Back to the Beginning with God: An Exegetical Analysis of 1 Kings 19:9-18

The well-known story of Elijah’s encounter with God on the slopes of Mount Horeb, with its intense theophanic imagery and its enigmatic description of the “small still voice of God,” has always been an eminently preachable text, lending itself well to powerful pulpit orations and Sunday School flannel graphs alike. Most expositions of this passage tend to focus on the presence of God in the small still voice of verse 12, drawing from this mysterious phraase either moralistic lessons about the importance of silence in the spiritual life or theological lessons about God’s unexpected presence in the stillness (so Rob Bell’s 2005 Nooma video, “Noise”). A close reading of this passage in context, however, suggests there is something more going on than simply a commendation to spiritual silence. Given its place in the Book of King’s account of the on-going struggle between Yahwehism and Baalism for the hearts Israel, given its ambivalent portrayal of Elijah as an embattled champion of Yahweh, and given especially its intertextual connections with the book of Exodus, 1 Kings 19:9-21 seems to be asking profound questions about the role of the covenant in the religious life of ancient Israel, more than it is speculating generally about whether God speaks with a booming voice or a gentle whisper. Careful analysis suggests that the point of this passage is that God’s covenant with Israel rests on YHWH’s faithfulness, not on the people’s, and that, so long as it stands on this foundation, God himself will see it fulfilled, however faithless Israel herself may become.

Historical Context

To understand the point this story is making about the covenant, it is helpful to bear in mind its historical provenience. Elijah’s flight to Horeb occurs during the reign of Ahab, the 8th king of Israel. He likely came to the throne some time around 874 BCE, the son of the previous king Omri (1 Kings 16:29). It is notable that Ahab’s reign represents the first dynastic succession in Israel after a series of political and military coups; that is to say, Ahab is the first king of Israel to reign in the place of his father since Elah, some four kings and ten years previous. This is significant in that it sets the question of the legitimacy of Ahab’s reign clearly in the backdrop of the Elijah narrative.

At the same time, it is equally notable that Elijah is the first major prophet to emerge in the post-Davidic era. Previous prophets (like Nathan in 2 Samuel 12) tended to be court prophets serving more as “seers” for the king, than as independent prophetic voices. There are certainly independent prophets mentioned in 1 Kings prior to Elijah, of course (the “Man of God” in 1 Kings 13, or Ahijah in 1 Kings 14), but these tend to be the secondary characters in a narrative focusing especially on the activity of the reigning king. The story of Elijah is the first time a prophet takes centre stage in a narrative focused specifically on him. This is significant in that it suggests a growing tension between the royal administration and the prophetic community in Israel, as the monarchy moves further and further away from the Davidic ideal.

Finally we note the role of Jezebel, Ahab’s Phoenician wife, who has introduced the worship of the Phoenician god Baal into Israel’s religious life. Philip Satterthwaite suggests that Ahab’s promotion of Baal worship as a “state religion” presents us with a picture of “oppression and state-sponsored apostasy” which marks a significant development in Israel’s history. This historical backdrop puts the questions that 1 Kings 19 is asking about the covenant into sharp relief: when a king of questionable legitimacy sits on the throne, while his foreign wife establishes Baalism as the state religion, and the hostilities between the monarchy and YHWH’s prophets reach a fever pitch, what will become of YHWH’s covenant with Israel, then?

Literary Context

The placement of this episode within the larger literary framework of 1 Kings is also significant. Elijah’s flight to Horeb occurs immediately after the so-called “contest” between Baal and Yahweh on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:20-46), which itself forms the climax of a series of episodes starting in Chapter 17, all of which are clearly intended to pit YHWH against Baal, presenting him as the one who truly possesses those powers that the Baal myths falsely attribute to Baal. The sequence begins with Elijah’s pronouncement of a drought in 1 Kings 17:1. Baal was primarily a fertility deity, the “god of the storm” who was mythologically responsible for sending the life-giving rain, thus when drought occurred, Baal was, in essence, dead. By announcing a drought, then, Elijah is attacking Baalism at its “theological centre,” signaling that it is YHWH and emphatically not Baal who determines when rain falls. The stories that follow underscore this anti-Baal polemic: by feeding Elijah during the drought (1 Kings 17:4-7) YHWH reveals that, unlike Baal, he is clearly not dead during times of drought ; by sending Elijah to perform a miracle for a Sidonian widow in Zarephath (17:8-16), the heart of Phoenician Baalism, YHWH reveals the “impotence of Baal in his own homeland” ; and by bringing the widow’s son back from the dead, YHWH reveals that he, and not Baal, holds the power over life and death.

