Elijah availed himself of this enthusiasm of the people for the Lord, to deal a fatal blow at the prophets of Baal, who turned away the people from the living God. He commanded the people to seize them, and had them slain at the brook Kishon, and that not so much from revenge, i.e., because it was at their instigation that queen Jezebel had murdered the prophets of the true God (1 Kings 18:13), as to carry out the fundamental law of the Old Testament kingdom of God, which prohibited idolatry on pain of death, and commanded that false prophets should be destroyed (Deuteronomy 17:2-3; Deuteronomy 13:13.).

(Note: It was necessary that idolatry and temptation to the worship of idols should be punished with death, as a practical denial of Jehovah the true God and Lord of His chosen people, if the object of the divine institutions was to be secured. By putting the priests of Baal to death, therefore, Elijah only did what the law required; and inasmuch as the ordinary administrators of justice did not fulfil their obligations, he did this as an extraordinary messenger of God, whom the Lord had accredited as His prophet before all the people by the miraculous answer given to his prayer. - To infer from this act of Elijah the right to institute a bloody persecution of heretics, would not only indicate a complete oversight of the difference between heathen idolaters and Christian heretics, but the same reprehensible confounding of the evangelical standpoint of the New Testament with the legal standpoint of the Old, which Christ condemned in His own disciples in Luke 9:55-56.)

1 Kings 18:46 Parallel Commentaries

the hand

2 Kings 3:15 But now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the LORD came on him.

Isaiah 8:11 For the LORD spoke thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying,

Ezekiel 1:3 The word of the LORD came expressly to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar...

Ezekiel 3:14 So the spirit lifted me up, and took me away, and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit...

he girded

2 Kings 4:29 Then he said to Gehazi, Gird up your loins, and take my staff in your hand, and go your way: if you meet any man, salute him not...

2 Kings 9:1 And Elisha the prophet called one of the children of the prophets, and said to him, Gird up your loins...

Job 38:3 Gird up now your loins like a man; for I will demand of you, and answer you me.

Jeremiah 1:17 You therefore gird up your loins, and arise, and speak to them all that I command you: be not dismayed at their faces...

Ephesians 6:14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

1 Peter 1:13 Why gird up the loins of your mind, be sober...

ran before

Matthew 22:21 They say to him, Caesar's. Then said he to them, Render therefore to Caesar the things which are Caesar's...

1 Peter 2:17 Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.

to the entrance of [heb] till thou come to