(3.) A space of three or four years now elapses (comp. 1 Kings xxii, 1 ; xxii, 51 ; 2 Kings i, 17) be- fore we again catch a glimpse of Elijah. The denun- ciations uttered in the Vineyard of Naboth have been partly fulfilled. Ahab is dead, and his son and suc- cessor, Ahaziah, has met with a serious accident, after a troubled reign of less than two years (2 Kings i, 1, 2 ; 1 Kings xxii, 51). Fearing a fatal result, as if to prove himself a worthy son of an idolatrous pareiitage, he sends to an oracle or shrine of Baal at the Philistine town of Ekron to ascertain tlio issue of his illness. But the oracle is nearer at hand than the distant Ekron. An intimation is conveyed to the prophet, probably at that time inhabiting one of the recesses of Carmel, and, as on the former occasions, he suddenly appeal's on the path of the messengers, without preface or in- quiry utters his message of death, and as rapidly dis- appears. The tone of his words is as national on this as on any former occasion, and, as before, they are authenticated by the name of Jehovah — "Tims saith Jehovah, Is it because there is no God in Israel that ye go to inquire of Baalzebub, god of Ekron ?" The messengers returned to the king too soon to have ac- complished their mission. They were possibly stran- gers ; at any rate they were ignorant of the name of tlie man wlio had thus interrupted their journey. But his apjiearance had fixed itself in their minds, and their description at once told Aliaziah, wlio'must have Seen the prophet about his father's court or have heard
him described in the harem, who it w^as that had thus reversed the favorable oracle which he was hoping for from Ekron. The " hairy man" (b"i" ^"3 'd"X, n man, a lord of hair), with a belt of rough skin round his loins, who came and went in this secret manner, and uttered his fierce words in thj name of the God of Israel, could be no other than the old enemy of his father and mother, Elijah the Tishbite. But. ill as he was, this check only roused the wrath of Ahaziah, and, with the spirit of his mother, he at once seized the op- portunity of possessing himself of the person of the man who had been for so long the evil genius of his house. A captain was dispatched, with a partj' of fifty, to take Elijah prisoner. He was sitting on the top of "the mount" ("I^IH), i. e. probably of Carmel. The officer approached and addressed the prophet by the title which, as before noticed, is most frequently applied to him and Elisha — "O man of God, the king hath spoken: come down." "And Elijah answered and said. If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty ! And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty." A second party was sent, only to meet the same fate. The altered tone of the lead- er of a third party, and the assurance of God that his servant need not fear, brought Elijah down. But the king gained nothing. The message was delivered to his face in the same words as it had been to the mes- sengers, and Elijah, so we must conclude, was allowed to go harmless. This was his last interview with the house of Ahab. It was also his last recorded appear- ance in person against the Baal-worshippers. It was this occasion to which the fierj^ sons of Zebedee al- luded (Luke ix, 51-56) in a proposal that brought out from the lips of the Saviour the contrast with his own benign mission (Trench, Miracles:, ch. iv).
(4.) It must have been shorth^ after the death of Ahaziah that Elijah made a communication with the southern kingdom. It is the only one of which any record remains, and its mention is the first and last time that the name of the prophet appears in the Books of Chronicles. Mainly devoted, as these books are, to the affairs of Judah, this is not surprising. The alli- ance between his enemy Ahab and Jelioshaphat can- not have been unknown to the prophet, and it must have made him regard the proceedings of the kings of Judah with more than ordinarj' interest. When, therefore, Jelioram, the son of Jehoshaphat, who had married the daughter of Ahab, began "to walk in the ways of the kings of Israel, as did the house of Ahab, and to do that which was evil in tlie siglit of Jehovah," Elijah sent him a letter (3ri^'2, a tcriting, difl'erent from the ordinary word for an epistle, '^Sp, a hoolc), denouncing his evil doings, and predicting his death (2 Chron. xxi, 12-15). This letter has been consider- ed as a great difficulty, on the ground that Elijah's removal must have taken place before the de;ith of Jehoshaphat (from the terms of the mention of Elisha in 2 Kings iii, 11), and therefore before the accession of Joram to the throne of Judah. But, admitting that Elijah had been translated before the expedition of Jehoshaphat against Jloal), it does not follow that Jo- ram was not at that time, and before his father's death, king of Judah, Jehoshaphat occupj'ing himself during the last eight or ten years of his life in going about the kingdom (2 Chron. xix, 4-11), and in conducting some important wars, amongst others that in question against Moab, while Joram was concerned with the more central affairs of the government (2 Kings iii, 7, etc.). That Joram began to reign during the lifetime of his father Jehoshaphat is stated in 2 Kings viii, 16. According to one record (2 Kings i, 17), which imme- diately jirccedes the account of Elijah's last acts on eartii, Joram was actually on the throne of Judah at the time of Elijah's interview with Ahaziah ; and though this is modified by the statements of other