The contest with Baal that pervades the entire Elijah narrative comes to a climax in chapter 18, where Elijah gathers the people of Israel together and challenges them to chose between Baal and YHWH: “If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, follow him” (1 Kings 18:21). A number of details here are relevant to our exegesis of 19:9-21. First, we note that, in a way consistent with the anti-Baal polemic of Elijah’s entire ministry, it is YHWH and not Baal who appears in lighting (fire from heaven, 19:38) and storm (19:45). Second, we note that, contrary to Elijah’s complaint in 19:10, the people do repent and confess the lordship of YHWH when YHWH reveals himself as sovereign and victorious over Baal in this way, crying out that “The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God!” Third, we note that, at Elijah’s directive, the people slay the prophets of Baal (18:40). Finally, and most importantly, we note that the contest on Mount Carmel ends with Ahab “going up to eat and drink,” while Elijah crouches on the top of Mount Carmel to watch for the coming storm (18:41-42). Kathryhn Roberts suggests that the image of Ahab feasting in God’s presence after YHWH’s decisive victory over Baal would have signalled a kind of covenant renewal between God and his people. In her words: “It is the king who initiates and presides over covenant making and covenant renewal. Elijah recognizes this and sends Ahab back up the mountain to eat and drink and to validate the covenant that has been renewed between Yahweh and the people.” If Elijah does mean Ahab’s feast on Mount Carmel to signify the renewal of the covenant between Israel and YHWH, it is, in his mind, a failed attempt. Immediately after this scene, Ahab returns to Jezebeel, she issues a death threat on Elijah’s life, and Elijah himself flees to Horeb (19:1-8). What the closing scene of 1 Kings 19 does reveal, however, is that for Elijah, the viability of the covenant itself rests on the outcome of this contest between YHWH and Baal. If the people abandon YHWH the covenant will fail; if and when they return the covenant must also be renewed.

Form, Structure, Movement

This brings us at last to the passage itself. In 10 short verses, 1 Kings 19:9-18 paints a powerful picture of God’s harried and despondent prophet confronting God with the apostasy of his people and the apparent failure of the covenant, and discovering that the covenant rests, in fact, not on the faithfulness of the people, but on God’s own faithfulness. The scene unfolds in two parallel halves. It begins with Elijah finding a cave on Mount Horeb and encountering the word of the Lord, who asks him, “What are you doing here?” Elijah replies with his complaint: that though he himself has been “zealous” (qânâ’) for YHWH, Israel has “forsaken [the] covenant,” and he is the only one left in Israel who is faithful to God (19:10). YHWH directs Elijah to “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord” (19:11), though before he leaves the cave, the Lord passes by with a series of supernatural phenomena—wind, earthquake, and fire—traditionally associated with a divine theophany. It is only when Elijah hears the “sound of a gentle whisper” (qôl demâmâh daq) that he “wraps his face in his mantle” and comes out.

From this point the second half of the narrative parallels the first half closely, in a way that draws attention to two interlocking points: the reason Elijah has come to Horeb, on the one hand, and the content of Elijah’s complaint, on the other. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” the Lord asks the prophet a second time, and the wording in verse 13 parallels the question in verse 9 identically. Elijah repeats his complaint in verse 14, and again the language follows the previous verse verbatim. Finally YHWH gives a second directive, to parallel his command in verse 11 for Elijah to “go (yâts‘) and stand on the mountain”; this time he tells Elijah to “go (hâlak)” to Damascus and anoint Hazael as king over Aram, Jehu as King over Israel, and Elisha as prophet in his place (19:15). The parallelism in this story puts verse 12 and the “sound of a gentle whisper” at the very centre of the narrative, the crux on which both parallel halves of the passage turn.

