(Photo: Shmuel Bar-Am)
By Aviva and Shmuel Bar-Am - April 4, 2020
For more than two decades in the 9th century BCE, the Kingdom of Israel was ruled by King Ahab and his Phoenician wife Jezebel. According to the Scriptures, the couple encouraged their subjects to worship the pagan god Baal.
The prophet Elijah was the scourge of the royal family. He despised the king and queen, and determined to squash their pagan practices. In 1 Kings 17:1, he declared that there would be a famine in Israel, and so there was.
In its third year, Elijah faced 450 prophets of Baal on the top of Mount Carmel (called the Mukhraka in Arabic) in a contest to determine who controlled the Kingdom of Israel: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — or Baal. After Elijah won, he had all of the other prophets slaughtered.
Over the years a Druze village grew up around the Mukhraka. In Arabic it means “scorching” — like the heavenly fire that consumed Elijah’s sacrifice when he won the contest.
Elijah is one of the most important prophets in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions and the site features an imposing stone statue of Elijah with a raised sword to the heavens. Today there is a church on the site, belonging to the Order of the Discalced (without shoes) Carmelites. Above the church a beautiful lookout offers a stunning view of the Jezreel Valley and Mount Tabor, the Upper Galilee and the Hermon Mountains.
Strange rocks are found on the Mukhraka, called, in Hebrew, Elijah’s Watermelon. It seems that Elijah was walking on the mountain one day, when he happened to see some lovely, ripe watermelons. He asked the farmer who owned the watermelons if he could have one.
Read More: Times of Israel