The Still Small Voice

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah: “May the gods punish me severely if by this time tomorrow I haven’t made you as dead as one of those prophets!”

When Elijah saw that, he got up and ran for his life. He came to Beersheba, in Judah, and left his servant there. Then he went on by himself a day’s walk into the wilderness, and sat down under a juniper tree. He asked to die. “I’ve had enough,” he said. “Now, Lord, take my life, because I am no better than my ancestors.”

He lay down under the juniper tree and fell asleep. Then an angel touched him. “Get up and eat!” the angel said. Elijah looked, and there by his head was bread baked on the coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again.

The Lord’s angel came back a second time and touched him. “Get up and eat,” he said, “because the journey is too hard for you.” So Elijah got up and ate and drank. With the strength that food gave him, he went on for forty days and forty nights, until he came to Horeb, God’s mountain.

Elijah answered, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of Armies, because the people of Israel have abandoned your covenant. They have thrown down your altars and killed your prophets with the sword. Only I am left, and they want to take my life.”

“Go out,” the Lord said, “and stand on the mountain in the Lord’s presence.” Then the Lord passed by. A great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke the rocks to pieces in front of the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind came an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.

After the earthquake a fire passed, but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire there was a still small voice.

Elijah heard it, and he wrapped his face in his cloak. He went out and stood in the entrance of the cave, and a voice came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

He gave the same answer: “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of Armies, because the people of Israel have abandoned your covenant. They have thrown down your altars and killed your prophets with the sword. Only I am left, and they want to take my life.”

The Lord told him, “Go back the way you came, and head for the wilderness of Damascus. When you arrive, anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. Anoint Jehu son of Nimshi to be king over Israel. And anoint Elisha son of Shaphat, of Abel Meholah, to be prophet in your place.

“Jehu will kill anyone who escapes Hazael’s sword, and Elisha will kill anyone who escapes Jehu’s sword. Yet I have kept seven thousand in Israel. Their knees have not bowed to Baal, and their mouths have not kissed him.”

Elisha left the oxen and ran after Elijah. “Please let me kiss my father and my mother,” he said, “and then I will follow you.”

“Go back,” Elijah said to him. “What have I done to you?”

So Elisha went back. He took the pair of oxen and killed them, and boiled their meat using the oxen’s own gear. He gave the people the meat, and they ate. Then he got up and went after Elijah, and served him.

He sent messengers into the city to Ahab king of Israel. “Ben Hadad says this,” they told him: “‘Your silver and your gold are mine. Your wives and your children, the best of them, are mine too.’”

“As you say, my lord the king,” the king of Israel answered. “I am yours, and all that I have.”

The messengers came back. “Ben Hadad says: ‘I sent you word that you must hand over to me your silver, your gold, your wives and your children. But this time tomorrow I will send my officials to you. They will search your palace and your officials’ houses, and they will take away whatever you treasure.’”

Then the king of Israel called together all the elders of the land. “You can see that this man is out to make trouble,” he said. “He asked for my wives and children, and for my silver and gold, and I didn’t refuse him.”

All the elders and all the people told him, “Don’t listen to him, and don’t agree.”

So Ahab told Ben Hadad’s messengers, “Tell my lord the king, ‘I will do everything you asked of me the first time. But I can’t do this.’” The messengers went and took the answer back to Ben Hadad.

Ben Hadad sent back, “May the gods punish me severely if Samaria’s dust is enough to give a handful to everyone who follows me!”

The king of Israel answered, “Tell him, ‘The man putting his armor on shouldn’t boast like the man taking it off.’”

When Ben Hadad heard this, he was drinking with the kings in their tents. “Get ready to attack!” he told his men. So they got ready to attack the city.

“By whom?” Ahab asked.

“The Lord says,” the prophet answered, “‘By the young men who serve the rulers of the provinces.’”

“Who will start the battle?” Ahab asked.

“You,” he answered.

So Ahab called up the young men who served the rulers of the provinces, 232 of them. After them he called up all the people of Israel, seven thousand in all. At noon they marched out. Ben Hadad was in the tents getting drunk, along with the thirty-two kings who helped him.

The young men of the provinces went out first. Ben Hadad sent men out, and they told him, “Men are coming out of Samaria.”

“If they have come out for peace,” he said, “take them alive. Or if they have come out for war, take them alive.”

So the young men came out of the city with the army following them, and each of them killed one of the enemy. The Syrians ran, and Israel chased them. Ben Hadad the king of Syria escaped on a horse with some horsemen. Then the king of Israel went out and attacked the horses and the chariots, and killed great numbers of the Syrians.

Then the prophet came to the king of Israel. “Go and make yourself strong,” he said, “and plan what you must do, because when the year comes around again, the king of Syria will march against you.”

When the year came around again, Ben Hadad called up the Syrians and marched to Aphek to fight Israel. The Israelites were called up too and given supplies, and they went out to face them. Israel’s camp facing them looked like two little flocks of young goats, but the Syrians filled the countryside.

A man of God came to the king of Israel. “The Lord says,” he told him, “‘Because the Syrians have said, “The Lord is a god of the hills, but he is not a god of the valleys,” I will hand this whole huge army over to you, and you will know that I am the Lord.’”

