1 Kings 18:40

40. Take the prophets of Baal Take them prisoners; lay hold upon them as criminals worthy of immediate death. The order was addressed to the obedient multitude, now all enthusiasm to vindicate Jehovah’s honour.

Down to the brook Kishon Which flows along the very base of Carmel. See note on 1 Kings 18:35. “With regard to the place where the slaughter took place, there is general agreement. The path down the mountain, after passing the fountain,… continues with no great windings almost directly towards Tell Kussis, a commanding hill on the opposite side of the Kishon, but very near it. It is a spur from the hills which bound the plain of Esdraelon on the north, close by where the plain contracts into the narrow valley which connects it with the plain of Akka. Its name, signifying hill of the priests, is not improbably derived from the fact of the slaughter of the prophets of Baal, which must have taken place near it.” PROF. MEAD, in Bibliotheca Sacra, 1873, p. 685.

Slew them there Here we may see some retaliation for Jezebel’s slaughter of the prophets of Jehovah. See 1 Kings 18:4. But we must not judge this act of Elijah on the principles of Christian ethics, but by the spirit and letter of the Mosaic economy. The law commanded that the devotees of idolatry should be punished with death. See Deuteronomy 13:1-15; Deuteronomy 17:2-4; Deuteronomy 18:20. And so great was the passion with which the people, at the order of Elijah, helped to execute the law in this case, that Ahab, who was present, had no power or apparent disposition to interfere. On the moral principle involved in this slaughter of the Baal prophets, see notes on 1 Kings 2:24; 2 Samuel 12:31.