In the third year of the drought, God told Elijah to show himself to Ahab, promising to send rain. The famine in Samaria was severe. Ahab and Obadiah, the official in charge of the palace, had been searching the land for grass to keep horses and mules alive.
Obadiah feared God greatly. When Jezebel was killing the prophets of the Lord, he had hidden one hundred of them in caves and supplied them with bread and water. On the road he met Elijah, who told him to report to Ahab that Elijah was there. Obadiah feared that Elijah might disappear and Ahab would kill him, but Elijah promised to appear before the king that day.
When Ahab met Elijah, he called him the troubler of Israel. Elijah answered that Ahab and his father’s house had troubled Israel by abandoning God’s commands and following the Baals. He told Ahab to gather all Israel, four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, and four hundred prophets of Asherah at Mount Carmel.
Elijah asked the gathered people how long they would waver between two choices. If the Lord was God, they were to follow him; if Baal was god, they were to follow Baal. The people gave no answer. Elijah proposed two bulls, one for Baal’s prophets and one for himself, with no fire placed beneath either offering. The god who answered by fire would be God.
Baal’s prophets called from morning until noon, but there was no voice and no answer. They danced around their altar. Elijah mocked them, saying that perhaps Baal was thinking, busy, traveling, or asleep. They shouted louder and cut themselves, but until the time of the evening offering there was no response.
Elijah repaired the ruined altar of the Lord with twelve stones, one for each tribe of Jacob. He placed wood and the bull on it and ordered four jars of water to be poured over the offering three times. Water ran around the altar and filled the trench.
At the evening offering Elijah prayed that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel would be known as God in Israel, that Elijah was God’s servant, and that he had acted at God’s word. He asked that the people’s hearts be turned back. Fire from the Lord fell, consuming the offering, wood, stones, soil, and water in the trench.
The people fell facedown and declared that the Lord was God. Elijah had the prophets of Baal seized and taken to the Kishon Valley, where they were killed. He then told Ahab that the sound of heavy rain was coming.
Elijah went to the top of Carmel and prayed with his face between his knees. Seven times he sent his servant to look toward the sea. On the seventh, the servant saw a small cloud the size of a hand rising from the sea. Soon the sky grew dark with clouds and wind, and heavy rain fell. Ahab rode toward Jezreel, while God’s power came on Elijah and he ran ahead of Ahab to the entrance of the city.