Detailed Analysis

To flesh out the point that this mysterious passage is making about YHWH’s faithfulness to his covenant, we begin by noting that Mount Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai, the mountain of the Lord in Exodus, where YWHW first met with his people after bringing them out of Egypt, and where he first cut the covenant with them, under Moses (Exodus 19:18ff.). In terms of the covenant history of Israel, Elijah could not have chosen a more symbolically poignant place to have fled to, complaining that Israel had “forsaken the covenant.” As a kind of prophetic object lesson, Elijah’s journey to Mount Sinai, the place where the covenant began, is essentially saying that the covenant has failed and that YHWH needs to start over. Many commentaries note that 1 Kings presents Elijah as a kind of “second Moses” but if he is so there is a profound difference between the two. In Exodus, when the people abandon God to worship the golden calf, and YHWH threatens to “start over” with Moses himself (Exod. 33:1-3), Moses intercedes on behalf of the people (Exod. 33:12-13), and appeals to the fact that they are God’s own covenant people (Exod. 33:13). This contrasts sharply with Elijah, who similarly encounters the people’s faithlessness, but instead of interceding for them he returns to Horeb complaining that the covenant has failed and implying that God must now start over again. This explains the question that, though God asks it twice, Elijah never directly answers. What is Elijah doing at Horeb? He is there because he believes that YHWH must not only restore the covenant, but start anew, and thus he has returned to the site where YHWH first cut his covenant with the people.

Reading the story in this way helps us to appreciate all that follows. YHWH directs Elijah to stand on the side of the mountain in his presence, and we are told that the Lord was “passing by” (‘âbar). This scene, of course, evokes the famous scene in Exodus 33, where Moses—in response to the people’s apostasy—asks to see the glory of YHWH, prompting the Lord to cause “all of [his] goodness to pass (‘âbar) in front of [him]” (33:19). Here Moses experiences a theophany of YHWH that reveals the true character of God to him (his “name,” 34:5): that he abounds in covenant love and faithfulness (34:6) and maintains his love to “thousands of generations” (34:7). The lesson of Moses’ Sianitic theophany, in other words, is that God is determined, in the end, to remain true to his covenant. With this in mind, we discover some exegetically telling points of contrast with Elijah. Like Moses, Elijah is hidden in a cleft of the rock (the cave of 19:9) while God’s glory again passes by, but unlike Moses, Elijah fails to recognize the fundamental divine character thereby revealed. His complaint about the failure of the covenant after this theophany is identical his complaint before. Unlike Moses, who identifies himself with the sins of his people (Exod. 34:8, “forgive our wickedness and our sin”), Elijah continues to distance himself from the people, describing their apostasy in stark contrast to his self-professed faithfulness (1 Kings 19:14, “I have been very zealous . . . they have forsaken your covenant”). Unlike the Moses story, where God reveals his commitment to Israel in response to Moses intercession, YHWH reveals to Elijah that he still has 7,000 in Israel who remain true to him, despite Elijah’s lack of intercession.

This brings us to the central imagery of the story, the mysterious theophany of 19:11-12, which culminates in the enigmatic “voice of a gentle whisper.” Much scholarly ink has been spilled over how best to translate the phrase qôl demâmâh daq (literally: “the voice of silence crushed”), a phrase that only appears here in the Old Testament. Most translations render it with some expression that means, essentially, “silence” (NASB: “a sound of gentle blowing;” NIV: “a gentle whisper”; KJV: “a small still voice”). Many scholars, however, suggest that something like “a roaring thunderous voice” is a better translation. Without exploring all the linguistic evidence, I believe the question is better settled on exegetical grounds. If we accept that Elijah really is at Sinai because he believes the covenant has failed and must somehow “start over,” what stands out suddenly is how the events in 1 Kings 19:11-12 both compare and contrast to the events at Sinai back in Exodus 19, when YHWH first cut his covenant with the people. In Exodus 19:18, we read that when YWHW first descended on Sinai, there was “thunder and lightning” (Exod. 19:16), the mountain burned with “smoke and fire” (Exod. 19:18), and the whole mountain “quaked violently” (Exod. 19:18). This culminates with the mysterious sound of a shofar, an apparently supernatural trumpet blast that grows louder and louder until Moses finally speaks and God answers him (Exod. 19:19). Comparing this scene to Elijah’s experience on Mount Horeb (Sinai), we note that the same storm, fire, and earthquake are present, except that three times we are specifically assured that “the Lord was not in [it].” By emphasizing that YHWH is not in the thunder, earthquake and fire, the text implies that YHWH is explicitly and deliberately not repeating the Exodus 19 theophany. YHWH need not descend on the mountain in fire and earthquake this time, like he did when he first cut his covenant with his people, because the covenant emphatically has not failed. There is no need to start over.

