In studying the people of the Bible who are mentioned in the Qur’an, we have discussed them, for the most part, in chronological order. Our last two studies concerned King Solomon. Among the people mentioned in the Qur’an, those who come next would be the prophets Elijah (sometimes called Ilyas by Muslims), and his disciple and successor, Elisha (whom the Muslims also know as Al-Yasa). To better understand the story of these two men, it is useful to know what happened after the reign of Solomon.
The Division of the Kingdom
As we have seen in our last study, Solomon let himself be turned from God by the many pagan women he had married. Because of his infidelity, God told him:
“I will tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant. However, I will not do it during your lifetime because of your father David; I will tear it out of your son’s hand. Yet I will not tear the entire kingdom away from him. I will give one tribe to your son because of my servant David and because of Jerusalem that I chose.” (1 Kings 11:11-13)
After the death of Solomon, his son Rehoboam was to become his successor. But before proclaiming him king, the people said to him, “Your father made our yoke difficult. You, therefore, lighten your father’s harsh service and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you” (1 Kings 12:4).
Evidently, Solomon, to finance his numerous and grandiose construction projects and the luxurious life of his royal court, had made the people pay very high taxes. Before answering the people, Rehoboam asked for advice from the elders, those who had served his father Solomon. The aged men recognized the legitimacy of the people’s complaint and advised him to listen to them and reduce their burden. But Rehoboam next asked advice of the young men who had grown up with him. They advised him to respond harshly to the people and tell them that instead he would demand even more than his father had. The new king followed the bad advice of his young friends.
“When all Israel saw that the king had not listened to them, the people answered him: ‘What portion do we have in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. Israel, return to your tents; David, now look after your own house! So Israel went to their tents, but Rehoboam reigned over the Israelites living in the cities of Judah.’” (1 Kings 12:16,17)
The inhabitants of the ten tribes of the northern territory chose as king a servant of Solomon who had rebelled against him, a man named Jeroboam.
The Kingdom of the North Gives Itself to Idolatry
God was ready to bless the reign of Jeroboam over the northern tribes but he did not trust God.
“Jeroboam said to himself, ‘The way things are going now, the kingdom might return to the house of David. If these people regularly go to offer sacrifices in the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem, the heart of these people will return to their lord, Rehoboam, king of Judah. They will murder me and go back to the king of Judah.’ So the king sought advice. Then he made two golden calves, and he said to the people, ‘Going to Jerusalem is too difficult for you. Israel, here is your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.’ He set up one in Bethel, and put the other in Dan. This led to sin… [He also] set up priests from every class of people who were not Levites. Jeroboam made a festival in the eighth month on the fifteenth day of the month, like the festival in Judah. He offered sacrifices on the altar; he made this offering in Bethel to sacrifice to the calves he had set up. He also stationed the priests in Bethel for the high places he had set up.” (1 Kings 12:26-32)
So Jeroboam instituted a religion which was an imitation of the one God had revealed to His people. They claimed to worship the same God, the one who had brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, but did not respect His laws. God had forbidden representing Him with images, but Jeroboam created statues in the form of calves. God had chosen Jerusalem as the place for his sanctuary, but Jeroboam substituted the cities of Bethel and Dan. God had commanded the observation of feasts in the seventh month of the year, but Jeroboam moved them to the eighth month. God had the men of the tribe of Levi to serve in the temple and descendants of Aaron to be priests, but Jeroboam allowed anyone who appeared with a bull and a lamb to become priests.
Unfortunately, similar situations occur in our day as well. Many people think they are serving God as Christians, but in fact they have inherited a kind of counterfeit religion, because those who came before them substituted human teachings and practices in place of what the Lord authorized at the beginning of the church. Only by returning to the Bible can one rediscover the true Christian faith.
Why So Many Miracles?
It is in the context of this apostasy, or abandonment of the true faith by the Israelites of the North, that we find the story of Elijah and of Elisha. It is told in the Bible from 1 Kings 17 to 2 Kings 9. The thing about these two prophets that captures the attention of Bible readers is the great number of miracles that they did. On the word of Elijah, for example, rain was stopped for more than three years and fell again when he called for it. The flour and oil of a widow were constantly replenished in a way that provided nourishment for the woman, her son and also the prophet until the end of the famine caused by the drought. Elijah brought a child who had died back to life. He made fire fall from the sky. He predicted the future. And he was taken into heaven without dying.
