Conversations with Elijah

Rain stops at his command. Fire falls at his word. The prophet Elijah intends to bring Israel back to the one true god, relying on his booming voice and the elements at his command. But words fail Elijah when the Voice in his heart sends him into refuge with an idol-worshiper.

Set in Israel and Sidon during the Iron Age, CONVERSATIONS WITH ELIJAH chronicles the precarious relationship between “The Tormentor of Israel” and the foreign widow who reluctantly gives him refuge. When the widow reveals her true identity, Elijah must reconcile his conviction to purge Israel of Baal worship with his desire to protect the woman and her child. Frustrated by the silence of the heavens, Elijah vows that if his god will not act, he will.

My publishing credits include short fiction and a regular newspaper column. CONVERSATIONS WITH ELIJAH, a historical novel of 100,000 words, explores the clash between monotheism and polytheism in the Old Testament Culture – and questions which tradition is truly the predecessor of modern Christian worship.

Excerpt from Conversations with Elijah

Chapter 1 Dry Brook
Israel, 859 BC during the reign of Ahab

He was dying. He was starving, like the many gaunt forms drifting along the road. The hatred in their eyes still burned his soul like firebrands. The people were caught in his curse.

“That’s him,” one hissed as his camel cloak came into view. The hands extended toward him, the bone-thin fingers flexing and grabbing. “You brought this curse on us, Elijah!”

Some other man restrained that one, both of them with as little strength as babes.

“Don’t harm the prophet!” an old woman wailed. “If you kill him, we’ll never see rain again!”

Elijah wrenched free and moved on down the road. Behind him they cried, “Save us, Elijah!”

But he could not save them. He could not even save himself. For a time, Yahweh had sustained him. In his hiding place, the brook had bubbled fresh in spite of the drought. And the raven came. Each morning and evening, the gleaming black fowl swooped down to his camp and deposited a small muslin pouch.

“Who sent you, little friend?”

The raven always hopped backward as he opened the sack and brought out a morsel of sweet bread and a stick of dried meat. Then the brook dried up, leaving only a broken line through a web of brittle roots. The raven did not return.

“Go to Zarephath,” said the Voice in his heart. “A widow there will care for you.” Where in Israel was a town called Zarephath? The Voice spoke no more, so Elijah tied on his leather belt and started walking, hoping to ask directions along the way. Only there was no one to ask.

There were people on the dusty roads, but not the usual merchant convoys. Whole tribes guided dazed children and livestock over the cracked earth with their possessions tied to their backs. Carcasses of sheep and oxen lay here and there in the dry ditches, empty eye sockets staring obscenely at heaven.

Elijah kept plodding along, his tongue swollen against the ridges of his mouth. On the third day, he passed through the land Yahweh had given to the tribe of Asher and started north, away from Queen Jezebaal but most of all, away from the dying throng. Still their voices sounded in his ringing ears, and their faces swam before him as he trudged the dry road.

He left Israel and crossed into the land of the Phoenicians, those despicable Baal-worshipers who spawned the vile and beautiful Jezebaal.

“Damn them,” Elijah muttered, collapsing against the stone wall of a city. His chest burned with hunger. His tongue seemed to wick all moisture from his mouth, so his teeth grated brittle against each other. He tucked his chin down, succumbing to exhaustion. Here he would die, in the land of Baal.

“Get up.” The voice was high-pitched and sharp. “Someone will see you.”

Elijah raised his head and looked up at the shrouded figure. “I have nothing to steal.”

“Only your life. Everyone recognizes you, Yahweh Man.”

He groaned. “Even here?”

“Your god is killing us, even here in Zarephath.”

He gasped at the sound of that name. He should have known Yahweh would lead him right to Zarephath – right to the wealthy old widow that would sustain him.

“I’m so happy you found me,” he said then, a smile crinkling his sunburned face. “I’m hungry and thirsty.”

She was walking away.

“Wait!” he cried, rising on weary legs. “I’m coming with you!”

“I have nothing for you.” She bent to pick up two dry sticks and then kept walking along the city wall.

“A drink,” he said, flashing the smile that always worked on the women of Israel.

She did not turn to face him, so she did not see his smile.

“There is a well in town,” she said. “I hope you like brine.”

He started picking up sticks. “A morsel,” he entreated her. “A scrap of bread?”

Now she spun around, shocking him with her youthful face and fiery eyes. “You have already taken everything from us. I have only my son, and we are both starving. I’m out here gathering these few sticks so I can bake the very last cake, made with the last of my grain and oil. Then we die.”

