Elijah's Drought

According to Jacob, the drought in Elijah's time lasted 3 years and 6 months and was remedied a certain way. In book 9 another drought had a similar remedy.

Jacob 5:13-18

Count

3+6 = 9 = Second Samuel

Second Samuel

The math in Jacob's discussion of Elijah's drought points to the book of Second Samuel. What do we find in this book related to the passage in Jacob? Another 3 year drought. Here's the story of the drought in David's time.

Jacob cites two stories about a three year drought, two stories that rely on prayer to end the drought. He cites Elijah's story with words. This is the kind of reference everyone is used to. But he also cites David's story with numbers. This is the kind of reference we are documenting in this larger study on Book Numbers.

Both stories must relate to what Jacob is talking about or they would not be cited together. Both stories are about a 3 year drought. Both are also stories about prayer, the primary topic of the originating passage. We are told directly, by Jacob, that Elijah was a man of prayer. David is also cited, but numerically, so we have to read his story to learn that he also used prayer to end a drought. By extension, David, like Elijah, is an example of prayer for us.

When David had a drought on his hands he asked Yahvah why. When he had an answer he was able to take action. It's clear in Elijah's story too, in First Kings 18, that the same kind of process is happening, for as Jacob says, Elijah even prayed the drought into existence. No one would attempt, let alone succeed, at such a thing if they had not heard to do so from Yahvah. The take away is that prayer is not a matter of repetitive asking. Prayer is a matter of taking your questions to Yahvah until you hear his explanation for what's happening and what to do about it. This is the way both David and Elijah were operating.

Given the way these two stories are so similar, might there be other parallels between them? You bet. What Elijah and David were lead to do is quite similar. David turns over some of Saul's descendants to the Gibeonites to be slain because of a contract between Israel and Gibeon that Saul broke. Elijah commanded the slaying of the prophets of lord because Ahab and his forefathers (and many in Israel, though not all) had forsaken the contract with Yahvah. The root problem and solution is the same in both stories.

There's another element shared by both stories. David moved Saul and Jonathan's remains to their rightful resting place in the family plot. Elijah repaired an altar to Yahvah. But how are these alike? Left to guess on your own you might come up with the idea that both of these moves are honoring, or something similar, and you'd be right, but the idea is to learn to use scripture to interpret scripture, and in this case, by a simple math problem, we've been shown what passages to compare. So let's use the stories to figure this out.

I think the symmetry between the two stories wants the reader to infer that when David moved Saul and Jonathan to their family plot, he also rebuilt their father's sepulcher (or rebuilt something related to their burial). Whether Saul and Jonathan's graves were never marked when they were buried the first time or whether they had been vandalized is unknown, though the symmetry suggests they had fallen into disrepair one way or another. So David does some kind of repair or rebuilding in the process of laying them to rest in the right location.

A sidenote on the word "altar" may help put this particular assertion of mine on better footing. The word altar in the original langauge is literally "from sacrifice." That means an altar is what's left from a sacrifice(s). The altar becomes the memorial or marker of a sacrificial event or place. In that light it's very much the same as a headstone or memorial to a loved one who has died. Given that background I imagine Elijah's repairing of an altar has an echo in David's story and I imagine it's a repairing of a memorial.

First Kings 18

Elijah's story, for comparison.