Who was Elijah?

Elijah is thought to have been a real historical person who lived around 900 years BCE. He is respected as a prophet by Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Druze. The narrative set to music by Mendelssohn is taken from the Bible.

 

What is the story?....

 

1 Elijah declares a drought

With immense authority, the prophet Elijah declares a merciless drought as punishment for turning their back on the true God and drifting after the gods of alien neighbouring cultures. (Dramatically, this startling declaration happens even before the overture). The overture which follows might be taken to represent a great and challenging journey.

 

2 The people's suffering

The great suffering resulting from of the drought is described by the people as they plead for rain.

 

3 The Widow of Zarepath

Elijah is told by God to go to a place called Zarephath. There he meets a woman whose child is at the point of death from the drought. There is an intense dialogue between the Mother and the Prophet Elijah culminating in the healing of the child and the recognition by his Mother that Elijah really is a prophet of the living God.

 

4 Fire from heaven

Elijah goes to declare to King Ahab, the bad king who has encouraged the nation to drift to the false gods, the consequences of his actions. It culminates in a challenge to bring down fire from heaven to consume an offering. Three times, with increasing frenzy, the false prophets try to call down fire. It doesn’t work. Then comes Elijah’s turn. There is an intense dramatic contrast: Elijah’s prayer is calm, authoritative, somehow handsome, mature, honest, and compelling. The fire comes, the sacrifice is consumed, Elijah has triumphed.

 

5 The rain returns

Yet there is still no rain. Elijah prays, and sends his boy to look for a cloud. Three times the boy goes. Three times he returns to say no, there is nothing. No cloud. No rain. Then, the fourth time, “a little cloud ariseth now from the waters, it is like a man’s hand”. Soon it is a tempest, sheets of rain, a cloudburst, downpour upon downpour: the nation is saved. “Thanks be to God” they cry aloud.

 

END OF PART ONE

 

6 Elijah's despair

Elijah once more faces Ahab and remonstrates with him about the evil Ahab has brought on the nation. But now there is a serpent in the grass: the bad queen is on the scene, and she is more manipulative, more wily, more trouble-making than King Ahab. She whips the people up into a fury against Elijah. Warned of serious danger by his acolyte Obadiah, Elijah despairs of his endeavours to bring the people back to the true God, and in the deepest of depressions, begs God to take his life. “It is enough”, he sings in despair.

 

7  The angels restore Elijah

Angels sing around the sleeping prophet. In a cascade of encouragements, the soul of the sleeping, despairing Elijah is gently restored. “Lift thine eyes to the mountains whence cometh help” followed by “He watching over Israel slumbers not nor sleeps”, followed by “O rest in the Lord, wait patiently for him, and he shall give thee thy heart’s desires,” followed by “He that shall endure to the end shall be saved.”

 

8 A still small voice

A tremendous earthquake, a terrifying fire, a tsunami, mountainous ocean waves, pass by the waiting prophet – yet, in the words of the narrative, “the Lord was not in the fire; and, after the fire, there came a still small voice” (all this drama and contrast perfectly captured by Mendelssohn’s extraordinary music): “and in that still voice, onward came the Lord”. The vision of God is not in the terrifying immensities, but in the quietness, the still, small voice.

 

9 Elijah is re-commissioned

In a majestic series of choruses - music of august grandeur, Elijah is re-commissioned to his prophetic authority and goes onto ever greater things in the full power and authority of his God.

 

10 The invitation to all

Yet, interrupting the magnificence of the mighty restored prophet declaring to nations the truth of the true God, the narrative pauses for a moment of the most intense and tender delight. For a few moments, the focus is no longer on earthshaking events millenia ago, but on us. In a delicious quartet, the four soloists turn for a moment from the cosmic narrative to the intimacy of your life and mine – our days, our nights, our worries, our fears, our hopes, our own vulnerability like Elijah’s vulnerability, our potential to be re-made and restored just as Elijah was re-made and restored. Its simplicity, in this context, is exquisite. It comes and takes us by the hand, reaching out to dry the tears in our eyes or share the smile on our lips, as the four soloists turn to us and sing:

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O come, every one that thirsteth,

O come to the waters,

O come unto Him

O hear, and your souls shall live for ever,

O come, O come, O come unto Him.

 

11 Conclusion

And then, returning to the grandeur narrative, “And then shall your light break forth as the morning breaketh”, and a final fugue of praise ends our mighty story.