the admission is made that this struggle against Baal, in spite of his sacrificial victory on Carmel, was in the end without result, and that only the judicial murder of Naboth brought about a change in the popular sentiment.  But according to 2Kings ix. 25, this murder proved a momentous event, not because it led, as we should expect, to a popular agitation, but from the fortuitous circumstance that Jehu was a witness of the never-to-be-forgotten scene between Ahab and Elijah, and seemed therefore to the prophets to be a fit person to carry out his threatenings.

It is certainly the case that the grand figure of Elijah could not have been drawn as we have it except from the impression produced by a real character. 1 But it is too much torn away from the

************************************* 1.  The distance of the narrator is not so very great in point of time from the events he deals with.  He is a North-Israelite, as the )#R LYHWDH of xix. 3 shows:  this may also be gathered from xix. 8 compared with Deuteronomy i. 2.  A man of Judah could not easily make so considerable a mistake about the distance, though we have to remember that with this narrator the situation of Horeb can scarcely have been that which we have long been accustomed to assume.  Another sign of antiquity is the way in which Elijah is represented as combating Baal in Israel, and in the land of Sidon associating with the worshippers of Baal on the most friendly terms (Luke iv. 25 seq.). *********************************************

historical position it belongs to, and is thereby magnified to colossal proportions.  It may be said of this class of narratives generally, that the prophets are brought too much into the foreground in them, as if they had been even in their lifetime the principal force of Israelite history, and as if the influence which moved them had ruled and pervaded their age as well.  That was not the case; in the eyes of their contemporaries they were completely overshadowed by the kings; only to later generations did they become the principal personages.  They were important ideally, and influenced the future rather than the present; but this was not enough, a real tangible importance is attributed to them.  In the time of Ahab and Jehu the Nebiim were a widespread body, and organised in orders of their own, but were not highly respected; the average of them were miserable fellows, who ate out of the king’s hand and were treated with disdain by members of the leading classes.  Amos of Tekoa, who, it is true, belonged to a younger generation, felt it an insult to be counted one of them.  Elijah and Elisha rose certainly above the level of their order; but the first, whose hands remained pure, while he no doubt produced a great impression at the time by his fearless words, effected nothing against the king, and quite failed to draw the people over to his side:  while Elisha, who did effect something, made use of means which could not bear the light, and which attest rather the weakness than the strength of prophecy in Israel.