In regard to Elisha, his miracles were even more numerous. He parted the waters of the Jordan to cross it on dry ground. He purified bitter waters. He raised a dead child. He multiplied food to feed a crowd of people. He healed a leper. He struck an army with blindness. And we could keep going.
When you think about it, there are only two other periods of history in the Bible where we see such a great concentration of miraculous events: during the life of Moses and during the time of Jesus and his apostles. This is not to say that the Bible does not talk of miracles outside these three time periods, but they are much more rare. Is there a trait that these three moments in history have in common which could explain the great number of miracles by these servants of God? As a matter of fact, there is.
In regard to Moses and Jesus, we easily see a reason that explains the great number of signs they accomplished. Both of them claimed to bring a whole set of revelations from God. They were spokesmen for God in a particular way.
Through Moses, God inaugurated what we call the old covenant. He revealed the story of the creation of the world and the origins of the Jewish people, and he gave the people the laws by which they would be governed. This revelation that God made to Moses was the basis of His relationship with his people for fifteen centuries. It was absolutely necessary for the people to be sure that God had really spoken to Moses. After all, anyone can claim to receive a message from God. People do it every day. But God provided irrefutable evidence that he had chosen Moses to speak in His name to the people that He had chosen.
Jesus also did many astonishing miracles, and the first Christians did not fail in their preaching to appeal to these miraculous signs which were well known and undeniable. The apostle Peter spoke to the crowd who listened on the day of Pentecost. “This Jesus the Nazarene was a man pointed out to you by God with miracles, wonders and signs that God did among you through him, just as you yourselves know” (Acts 2:22).
When he preached to the Roman centurion named Cornelius, Peter said:
“You know the events that took place throughout Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John preached: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power and how he went about doing good and healing all who were under the tyranny of the Devil, because God was with him.” (Acts 10:37,38)
The apostle John, in the Gospel that bears his name, described many miracles of Jesus. Then, toward the end of his book, he said:
“Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:30,31)
The same principle is applied to the miracles performed by the apostles of Jesus after his death and resurrection. The author of the epistle to the Hebrews said:
“How will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was first spoken by the Lord and was confirmed to us by those who heard him. At the same time, God also testified by signs and wonders, various miracles, and distributions of gifts from the Holy Spirit according to his will.” (Hebrews 2:3,4)
Why so many miracles? We have answered that question in the case of Moses. And for Jesus and his apostles? It is necessary to understand that the ministry, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus mark a turning point in the relationship between God and people.
In his sermon on the mount, Jesus said that the least part of the law of Moses would not pass until all had been accomplished (Matthew 5:18). Yet, in saying that, Jesus affirmed that the law would pass away, in the sense that it would no longer be in effect. Actually, throughout the Gospels, it is written that such and such a thing took place to fulfill what had been foretold by the prophets. In John 19:30, we see the last words of Jesus before his death on the cross:
“When Jesus received the sour wine, he said: ‘It is finished.’ Then bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.”
When Jesus had come back to life, he tried to make his disciples understand the necessity of his sufferings and of his death.
“Then he told them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.'” (Luke 24:44)
Nothing was to pass from the law until all had been fulfilled. With the death of Christ, all was fulfilled. By his death a new covenant was inaugurated (Hebrews 9:16-22). But for people to be sure that all this was from God, the miracles (especially the resurrection of Christ) and the fulfilled prophecies furnished a dramatic confirmation. And several passages assure us that God’s revelation is final and will never need to be replaced or added to (Galatians 1:8,9; 2 Corinthians 3:11; Hebrews 10:9,10; Jude 3).
Finally, let’s now return to the case of Elijah and Elisha. As we have said, the situation in their time was special because of what the kings of Israel in the north had done to change the religion God had revealed. The true priests and the Levites had abandoned their homes in the north and gone to Judah to serve God faithfully (2 Chronicles 11:13,14). There was no one left to teach the true word of God to the Israelites in the north, and the generation of Elijah and Elisha was ignorant of much of what the Holy Scriptures taught. They were cut off from God’s revelation. Elijah and Elisha probably had to retransmit the will of God to this people who had been deprived of the truth. The miracles that they did served to prove clearly that they spoke for the true God of Israel.