Elijah Flees to Horeb
19 Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2 So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.”
Like a child who momentarily finds himself at the bottom end of a little teasing, Ahab thought to himself, “I’m telling!” and went and poured out his heart to Jezebel. Ahab may have been king, but Jezebel was Queen, and truly in power. Ahab could speak with Elijah face-to-face; Ahab had seen the miracle. It’s safe at least to wonder whether Ahab’s conscience was pricked just a little by what his eyes had seen and by what his ears had heard. For Ahab, fire, death and rain all pointed to the powerlessness of Baal. But Jezebel only cared about the blood.
3 Elijah [saw this] and ran for his life.
In Hebrew, the two verbs he saw and he feared look almost the same, especially in the “imperfect” form (tense) we have here. The Hebrew actually has “saw” here, although translations in almost all languages (including English) prefer “was afraid.” Since the advent of psychoanalysis, no translation I know of has permitted the Hebrew “saw” to stand in this passage. It’s as if we all want to psychoanalyze Elijah; we know that with Jezebel’s threat, it would be perfectly reasonable to assume the prophet was afraid. But a translation should not be based on “I think,” but rather “the text says.” Some English translations don’t even bother to mention “saw” in a footnote, but it’s good to see that some (like the new NIV and the NASB) do.
So why did Elijah run? He “saw” what Jezebel had in mind for him. As we will see later in this same verse (19:3), Elijah was not as concerned with dying as he was with where he died. Jezebel had a reputation for killing the Lord’s prophets, and Elijah probably (please permit me that one “probably”) felt that his days were numbered. It was the message of his death that concerned him more than the death itself.
When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4 while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” 5 Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.
Beersheba is not in the northern kingdom of Israel; it was outside of Jezebel’s sphere of influence. In fact, Beersheba is almost outside the land of Judah, let alone Israel. Beersheba is a well in the extreme south of Judah. If you were to overlay a map of Israel over a map of the state of Minnesota (and I have), you would find that if the area of the northern Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul) is equivalent to Jerusalem, then the city where I serve (New Ulm, Minnesota) would correspond to Beersheba. New Ulm is about two hours by car from the north side of the Twin Cities.
It was here, in the deep south, that Elijah stopped running. He found a big bush there and sat in its shade. A broom tree isn’t much of a tree, but the Bedouins find that its scrawny branches burn very hot (Psalm 120:4). Now at last Elijah prayed for his death. Exhausted, he lay down and fell asleep.
If Elijah were to die here, the Lord’s success on Mount Carmel would remain a triumph. If Jezebel had killed him, it might seem more like her victory rather than the Lord’s. Elijah was tired and he wasn’t trusting God as much as he should have, but we don’t have to apply a lot of psychological theory to his prayer.
All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” 6 He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. (NIV)
This isn’t the only time an angel wakes a man up to give him help. Daniel was awakened this way by an angel (Daniel 8:18), and Peter was also awakened when an angel hauled off and whacked him in the side (Acts 12:7). Here the Hebrew verb (naga‘) can mean to “reach” (Jonah 3:6), “touch” (as when the Lord touched Jeremiah’s mouth, Jeremiah 1:9), or “strike” as when the Lord struck Pharaoh with the plagues (Exodus 11:1). However softly or not-so-softly he touched Elijah, he provided him with food exactly as the ravens and the widow had provided for him in the past.
For today, let’s let Elijah sleep. He needed the rest, and he still had a long way to go. An angel appeared with a meal, woke Elijah up, and the prophet ate and drank and rested some more. This is a moment in the Bible where God was taking care of his servant in an absolutely supernatural way, and look at how the servant reacts: he eats, and he sleeps. Like a patient coming out of a long sickness, he doesn’t wonder too much about who his nurse might be. There are those who “have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2). How many of us would be surprised to know that God’s angels have watched over us when we needed help the most? Elijah’s angel actually woke him up, but perhaps many of us can relate a story about an angel or a suspected angel that’s an echo of what happened here at Beersheba.
Elijah was safe, and the Lord was watching over him. Praise God that he does the same for us. But as I said before; for now, let’s let Elijah sleep.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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