I Kings 18:28, “And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.”
This classic story pits God Jehovah against the god Baal worshipped by King Ahab of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The land of Israel has been without rain for three years. Baal simple means master and represents various ancient Middle Eastern deities. Archaeologist have uncovered quite a bit of information about this particular Baal which in I Kings is referred to in the plural as Baalim and would suggest that this also included the worship of Baal’s wife Asherah. We see that King Ahab also built a shrine to Asherah in I Kings 16:33.
King Ahab’s wife, Queen Jezebel was the daughter of Ethba’al the king of Sidon. Sidon was a city – state of Phoenicia. The Phoenician worshipped the god Melqartu who was the Son of El. Melqartu was a tutelary god (guardian) who was also known as a live-death-rebirth deity or a dying and rising deity. Ancient Akkadian literature speaks of Thasian Heracles making a journey to egersis (the awakening or resurrection) of the god Melqartu in the month of Peritius (February). As the guardian of the land it was believed that this god had to be awakened or resurrected during the egersis so he could bring rain to the land. Thus, he was also known as the rain god. His wife Asherah was the goddess of fertility and she would take the rains and fertilize the land which would then grow the crops and provide food for the survival of the people. It is interesting to note that Asherah was another name for the Phoenician goddess Tanit whose symbol was the letter Taw in the Canaanite script. The letter Taw is the last letter of the Canaanite Script and is in the shape of a cross. Some Christians have mistakenly called this the Paleo Hebrew Script. Although the Hebrew language did adopt this script for the Hebrew language, it was later replaced by the Scribe Ezra with the Assyrian script for the very reason that the Taw represented this pagan goddess who is also referred to in Jeremiah as the Queen of Heaven. Ezra also frowned on the first letter of the Canaanite script which is wrongly referred to as an ox head. It is really a bulls head and represents the god Apis which is the god that the Hebrews made in the wilderness that we call the golden calf.
However, back to I Kings 18. It is most likely that Elijah is making a reference to this egersis (awakening or resurrection) in I Kings 18:27 where we learn, “At noon Elijah began to taunt them.”Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.” Sleeping is an old Semitic idiom for death. Elijah was saying that perhaps you god is dead and needs to be resurrected. That is why they were shouting loudly to recall him from one of his many journeys that he was said to have made and is recorded in Akkadian literature. Akkadian literature also reveals that Malqartu also spent considerable time consulting with other gods or would be in deep meditation which became a good excuse as to why he was unresponsive to their needs at times and they needed to shout with a loud or great voice or make fools of themselves in a frenzied dance to get his attention
Ancient literature describes this awakening process. The Hellenistic novelist, Heliodorus of Emesa in his Aethiopica, refers to the dancing of the sailors of Phoenicia in this egersis process: “Now they leap spiritedly into the air, now they bend their knees to the ground and revolve on them like persons possessed”. The priest had long hair and they would spin around in a circle letting their hair drag on the ground. Such behavior was said to attract the attention of Malqartu away from his meditations or consultations. If this did not work then the priest would reason that Malqartu was dead and they needed to cut themselves on the shoulders, backs and thighs to shed their own blood which would be used to resurrect their god. Yet all this proved to be of no avail, as Malqartu remained unresponsive and his wife Asherah was helpless to fertilize the ground without the rain that Malqartu would bring.
I am particularly interested in the phrase, after their manner. In Hebrew the word is kimishepatam which literally means, as was in their judgment. This comes from the root word shapat which simply means to make a choice, a judgment, to decide between different viewpoints. These priest put two and two together and decided the reason their god was not responding was because he was dead and they needed to resurrect him with their blood as they have seen the Phoenician priest do. This cutting of themselves was not an irrational act, it was not done in a frenzied state, but was a carefully calculated act. Malqartu, being a dying and rising god, was most likely in his death mode and it was up to the priest to shed their blood to resurrect their god so he could bring the fire from heaven to destroy the prophet and Jehovah who in tandem was preventing the rains.
Note when it was Elijah’s turn we learn in verse 36 that all he merely did was say. The word said is ‘amar not debar which indicates words of power or the words of God, but ‘amar is simply a normal conversational voice. Elijah merely stated a fact. He did not shout in a loud voice, he did not speak with a commanding voice as the priest of Malqartu. He merely spoke. I have heard so called prophets speak with loud commanding voices, faith healers scream at the top of the lungs, “BE HEEEEEEEEEALED.” Yet like with the priest of Malqartu, nothing happened. Sometimes we are just like those priest of Malqartu. When God seemingly does not respond to our prayers, what do we do? We dip into our own kimishepatam, we reason or figure it out. We think we pray louder, maybe we do desperate things like pay our tithes and offerings, even using money set aside for our rent or other bills in hopes of getting God’s attention. Sometimes we shout our praises to God and dance before God, not out of our great love for God but in hopes that by making a fool of ourselves we will get God’s attention. In other words when our prayers are not answer we kimshspatam, use our own judgment and reasoning to figure out how to get our prayers answered and get God’s attention.
Yet, we forget that we have God’s undivided attention 24/7. All we have to do is ‘amar, simply talk with Him. He is not off consulting other gods, He is not on any journey to attend some egersis, nor is He dead and is the one that needs to be awakened. He is fully capable of awakening Himself as he proved 2,000 years and He did it with his own blood, not ours. With our God Jehovah we do not need to kimshspatam or figure Him out, we just need to simply believe He exist, we have His attention and all we have to do is speak to Him.
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