XIX. ELIJAH’S FLIGHT FROM JEZEBEL

Nor is this all. There is another and a still more valuable coincidence yet, connected with this part of my subject; more valuable, because involving in itself a greater number of particulars, and, therefore, more liable to a flaw, if the combination was artificial. When Elijah has worked his great miracle on the top of Carmel, and kindled the sacrifice by fire from heaven, he has to fly from Jezebel for his life, who swears that, by the morrow, she will deal with him as he had dealt with the prophets of Baal her god, and slay him [1 Kings 18:40; 19:2.] . Now when it was so common a practice, as we have seen, for the godly amongst the people of Israel to betake themselves to Judah in their distress, there to worship the God of their fathers without scandal and without persecution, it seems obvious that this was the place for Elijah to repair unto; the most appropriate, for it was because he had been very jealous for the Lord, that he was banished—the most convenient, for no other was so near; he had but to cross the borders, one would think, and he was safe. Yet neither on this occasion, nor yet during the three preceding years of drought, when Ahab sought to lay hands upon him, did Elijah seek sanctuary in Judah. First he hides himself by the brook Cherith, which is before Jordan [It is true that there is great difference of opinion as to the situation of this brook Cherith; but from the direction given to Elijah being to turn Eastward, when he was to go there, he being at the time in Samaria, it is clear that it could not be in Judah.—Consult Lightfoot, Vol. ii. 318, fol.] ; then at “Zarephath which belongs to Zidon;” and though he does at last, when his case seems desperate, and his hours are numbered by Jezebel’s sentence, “come in haste to Beer-Sheba, which belongeth to Judah,” [1 Kings 19:3.] still it is after a manner which bespeaks his reluctance to set foot within that territory, even more than if he had evaded it altogether. Tarry he will not; he separates from his servant, probably for the greater security of both; goes a day’s journey into the wilderness, and for-lorn, and spirit-broken, and alone, begs that he may die; then he wanders away, being so taught of God, forty days and forty nights, till he comes to Horeb, the Mount of God, and there conceals himself in a cave. Now all this is at first sight very strange and unaccountable; strange and unaccountable that the Prophet of God should so studiously avoid Judah, the people of God, governed as it then was by Jehoshaphat, a prince who walked with God [1 Kings 22:43.] ,—Judah being, of all others, a shelter the nearest and most convenient. How is it to be explained?

I doubt not by this fact; that Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, had already married, or was then upon the point of marrying, his son Jehoram to Athaliah, the daughter of this very Ahab, and this very Jezebel, who were seeking Elijah’s life [2 Kings 8:18; 2 Chron. 18:1.] ; his, therefore, was not now the kingdom in which Elijah could feel that a residence was safe; for by this ill-omened match (such it proved) the houses of Jehoshaphat and Ahab were so strictly identified, that we find the former, when solicited by Ahab to join him in an expedition against Ramoth-gilead, expressing himself in such terms as these: “I am as thou art, my people as thy people, my horses as thy horses;” [1 Kings 22:4.] and in allusion, as it should seem, to this fraternity of the two kings, Jehoshaphat is in one place actually called “King of Israel.” [2 Chron. 21:2.]

It may be demonstrated that this fatal marriage (for such it was in its consequences) was, at any rate, contracted not later than the tenth or eleventh of Ahab’s reign, and it might have been much earlier; whilst these scenes in the life of Elijah could not have occurred within the first few years of that reign, seeing that Ahab had to fill up the measure of his wickedness after he came to the throne, before the Prophet was commissioned to take up his parable against him. I mention these two facts, as tending to prove that the exile of Elijah could not have fallen out long, if at all, before the marriage; and therefore that the latter event, whether past or in prospect, might well bear upon it. I say that it may be proved that this marriage was not later than the tenth or eleventh of Ahab—for

1. Ahaziah, the fruit of the marriage, the son of Jehoram and Athaliah, began to reign in the twelfth year of Joram, son of Ahab, king of Israel [2 Kings 8:25, 26.] .

2. But Joram began to reign in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah [2 Kings 3:1.].

3. Therefore, the twelfth of Joram would answer to the thirtieth of Jehoshaphat (had the latter reigned so long; it did, in fact, answer to the seventh of Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat [Comp. 2 Kings 3:1; 8:16. 1 Kings 22:42.]; but there is no need to perplex the computation by any reference to this reign); and accordingly Ahaziah must have begun his reign in what would correspond to the thirtieth of Jehoshaphat.

4. But he was twenty-two when he began it. Therefore he must have been born about the eighth year of Jehoshaphat; and consequently the marriage of Jehoram and Athaliah, which gave birth to him, must have been contracted at least as early as the sixth or seventh of Jehoshaphat.

5. Now Jehoshaphat began to reign in the fourth of Ahab, king of Israel; therefore the marriage must have been solemnized as early as the tenth or eleventh of Ahab—how much earlier it was solemnized, in fact, we cannot tell; but the result is extremely curious; and without the most remote allusion to it on the part of the sacred historian, as being an incident in any way governing the movements of Elijah, it does furnish, when we are once in possession of it, a most satisfactory explanation of the shyness of Elijah to look for a refuge in a country where, almost under any other circumstances, it was the most natural he should have sought one; and, where, at any other time, since the division of the kingdoms, he certainly would have found not only a refuge, but a welcome.