Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 200 · July 19
Not a Word
“And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.”
This verse has been used in altar calls for a long time, and there is a fair complaint about that which deserves to be heard first. A person pushed into a corner has not really made a decision. If a meeting gets emotional enough, hands go up, and then they come down again in the car park.
The text agrees with that complaint. "How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word." That silence is all the challenge achieved. Elijah stood before the whole nation with one of the sharpest questions in the Old Testament, and nobody moved.
Halt is a limping word. A few verses later the chapter uses the same Hebrew word for what the prophets of Baal did around their altar, and there the King James translates it "leaped": "And they leaped upon the altar which was made." It is the same hopping, unsteady movement. The people were doing it in their minds, and the prophets were doing it with their feet.
What finally moved the people came from outside the argument. "Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench." Only after that did anything change: "And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The LORD, he is the God." God supplied the one thing Elijah could not make happen, after his question had already failed.
Even that did not last long. In the next chapter Elijah "arose, and went for his life." He "came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die." What God gave him there, at the bottom, was food: "an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat." He ate and drank and lay down again. Then the angel came a second time: "Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee." In the strength of that food he walked forty days to the mountain of God.
So go back to the question, because it is a good question that has often been used badly. "How long halt ye between two opinions" names a limp. It was put to people who really were limping, by a man who would be limping himself within days. Sending the fire is God's work. Your part is to admit the limp, and that is more than the crowd on Carmel managed. When you do, you will find what Elijah found: the God who sends fire also feeds the one who is limping, and He gives strength for a journey that is too great for you.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 200 is My Rock and Fortress (Psalm 18:2).