Commentary on the Gospel of
A Contest Not Commissioned
What a grand spectacle of the triumph of Yahweh over Baal on Mount Carmel! The entire people, who had rooted for Baal, are now converted; they even lynched en masse the prophets of Baal (which is so embarrassing that we skip verse 40 between today and tomorrow). However, was it a contest commissioned by Yahweh? Yahweh had asked Elijah to go and announce rain; the farce of a contest was Elijah’s will, not God’s. The same with the declaration of drought: it had been Elijah’s plan, not God’s. Elijah’s will comes first; God is forced to obey! Three years of great suffering of the people and the lynching of 450 prophets of Baal could have been avoided if Elijah had listened to God first, than forcing God to listen to him. Even in our times, do not God and the world suffer because of the hyper-fundamentalism of the so-called defenders of God? The tragedy of working for God instead of doing God’s work! (Elijah would soon learn the lesson, as we shall see.)