“Feed me,” he said, “and you’ll never run out of grain and oil.”

She started toward the city gate. He sighed, prepared to let her go. Then the fabric of her cloak caught the gleam of the sun slipping behind the city, and the cloth seemed to glow blue and green. Her garment looked like the wing of a raven.

“If you save me, you save Israel,” he called after her, “and the rain comes back to Zarephath, too.”

She peered at him from beneath the dark hood, her skin pale by contrast. “Save a killer to live? What kind of paradox is this?”

Finally she thrust the bundle of sticks into his arms. She loosed the tie of her cloak and shrugged it off. “Take my cloak,” she said. “I don’t want anyone to see me bringing home the scourge of Israel.”

She was small and thin, with dull black hair cascading across her shoulders in a tangle. Tied to her back was a dark-headed child bound in a woven blanket. The baby slept with one hand clutching the young woman’s hair.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “As long as I am your guest, no harm will come to you or your baby.”

“Then I am your slave.”

“You’re not my slave,” Elijah protested. “You’re my raven.”

She threw him a surprised glance.

“When the drought came, Yahweh sent a raven to sustain me. Every day the bird came with meat and bread.”

“Where is your friend now?”

“Yahweh sent me to you instead.”

He followed her through the wide streets of Zarephath, the widow’s dark cloak moving around him like a whisper. White stone buildings glowed orange in the sunset. A few women mingled by a dry fountain in the center of town, with neither jars nor urgency.

“This way,” the widow ordered, pulling him down a side street. “I don’t want to walk past Baal’s temple. So many people are there, making sacrifices for rain.”

“They offer their children to that vile God,” Elijah growled.

“Only in Israel.”

He stopped in the road. “Baal is a Phoenician god. King Ahab brought child sacrifice to Israel when he brought home that Phoenician woman Jezebaal.”

She turned around and stared at him. “Jezebaal would never slaughter children. Nor would Lord Baal accept such a sacrifice. Baal is the god of life and fertility.”

“Baal is not the god of anything.” He knew he should speak graciously to his host, but the passion of Yahweh pumped anger through his veins. “Yahweh alone is the god of life – the god of Abraham and Isaac and—“

“Look around you, Yahweh Man.” She waited, arms crossed, until he complied. He saw dusty streets lined by a few withered shrubs. A sunken-sided dog panted in a dry ditch. A poorly dressed child sat on a doorstep with protruding ribs. He saw disease, flies, and starvation.

“Who stopped the rain?” the widow challenged him.

She must have expected him to credit Yahweh with the deadly drought. But Elijah said, “I stopped the rain.”

“Yet you ask me for a drink of water.”

He exhaled. “It could be I came across the wrong widow,” he said, thinking aloud. “You are a widow, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” she answered flatly. “You killed my husband with your drought.”

Chapter 2 Oil
Zarephath in Sidon of the Phoenicians, 859 BC

The widow led Elijah to a small limestone house. Like many other buildings in Zarephath, it seemed almost to be carved from the earth. Elijah automatically lifted his hand when he reached the arched doorway, but there was no phylactery to touch as he crossed the threshold. These were not a people who hid Yahweh’s Word in their hearts, much less in their gates. Instead, symbols danced in carved relief around the opening. He paused to look at the ankh symbol and a hovering sun with eagle wings – all vestiges of Egyptian rule that had once extended across the Mediterranean to Sidon and indeed all of Phoenicia. Beside the latch, where the phylactery might have been, he pressed his fingers to the image of a raven.

Elijah ducked through the opening into the semi-darkness of the house. Tongues of orange light flickered off the sea and streamed through the windows at the back, dabbing at the smooth plaster walls. He could see an alcove in one corner behind the fireplace, and a small loft above. This was no wealthy widow. He wondered how she could take care of him at all.

She pried the lid off a large clay jar on the floor. “This is all the meal I have left.”

It was empty. Peering into the darkness of the jar’s open mouth, he saw the sides were still dusted with flour – perhaps a handful if the jar were scraped well.

“It is enough,” he said. “And you have oil?”

The shelf above the stove held a row of exquisite glass jars in various colors. All appeared empty. She took down a cruse fashioned like a translucent green gourd. She held it aloft, as if she could capture the fading sunset in her gleaming trap. As she tilted it, a golden wave of olive oil flowed toward the mouth of the vessel. Although he had doubts, Elijah said, “It is enough.”

She started scraping the jar of meal.

