Mount Carmel
A wooded ridge that runs inland from the Mediterranean coast at Haifa. Kings sets Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal here.
Carmel is a range of hills that meets the sea at the bay of Haifa and separates the coastal plain from the valley of Jezreel. Kings makes it the scene of the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and has Elijah watch from its summit for the rain cloud rising out of the sea (1 Kings 18:19–20, 42–44); see Elijah on Mount Carmel. Elisha also stayed on the mountain (2 Kings 2:25; 4:25). The text does not say where on the ridge the contest took place, and the marker shows the mountain as a whole.
What happened here
- about 860 BC, traditional dateElijah on Mount Carmel
During a long drought the prophet Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal, whom King Ahab and Queen Jezebel support, to a contest on Mount Carmel. Kings tells of fire from heaven, the people’s return to the Lord, and Elijah’s flight to Horeb.