For seven days the two armies camped facing each other. On the seventh day the battle began, and the Israelites killed a hundred thousand of the Syrians’ foot soldiers in one day. The rest fled to Aphek, into the city, and the wall fell on twenty-seven thousand men who were left. Ben Hadad fled into the city too, into an inner room.

His officials said to him, “Listen, we have heard that Israel’s kings are merciful kings. Please let us put sackcloth, a rough cloth, around our bodies and ropes on our heads, and go out to the king of Israel. Maybe he will spare your life.”

So they dressed in sackcloth, with ropes on their heads, and came to the king of Israel. “Your servant Ben Hadad says, ‘Please let me live,’” they told him.

“Is he still alive?” said the king. “He is my brother.”

The men were watching closely, and they quickly picked up on that word. “Your brother Ben Hadad!” they said.

“Go and bring him,” the king said. When Ben Hadad came out to him, Ahab had him get up into the chariot.

Ben Hadad said to him, “I will give back the cities my father took from your father. You can make streets for yourself in Damascus, the way my father did in Samaria.”

“With this covenant,” said Ahab, “I will let you go.” So he made a covenant with him and let him go.

So the prophet said to him, “Because you have not obeyed the Lord’s voice, the moment you leave me, a lion will kill you.” As soon as the man had left him, a lion found him and killed him.

The prophet found another man and said, “Please hit me.” This man hit him and wounded him.

So the prophet left, and he waited by the road for the king, disguised with his headband over his eyes.

As the king passed by, the prophet shouted to him, “I went out into the middle of the battle, and a man came over and brought another man to me. He said, ‘Guard this man! If he goes missing for any reason, your life will pay for his life, or else you will pay a talent of silver’ (a talent is about sixty-six pounds). But while I was busy here and there, the man was gone.”

The king of Israel said to him, “Then that is your punishment. You have decided it yourself.”

The prophet quickly took the headband away from his eyes, and the king of Israel recognized that he was one of the prophets.

The prophet said to him, “The Lord says, ‘Because you let go of the man I had devoted to destruction, your life will take the place of his life, and your people will take the place of his people.’”

The king of Israel went back home to Samaria, sulking and angry.

Naboth answered Ahab, “May the Lord keep me from giving you what I inherited from my ancestors!”

Ahab went home sulking and angry over what Naboth of Jezreel had said to him: “I will not give you what I inherited from my ancestors.” He lay down on his bed with his face turned away, and he wouldn’t eat.

His wife Jezebel came to him. “Why are you so unhappy,” she asked, “that you won’t eat?”

He told her, “Because I spoke to Naboth of Jezreel. I said to him, ‘Sell me your vineyard. Or if you like, I will give you another vineyard for it.’ He answered, ‘I will not give you my vineyard.’”

His wife Jezebel said to him, “Do you rule the kingdom of Israel or not? Get up, eat something, and cheer up. I will give you the vineyard of Naboth of Jezreel.”

So she wrote letters in Ahab’s name and sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters to the elders and nobles in Naboth’s town.

In the letters she wrote, “Announce a fast, and seat Naboth up front among the people. Seat two wicked men facing him, and have them testify against him: ‘You cursed God and the king!’ Then lead him out and stone him to death.”

The men of the town, the elders and the nobles who lived there, did just as Jezebel had told them in her letters. They announced a fast and seated Naboth up front among the people. Then the two wicked men came in and sat facing him, and in front of everyone they testified against Naboth: “Naboth cursed God and the king!” They took him outside the town and stoned him to death.

Then they sent a message to Jezebel: “Naboth has been stoned, and he is dead.”

When Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned and was dead, she said to Ahab, “Go and take over the vineyard of Naboth of Jezreel, the one he refused to sell you. Naboth isn’t alive anymore. He’s dead.”

When Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, he set off down to Naboth’s vineyard to take it over.

“Say to him, ‘The Lord says: Have you killed a man, and then taken over his vineyard too?’ Then say to him, ‘The Lord says: In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, dogs will lick your blood, even yours.’”

Ahab said to Elijah, “Have you found me, my enemy?”

“I have found you,” Elijah answered, “because you sold yourself to do evil in the Lord’s eyes.

“I will bring harm on you and sweep you away completely. I will wipe out every male in Ahab’s family in Israel, whether shut away or left free. I will make your family like the family of Jeroboam son of Nebat and like the family of Baasha son of Ahijah, because you have made me angry and have led Israel into sin.”

The Lord also spoke about Jezebel: “The dogs will eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel. The dogs will eat any of Ahab’s family who die in the city, and the birds will eat any who die in the open country.”

No one else sold himself to do evil in the Lord’s eyes the way Ahab did, and his wife Jezebel stirred him up. He did truly disgusting things. He followed idols, doing everything the Amorites had done, the people the Lord had driven out ahead of the Israelites.

When Ahab heard those words, he tore his clothes, put sackcloth on his body, and fasted. He lay in sackcloth and went about with a heavy heart.

Then the Lord’s word came to Elijah the Tishbite: “Do you see how Ahab humbles himself before me? Because he humbles himself before me, I will not bring the harm in his lifetime. I will bring the harm on his family in his son’s days.”