“Who are you?” Elijah implored. “And how you did you end up here? It doesn’t fit you.”

She looked at him for a moment. “Why do you say that?”

He shrugged. “I’m an excellent judge of status,” he said. “I can tell a slave girl from a lady at three hundred cubits.”

“Really?” she challenged. “And which am I?”

He smiled. “You seem to be poor now – not too poor, with the upstairs bath and the mosaic floor – but poorer than most of your neighbors. Still, I’m thinking this is a temporary state for you. You were raised with affluence and culture. I can tell by the way you hold your head, with the chin slightly elevated--”

The widow lifted her black hair away from her face. Her left ear had been pierced through with a band of gold, marking her as a lifelong and irredeemable slave.

He stared at her. “A slave? How can you be a slave?”

“How can you be a prophet?”

Elijah met her level gaze. “I am Yahweh’s prophet.”

“Then you should already know me.”

“I don’t know everything. Just what the Voice tells me.”

“Then ask the Voice.”

Her tone was final. She would have walked away, he thought, but her hands were covered with flour. The baby on her back began to complain. She struggled to shift his pack to the front without making a mess.

“May I help?” Elijah asked. He stood and reached toward the boy.

The infant gasped, throwing out his limbs like a startled fawn. Elijah pulled him tight against his chest. The thin eyelids fluttered and closed. He felt the tension drain from the tiny arms and spine. Elijah exhaled in unison with the baby.

“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered into the child’s feathery hair. He breathed the baby’s scent, which brought to memory the fragrant drops of moisture that used to carpet the fields of Israel in the morning. Beneath the boy’s downy skin, Elijah could feel every bone and joint. Elbows and knees protruded like hinges. The child’s eyes were sunken, his complexion too yellow. Very slowly, this child was dying.

Elijah clenched his jaw, silently praying, “Is this why you sent me here, Yahweh? It was not enough that I should obey the Voice. It was not enough that I should risk my life by declaring your drought. You had to make sure I would feel the pain of your wrath, here in my own bosom.”

The widow cleared her throat. “You can lay him on my bed.” He followed her beyond the warmth of the stove to the alcove at the back of the house.

The bedroom was small and messy. Covers lay in a swirled heap at the foot of the sheep’s wool mattress. He could see her shape still pressed into the bed. The faint scent of a woman lingered, teasing him as he bent to place the infant in the center of the mattress.

Elijah said, “I’ve never held a baby before.”

The woman smiled. “You have no younger brothers, then?”

“No. You?”

“Who can tell? I was born a slave. I have never known my mother or my father. Only Jezebaal.” She clucked her tongue. “Damn you, Yahweh man.”

“You know Jezebaal?”

“So you got me talking,” she conceded. “Now hush before you wake the baby.”

He followed her into the kitchen. “Is that who pierced your ear? Did you serve Queen Jezebaal?”

“Jezebaal is your queen,” she answered. “To me she will always be a priestess.”

Chapter 3 Baal’s Priestess
The palace in Sidon, 879 BC

The memory is trapped forever in my heart. The sea turns and eddies, like a churning stew pot filled with azurite and malachite jewels. The other servant girls dawdle at the water’s edge, skirts hiked around their slim waists. I see those girls in my mind, and hear the undisguised scorn in their voices. They hate me because I am not like them. They look at Jezebaal and see a pampered princess, daughter of the formidable King Ethbaal. I look at her high cheeks and full-moon eyes and see the priestess of Lord Baal. They serve Jezebaal, but I alone love her.

The two of us are standing farther out, Jezebaal and I. She is large and well-formed, like a figure cut from black limestone. The sun gleams from drops of saltwater on her shoulders. Beside her, I am clumsy in an awkward form of juts and corners, with skin as pale as milk and small breasts that stare ridiculously heavenward.

She reaches back to grasp my hand, her long dark fingers encircling my slender wrist. “Stand beside me,” she orders, “not behind me.”

I close the distance, until my shoulder is pressed to her arm. A cold, gelatinous wave reaches up to wash across my stomach. I shiver, and turn to watch her inhale the tangy sea breeze. Her braid does not shift in the wind. The tide does not lift her widely planted feet.

“Don’t look at me,” she orders without opening her eyes. “Look out to sea. Tell me what you find.”

I squint at the horizon. The tart wind squeezes tears from my eyes. The sky stretches above and ahead, as smooth and cool as a wall of lapis lazuli. The horizon dances before me, a vacillating line of blue against blue. I see no ships, no birds, no great slick fish rising on the frothy waves.

