1 Kings 18:19

It was a challenge given — a fair and open challenge by the prophet. It was to be a question between God and Baal. Elijah on the one side and these prophets on the other were to settle it. So Ahab sends to all, and all gather together.

Think of Ahab. He is a powerful tyrant. The whole army of the kingdom is at his command, and a determined, ruthless wife stands behind him. Yet a weak man with no friends is all but ordering him to call the nation together! We have already noted the moral dignity that comes from close fellowship with God. We see it again here in Elijah the Tishbite.

Ahab gave in and summoned Baal's prophets at Elijah's command. That shows how fully God's own constraint had mastered him. Against his will, God used him to carry out His purpose. In this way the Lord made the wrath of man praise Him.

Elijah shows the king there is only one way to end the famine and reach the day when the Lord will send rain on the earth. The sin that brought the judgment must itself be judged. So Ahab is told to gather all Israel to Carmel, along with the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table. Everyone who had a share in this great sin must be there. The leaders and the people they led are to gather at Carmel. No privileges anyone enjoys, and no position, however high, will count as an excuse for staying away.

But man failed. Sin and corruption came in, until Elijah, a faithful man, felt he stood alone in Israel. When the time came for him to build an altar to the Lord, we find he took twelve stones. And why? Because he knew that in God's mind the tribes were always twelve, however divided and torn apart they were then.

False religion has always looked for the sunshine of this world's favour. True religion has always been purer and more genuine when the world frowned on it. "The prophets of Asherah eat at Jezebel's table." If Jezebel had had no table, she would have had no prophets either. They were after her table, not her soul.

She stands out as the spirit of that which always persecutes the witnesses of God. They did not eat at Ahab's table. It was at Jezebel's table.

The name usually carries 'the' in front of it, and it means 'the park' or fruitful place. Carmel is a mountain 12 miles long. It runs from the plain of Esdraelon in Galilee, north-west toward the Mediterranean. It was the scene of Elijah's contest with the priests of Baal, which led to their destruction. One part near its east end is still called Mukrakah, 'place of burning' — the traditional spot of that contest.

We cannot be sure the prophets of Ashtaroth were there. Jezebel may have been able to shield her own favourites. Even so, the people felt too strongly for her to stop the gathering altogether. Elijah wanted both crowds of false leaders to come, but the record mentions only Baal's four hundred and fifty.