Prophecy in 1 Kings

“Give your servant, therefore, a listening heart to judge your people and to distinguish between good and evil.” (3:9)

Reading

Offered anything he wants, the young Solomon asks for wisdom, and God gives him a heart “so wise and discerning” that there has been no one like him (3:12). His fame reaches the ends of the earth. The queen of Sheba comes with camels bearing spices, gold and precious stones, tests him with hard questions, and confesses “that not even the half had been told me” (10:7).

Fulfilled

Jesus names this scene: “At the judgment the queen of the south will arise with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and there is something greater than Solomon here” (Matthew 12:42). Christ is the Son of David who is himself “the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24). The Magi, coming from the East with gold and incense (Matthew 2:11), fulfill what Psalm 72:10–11 and Isaiah 60:6 sang of the kings of Sheba bringing gifts.

See also

Prophecy in Matthew: the sign of Jonah, in the same saying; Psalm 72.

“When the priests left the holy place, the cloud filled the house of the LORD so that the priests could no longer minister because of the cloud, since the glory of the LORD had filled the house of the LORD.” (8:10–11)

Reading

The ark is carried into the inner sanctuary, and the cloud of glory that filled the tent in the wilderness (Exodus 40:34–35) fills the temple. Yet Solomon knows no building can hold God: “If the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain you, how much less this house which I have built!” (8:27). He prays that God will hear from heaven whoever prays toward this place, even the foreigner (8:41–43). The Catechism notes that this prayer relies on God's promise and covenant, and asks that the nations may know that he is the only God (CCC 2580).

Fulfilled

The Word “made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory” (John 1:14). Jesus speaks of the temple of his body, destroyed and raised in three days (John 2:19–21). The house of David's son is Christ himself, and through him the Church becomes God's temple (1 Corinthians 3:16).

Future

In the new Jerusalem John sees no temple, “for its temple is the Lord God almighty and the Lamb” (Revelation 21:22): the glory that once filled one house fills the whole city.

See also

The Temple of His Body.

“As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, during these years there shall be no dew or rain except at my word.” (17:1)

Reading

Elijah appears without introduction and shuts the sky over Ahab's kingdom. God sends him outside Israel, to a widow of Zarephath in Sidon, who shares her last bread with him: “The jar of flour shall not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry, until the day when the LORD sends rain upon the earth” (17:14). The rain returns “in the third year” (18:1). The Catechism notes that Elijah teaches the widow to believe in God's word (CCC 2583).

Fulfilled

Jesus cites the widow in Nazareth: there were many widows in Israel “when the sky was closed for three and a half years,” yet Elijah was sent “only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon” (Luke 4:25–26). The grace of God was always meant for the nations. St. James gives Elijah as a model of prayer: “for three years and six months it did not rain upon the land” (James 5:17).

Why mystery

Revelation gives the two witnesses Elijah's power: “They have the power to close up the sky so that no rain can fall during the time of their prophesying” (Revelation 11:6). Many early writers took the witnesses to be Enoch and Elijah; others read them as the Church's witness, in the spirit of Moses and Elijah. The Church has not settled who they are. The three and a half years of Luke and James is also the time of trial in Revelation (11:2–3; 12:6, 14).

“Seeing this, all the people fell prostrate and said, ‘The LORD is God! The LORD is God!’” (18:39)

Reading

On Mount Carmel Elijah challenges the people: “How long will you straddle the issue? If the LORD is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him” (18:21). The prophets of Baal cry out all day; Elijah prays once, and “The LORD's fire came down and devoured the burnt offering” (18:38). His name means “The LORD is my God,” the very cry of the people (CCC 2582).

Fulfilled

The Catechism notes that the Eastern liturgies take up Elijah's prayer on Carmel in the epiclesis of the Eucharist, when the Church asks the Father to send down the fire of the Holy Spirit on the offering (CCC 2583). The fire from heaven falls on the Church at Pentecost in tongues as of fire (Acts 2:3).

Unfolding

Revelation warns that the beast from the earth, the false prophet, will also perform great signs, “even making fire come down from heaven to earth,” to deceive (Revelation 13:13; 16:13). Carmel teaches the discernment the last book asks for: not every sign is from God, and the people must choose whom they will follow.

“He got up, ate, and drank; then strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.” (19:8) “After the fire, a light silent sound.” (19:12)

Reading

Fleeing Jezebel, Elijah lies down in the desert and asks to die. An angel wakes him: “Get up and eat or the journey will be too much for you!” (19:7). At Horeb, the mountain of Moses, God passes by, not in the wind, the earthquake or the fire, but in “a light silent sound,” the NABRE's rendering of a phrase older Bibles translated “a still small voice” or “a tiny whispering sound.” Elijah hides his face in his cloak, as Moses hid in the cleft of the rock (Exodus 33:22).

Fulfilled

The bread that carries Elijah forty days is read in the liturgy as a figure of the Eucharist: the Church pairs 1 Kings 19:4–8 with Jesus' words, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven” (John 6:51), and calls the Eucharist given to the dying viaticum, food for the journey. Like Moses (Exodus 34:28) and Jesus in the desert (Matthew 4:2), Elijah keeps forty days. The Catechism follows him to Horeb and notes that only on the mountain of the Transfiguration would Moses and Elijah see unveiled the face of the one they sought (CCC 2583; Matthew 17:3).

Unfolding

The God who comes in a light silent sound is still found in silence and prayer, and Carmel and Horeb have given their names and their spirit to a whole tradition of contemplative life in the Church.