And it came to pass after many days, that the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year, saying, "Go, show thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth."
And Elijah went to show himself to Ahab. And the famine was sore in Samaria. And Ahab called Obadiah, who was over the household. (Now Obadiah feared the Lord greatly: for, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.) And Ahab said to Obadiah, "Go through the land, to all the fountains of water, and to all the brooks: perhaps we may find grass and save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the beasts."
So they divided the land between them to pass throughout it: Ahab went one way by himself, and Obadiah went another way by himself. And as Obadiah was on the way, behold, Elijah met him: and he knew him, and fell on his face, and said, "Is it thou, my lord Elijah?"
And he answered him, "It is I: go, tell thy lord, 'Behold, Elijah is here.'"
And he said, "Wherein have I sinned, that thou wouldest deliver thy servant into the hand of Ahab, to slay me? As the Lord thy God liveth, there is no nation or kingdom, whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee: and when they said, 'He is not here,' he took an oath of the kingdom and nation, that they found thee not.
ROCK OF ELIJAH'S ALTAR ON MOUNT CARMEL AND OUTLOOK NORTH OVER PLAIN OF ESDRAELON.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood and used by special permission.
But it is as sanctuary that the long hill of Carmel is best remembered in history. In its separation from other hills, its position on the sea, its visibleness from all quarters of the country; in its uselessness for war or traffic; in its profusion of flowers, its high platforms and groves with their glorious prospects of land and sea, Carmel must have been a place of retreat and of worship from the earliest times. It was claimed for Baal; but, even before Elijah's day, an altar had stood upon it for Jehovah. About this altar--as on a spot whose sanctity they equally felt--the rival faiths met in that contest, in which for most of us all the history of Carmel consists. It is not without interest to know that the awful debate, whether Jehovah or Baal was supreme lord of the elements, was fought out for a full day in face of one of the most sublime prospects of earth and sea and heaven. Before him, who stands on Carmel, nature rises in a series of great stages from sea to Alp: the Mediterranean, the long coast to north and south, with its hot sands and palms; Esdraelon covered with wheat, Tabor and the lower hills of Galilee with their oaks,--then, over the barer peaks of Upper Galilee and the haze that is about them, the clear snow of Hermon, hanging like an only cloud in the sky. It was in face of that miniature universe that the Deity who was Character was vindicated as Lord against the deity who was not. It was over all that realm that the rain swept up at the call of the same God who exposed the injustice of the tyrant and avenged the wrongs of Naboth.
