahead of him every step of the way.

Arrived at the palace, the story of the day's happenings was told to Jezebel, Ahab's wife, who flew into a terrible rage when she heard that Baal's priests had all been slain. She threatened Elijah, saying: "So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to-morrow about this time."