On this reading the “voice of crushed silence” in 1 Kings 19:12 directly contrasts the deafening “voice of the trumpet” (qôl shôphâr) that the people heard in Exodus 19:19. Inasmuch as YHWH was not in the fire, wind, nor earthquake, neither does he come with Exodus 19’s thundering trumpet blast; the covenant still stands, and so instead of the trumpet that heralded the start of the covenant under Moses, Elijah hears the sound of utter silence. This is a silence that speaks volumes, of course, insisting without a word that Elijah is wrong. The covenant has not failed; nor does it need to start over. However bleak things look, YHWH will always maintain a remnant in Israel faithful to him, because the covenant, in the end, does not depend on the people’s faithfulness, but his. He will go on to say as much in verse 18, with the reference to the seven thousand whose knees have not bowed to Baal, that YHWH himself “reserves” (shâ’ar) for himself in Israel, but this is just underlining the point that the entire episode has already subtly, and symbolically made.

Reflection and Application

Turning from this exegetical analysis to reflect on ways in which this text applies to our own understanding of our vocations as Chrisitans—the ways in which it renews, challenges, and affirms our calling in the Lord—a number of theologically encouraging and spiritually challenging points stand out to starkly.

On the one hand, it is deeply encouraging to realize that YHWH’s covenant relationship with his people rests on his own faithfulness and not ours. This theme, of course, can be extrapolated forward from the Elijah story until it reaches its ultimate expression in the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is the faithfulness of Jesus that saves, and it is the faithfulness of God in raising him from the dead that finally fulfills and renews the covenant, writing the truths of the covenant on the tablets of our hearts through his risen life (Heb 10:16). There is great freedom to minister well and with joy from this place, recognizing that neither my worst failures as a pastor, nor my greatest successes can derail what God has done, and will do, to call a Gospel People his own through the work and person of Jesus Christ. There are times when we might be tempted to despair about the future of the church, our own particular churches, the church in Canada more generally, the plight of the persecuted around the world. These are the moments we most need to hear the lesson of the “sound of crushed silence” on the slopes of Mount Horeb, that despite appearances, God’s covenant with his people has not, and will not fail.

On the other hand, there is a profound challenge implicit in the story of Elijah. Because he has the privilege of standing with Moses in the presence of the Lord Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, we tend to read Elijah as the justified hero of this story. But taken strictly at face value, it is not so clear that the text intends us to read Elijah in this way. As I have argued above, he has made a fundamental miscalculation of God’s fundamental character; he has misunderstood the nature of God’s covenant, and most dramatically, he has condemned his people instead of interceding for them on the basis of God’s revealed faithfulness. It is telling, and perhaps understanding, that after Elijah repeats his complaint to YHWH in verse 14, having missed entirely the point of the theophany of verses 11-12, YHWH essentially decommissions him as a prophet, directing him to anoint Elisha to serve in his place (1 Kings 19:16). 

As I apply this detail to my own understanding of my calling to ministry, I feel the challenge of identifying fully and faithfully with God’s people, as God’s people. However spiritually adrift they might become—and here I use the “they” language with great hesitancy, recognizing that it was “they-and-not-I” language that was Elijah’s undoing—they are still God’s covenant possession, the apple of his eye, the fully-ransomed bride of Christ. Any minister who has truly heard the small still voice that deafened Elijah with its silence on Mount Sinai, and understood it for what it was, will love God’s people, and intercede for them, and throw himself all in to serving them for Christ’s sake, knowing that God himself has pledged never to leave them or forsake them.