5. (Sept. 'E\(n'i5.) A chief of the tribe of Judah, said to be " of the brethren of David" (1 Chron. xxvii, 18), and hence supposed by some to have been his old- est brother Eliab (1 Sam. xvi, 6). B.C. 1013 or ante.
Eli'jah (Heb. Eliyah' , iT?X, whose God is Jehovah, 2 Kings i, 3, 4, 8, 12 ; 1 Chron. viii, 27; Ezra x, 21, 26 ; Mai. iv, 5 ; elsewhere in the prolonged form Eli- ya'hu, W;;i3>< ; Sept. 'UXiov v. r. 'HXi'ac ; N. T. "HAi- «<; ; Josei)hiis, 'HXi'ac, Ant. viii, 13, 4; Vulg. EUas), the name of several men in the O. T., but the later ones apparently all namesakes of the famous prophet.
1. "Elij.\h the TiSHBiTE," the "Elias" of the N. T., a character whose rare, sudden, and brief ap- pearances, undaunted courage and fiery zeal — the brilliancjf of whose triumphs — the pathos of whose despondency — tiie glory of whose departure, and the calm beauty of whose reappearance on the ISIount of Transfiguration — throw such a halo of brightness around him as is equalled by none of his compeers in the sacred story.
1. Orifjin. — This wonder-working prophet is intro- duced to our notice like another Melchizedek (Gen. x, 4, 18 ; Heb. vii, 3), without any mention of his father or mother, or of the beginning of his days — as if he had dropped out of that cloudy chariot which, after his work was done on earth, conve}'ed him back to heaven. "Elijah the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead," is literally all that is given us to know of his parentage and locality (1 Kings xvii, 1). The He- brew text is "irl?i "^H'^^ln^ "'Sdnn ^I^^X. The third word may be pointed (1), as in the present Maso- retic text, to mean "from the inhaliitants of Gilead," or (2) " frt)m Tishbi of Gilead," which, w-ith a slight cliange in form, is what the Sept. has (o tK Herrrrtfiun'). The latter is followed by Ewald (Isr. Gesch. iii, 486, note). Lightfoot assumes, but without giving his au- thority, that Elijali was from Jabesli-Gilead. By Jo- sephus he is said to have come from Thesbon — tK ■Ki'AoDi; ihrri'iwi'iir rz/c raXaaciTiOo<; \wf)ac (Ant. viii, 13, 2X Perhaps tliis maj' have been read as Heshbon, a city of the priests, and given rise to the statement of Ejiiplianius that he was "of the tribe of Aaron," an<l grandson of Zadok. (See also the Chron. Pasch. in Fabricius, Cod. Pseudep. V. T. p. 1070, etc. ; and tjua- resmius, Elucid. ii, 605.) According to Jewish tradi- tion— grounded on a certain similarity betwepn the fiery zeal of the two — Elijali was identical with Phi- nehas, the son of Eleazar the (jfiest. lie w.'is also the angel of Jehovah who appeared in fire to Gideon
(Ligbtfoot on John i, 21 ; Eisenmenger, i, 086). Arab tradition jjlaces his birthplace at Gilhad (Jalud), a few miles north of es-Salt (Irby, p. 98), and his tomb near Damascus (Mislin, i, 490). The common assump- tion— perhaps originating with Hiller (Onom. p. 947) or Keland (Pal. p. 1035) — is that he was l)orn in the town of Thisbe (q. v.), mentioned in Tob. i, 2. But, not to insist on tlie fact that this Thisbe was not in Gilead, but in Naphtali, it is nearly certain that the name has no real existence in that passage, but arises from a mistaken translation of the same Hebrew word which is rendered " inhabitants" in 1 Kings xvii, 1. See Tishbite.
2. Personid Appearance. — The mention of Gilead, however, is the key-note to much that is most charac- teristic in the story of the prophet. Gilead was the country on the further side of the Jordan — a country of chase and pasture, of tent-villages and mountain- castles, inhabited bj' a people not settled and civilized like those who formed the communities of Ephraim and Judah, but of wandering, irregular habits, exposed to the attacks of the nomad tribes of the desert, and gradually conforming more and more to the habits of those tribes ; making war with the Hagarites, and taking the countless thousands of their cattle, and then dwelling in their stead (1 Chron. v, 10, 19-22). See Gilead. "With Elijah this is seen at every turn. Of his appearance as he "stood before" Ahab — with the suddenness of motion to this day characteristic of the Bedouins from his native hills — we can perhaps realize something from the touches, few, but strong, of the narrative. Of his height little is to be inferred — that little is in favor of its being beyond the ordi- nary' size. His chief characteristic was his hair, long and thick, and hanging down his back, and which, if not betokening the immense strength of Samson, yet accompanied powers of endurance no less remarkable. See Hair. His ordinary clothing consisted of a girdle of skin round his loins, which he tightened when aliout to move quickly (1 Kings xviii, 46). But in addition to this he occasionally wore the "mantle" (q. v.), or cape, of sheep-skin, which has supplied us with one of our most familiar figures of speech. In this mantle, in moments of emotion, he would hide his face (I Kings xix, 13), or when excited would roll it up as into a kind of staff. On one occasion we find him bending himself down upon the ground with his face between his knees. Such, so far as the scant}' notices of the record will allow us to conceive it, was the gen- eral appearance of the great prophet — an appearance which there is no reason to think was other than un- common even at that time. The solitary life in which these external peculiarities had been assumed had also nurtured that fierceness of zeal and that directness of address which so distinguished him. It was in the wild loneliness of the hills and ravines of Gilead that the knowledge of Jehovah, the living God of Israel, had been impressed on his mind, which was to form the subject of his mission to the idolatrous court and countr)' of Israel.