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
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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.
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