By the Brook Cherith
In past articles, we introduced the prophet Elijah and witnessed his initial encounter with Ahab, the king of Israel. He confronted the king for his infidelity to the Lord and announced a devastating drought. He has become a national threat and so God will provide him a means of escape: the Lord will hide his prophet in the brook Cherith…
Departure:
The first command that Elijah receives after his encounter with King Ahab is to:
“Depart from here and turn eastward…"(1 Kgs 17, 3).
God instructs his prophet to leave the scene of confrontation and to find a solitude which the Lord will show to him. Elijah begins a journey of faith with the Lord very much like the journey that the patriarch Abraham had made long before him in the land Canaan. The father of the Hebrew peoples was led out of his homeland of Ur into a country which he did not know. The journeying in itself in these instances of salvation history is a kind of divine pedagogy by which God teaches trust in his loving care. Elijah will begin his first lesson in abandonment to Divine Providence. In cases such as these, God never permits the use of roadmaps (imagine no GPS!). The word of the Lord is guide enough! There are many figures in the Old Testament who had to travel in such a manner.
Moses in his flight from Egypt to Midian, for example, comes to mind immediately. Moses seeing the plight of his people and witnessing firsthand the injustice of Pharaoh’s policy of oppression against the Hebrews, stands up to an Egyptian aggressor caught in the act of beating one of his own. Moses kills the unnamed Egyptian, hiding him in the sand. Fearing retaliation on the part of Pharaoh, Moses ventures into Midian, northwest Arabia, where he will spend 40 years. In other words, he will go East. This will not be lost time for the future leader of God’s people. It will be a time of learning: he will marry, begin a family, wait for God’s direction, and become a shepherd. Solitude is time away from all that is familiar. It is space in which God and his unfamiliar ways are contemplated. It seems that all God’s prophets come to recognize the following truth:
“…my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the lord...” (Is 55, 8)
Before moving on from the example of Moses and his personal plight, it is worth noting God’s attentiveness. God attends not only to Moses but also to the whole Hebrew nation. Moses could not hide from God just as Adam and Eve could not hide from God. Divine solicitude seeks out the lost and the frightened. God overcomes our fear by coming to us. God made the human person (you and me) for himself, and he knows each one of us intimately – we are fearfully, wonderfully made (cf. Ps 139). God knows us and follows all our movements. We can never escape him because he enfolds us in his love and surrounds us with his presence:
“Where shall I go from your spirit? or where shall I flee from your presence? if I ascend to heaven, you are there! if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! if I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” (Ps 139, 7-10)
Elijah must now place himself in the hand of the Lord his God, who will lead him. God’s right hand and the strength of his grasp are images of his ability to act powerfully in the lives of those under his watchful eye. To be spiritual, one must realize that you can never be outside the all-encompassing presence of the Spirit. Heaven is not high enough, Sheol not deep enough, not even the expanse of the Seas or the distance of lands on the face of the Earth can separate us from the presence of God. This is important to understand because a three-year drought is about to begin in Israel. God will not fail his prophet. The Lord will provide. God has Elijah covered.
Elijah does not flee out of fear. That will come later under the threat of death coming from Queen Jezebel. Now as the prophet of Carmel begins his journey to Cherith, he responds in obedience to the Word of the Lord which has come to him. Elijah has already declared himself to be the servant of the Lord. God is the One before whom he stands. That he is the servant of the Lord is proved true by his “immediate and meticulous obedience to the divine word.” (New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 1 Kgs 17, 2-7).
God Provides Because He is the Lord:
As we follow the story of Elijah, we will notice how his journey will correspond in certain aspects with Israel’s time of wandering through the wilderness – the forty years during which God taught, and formed his people into a holy nation (i.e., a people who obeyed his word). When the people murmured in the desert against Moses and Aaron about the lack of food, Moses would complain:
“…what are we? Your murmurings are not against us but against the Lord” (Ex 16, 8).
So, the complaint about the want of provisions in the desert was ultimately directed against God – a demonstration of the people’s lack of faith. God responds:
“I have heard the murmurings of the sons of Israel; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat flesh, and in the morning, you shall be filled with bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God” (Ex 16, 12).
The drought which Elijah has now called upon the land of Israel is a divine utterance. God speaking through the mouth of his prophet brings about this time of hardship. He will make Israel a desert land (…and the desert will become a Carmel – “a garden wilderness”). It will become a classroom in which faith and trust in the Lord alone are learned. Will Ahab and the kingdom of Israel turn to God in their time of want, or will they turn to the Baals? In the meantime, Elijah demonstrates in his person the proper attitude – confidence and adherence to God’s command with simplicity and trust. He takes up his place by the wadi Cherith, he dwells there, and drinks from the brook while the ravens feed him “bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening”. Most importantly, the prophet did not complain although the food was brought to him by animals which were considered under Hebrew custom to be unclean. Elijah teaches us to trust and to wait in solitude. God provides by mysterious means. He will not allow his faithful servants to go without the necessaries of life (natural and supernatural).