“What do you see?” she asks, squeezing my arm.

I say, “Nothing.”

Impatiently, she drops my arm and turns to face me. “The answer is not nothing. The answer is everything.”

“Everything? I don’t see it. I see nothing.”

“Everything and nothing are the same,” she pronounces.

I feel my eyebrows climbing, forming a silent question.

“When no path lies before you, then no way is blocked. Don’t you see? The whole world is open to us.”

She turns side to side as if surveying a vast kingdom. While she scans the empty horizon for glimmers of promise, I turn her words round and round in my mind, the way a child plays with a pretty stone. The whole world is open to us. I am thinking not of “the world,” but of “us.”



The Jezebaal I served was clear-eyed and fearless. I would have died for her, and she would have accepted the sacrifice without blinking. Though our relationship was not one of equals, I always knew she loved me. I was not worked like the other servants, nor was I available to the king’s whims. As a child, my work was to smile and to sing and to drink imaginary wine from tiny glass cups. I was to be the living doll of the princess, allowing her to dress me and braid my hair. She took me everywhere, like a talisman, so even Ethbaal King of Sidon had to tolerate my presence.

Jezebaal’s fondness only exacerbated the situation with other slave girls.

“Why do you act so high and mighty?” the ugly Arsuun demanded, a scowl twisting her pocked face. “You are only a slave like us.”

“You’re wrong,” I answered. “I am Jezebaal’s sister.” Such foolish words! They turned bitter even as they left my mouth.

“Her sister?” the other girls tittered. “Where is your crown?”

Someone thrust a broom into my palm. “Your scepter, my lady!” Arsuun howled. The other girls bowed, giggling.

I dropped the broom as though it were a snake, and ran from the kitchen. After that day, I kept my thin lips pressed tight together. It was a foolish idea, of course, that I could be sister to the dark lovely princess of Sidon.

Jezebaal’s heritage was carved on the palace wall. She is the daughter of Ethbaal King of Sidon, with ancestors who ruled not only Sidon and Tyre but all the seacoast of Phoenicia. Her forefathers hailed from mighty Egypt and westward from lands across the sea. The Tigris and the Euphrates coursed through her veins. Her royal bloodline extended backward to creation. Her forefathers were the god of night and the god of day. She was the offspring of Baal, life giver and creator of us all.

And me? I suppose it is natural that a born slave, having no mother, no father, no ancestry, should seek to moor herself to the rock-solid heritage of her mistress.

For as long as I could remember, I had belonged to the Princess of Sidon. I took comfort in her presence: Her arms thrown loosely around my body in sleep, her hand in mine on the seashore, her laughing eyes blinking a code during our writing class. She thrived on my companionship. She needed me.

If she was Baal’s priestess, so I was hers. I was a slave, yes, but also a confidante, an admirer, and in my own mind, some kind of sister.

As I grew taller, Jezebaal took me into her confidences.

“Look at that one,” she whispered. I followed the direction of her eyes, picking out a young man in the crowded marketplace. He carried a basket of fish on his browned shoulder. Dark eyes followed us from beneath a shag of red-brown hair. He was a common fisherman, and too young besides. He was probably no older than Jezebaal.

“Not the type Father Ethbaal would approve,” I said.

She pinched my thigh. “Must you take the fun out of every sport?”

She was grinning even as she scolded me.

“Only thinking of your future,” I said.

“And perhaps your own?”

I didn’t answer her. I had never considered that I had any future of my own. My future was only serving Jezebaal, the princess by the sea. I reached up, instinctively fingering the loop of gold in my ear. My future had already been determined, so long ago I could not remember the pain of its infliction.

“Don’t you ever think about men?” Jezebaal persisted. “I know you’re not yet twelve and still such a baby. But don’t you ever just wonder how it would feel to be near a man? To smell the scent of his skin against yours? To feel his breath on your face?”

I dropped my eyes, feeling my cheeks burn.

“See!” she exclaimed. “I knew you must!”

Our chariot pushed forward, slowly navigating the crowded streets.

“I think about where we might live,” I admitted, “and with whom.”

“Father won’t wed me to anyone in Sidon,” Jezebaal said, casting a long cool gaze around the crowded city.

“Why not?”

“Because there isn’t anyone in the city more important than Father.”

“Would you hate it,” I asked, “if we were sent far away?”

She lifted her chin, gazing beyond the crowded marketplace and the rows of white stone buildings, till her eyes settled on the sparkling, undulating sea.

She never answered.