I am sure that, if God had not held him back, Satan would have brought up a little spark out of hell to set that sacrifice on fire. But God would not let him.
Then they begin to pray: “O Baal, hear us! O Baal, hear us!”
Elijah might have said: “Why haven’t you prayed to Baal for water this dry weather? You might just as well have asked him for water as for fire.”
After a long time they begin to get hoarse.
“You must pray louder than that, if you expect Baal to hear you,” says the old prophet. “Maybe he is asleep. Pray louder, so as to wake him up.”
Poor fellows! They haven’t any voice left. So they begin to pray in blood. They now cut themselves with knives, and lift their streaming hands and arms to Baal. But no fire comes down.
It is getting toward sundown.
The prophet of the Lord builds an altar. Mind you, he does not have any thing to do with the altar of Baal. He builds an entirely different one, on the ruins of the altar of the Lord, which had been broken down.
“We will not have any one saying there is any trick about this thing,” says the prophet. So they bring twelve barrels of water and pour over the altar. I do not know how they managed to get so much water, but they did it.
Then Elijah prays: “O God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, let it be known this day that Thou art God in Israel.”