This Study 3 is from an Easter Youth Camp at Boomer Beach SA, 2001. There is an ERROR leaving out the last 5 mins ☹. I was able to retrieve some. The last 3.5 minutes is at 
• 2001 Missing 3 mins from Study 3
At 8:02 Elijah is better understood as representing Gentiles because he was one himself. See Elijah was a Gentile
This Study 2 is from an Easter Youth Camp at Boomer Beach SA, 2001. The story of Elijah. Error: at 31:20 The King was actually looking for grass for the animals – not water. [1 Kings 18:5].
Kings 19:4 “But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree; and he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers.”
Elijah is dejected – feeling a failure. He had failed his mission. Wasn’t he supposed to bring all Israel back to God? Didn’t the fire on Mt Carmel show who the one true God really was? And here he was, seemingly just one day later and Jezebel was after his blood. Where were all the people who had cried out “the Lord is our God’ [1 Kings 18:39]? Did they stand up to Jezebel? No. The prophet was now alone – and running for his life.
What did Elijah mean by “take away my life; I am not better than my fathers.” Perhaps he was referring to all the prophets who had died before him – and he was now asking God to take his life. He may as well be dead like them. But I don’t think so. I think that Elijah had a passion to be the one who would ‘turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers’. I think Elijah thought he was the chosen prophet to bring Israel back to God. All the other prophets had failed – but he would do it. And now, here he was, a failure just as the prophets before him were. He was feeling no better that his fathers, he may as well be dead.
And so Elijah comes to God and says ‘I am the only one, God – I am the only one left who loves you’. He knew that wasn’t true [1 Kings 18:4]. He knew there were others who were in love with the true God of Israel, but he was immersed in self-pity.
So, what does God say? God gives the best advice to a person feeling down in the dumps. A person feeling, ‘Oh poor me.’ [1 Kings 19:10]. Get up, dust yourself down, and get on with the next job I am going to give you. You’ve got more to do; you’re not finished yet!
So, God gives Elijah three more jobs to do –
“And the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive, you shall anoint Haz′ael to be king over Syria; 16 and Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint to be king over Israel; and Eli′sha the son of Shaphat of A′bel-meho′lah you shall anoint to be prophet in your place.” I Kings 19:15
Well, there you go. Lots more to do. But – was there something ominous in asking him to appoint a successor? Why? Was Elijah old and fading out? We have no evidence of that. Maybe there was a deeper lesson.
Of the three tasks, Elijah only completed one. He did anoint Elisha to be a prophet [1 Kings 19:19]. But God took him in the whirlwind of fire before he had a chance to do the other two jobs. Why? Why did God give him two jobs and then prevent him from doing them? Perhaps it was Elijah’s last lesson. Elijah – you have done your job – but my Spirit will not die with you. I will pass it onto others who will accomplish my will. One prophet may pass, but another will rise. The plan and purpose of God is not thwarted – it will pass from one prophet to another until it comes to The Son of Man. One of the sons of the prophets anointed Jehu [2 Kings 9:3], and then Elisha verbally anointed Hazael [2 Kings 8:13]. God’s plan is fulfilled by whichever vessel is used by the Spirit. So, Elijah’s last lesson may have been that he was a just a link in an ongoing chain.
So now, from 1 Kings 19, Elijah and Elisha go on together as a sort of ‘master and apprentice’. Or so it seems. In 1 Kings 21 Elijah seems to be alone in condemning Ahab over Naboth’s vineyard. Elijah continues alone in the 2 Kings 1 condemnation of Ahaziah. They seem to re-unite in 2 Kings 2 when Elijah is taken, and Elisha is granted a double portion of the spirit of Elijah.
Here, Elijah is taken in a whirlwind and the two prophets are separated by horses and chariots of fire. Elisha calls out
“My father, my father! the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” [2 Kings 2:12].
This was a testimony to Elijah, not a description of the vision. It was Elijah who was the chariot of Israel – its strength as he was the vessel of God’s spirit. This was an epithet which Elisha himself was to inherit [2 Kings 13:14].
So, Elisha now emerges as the greater of the two. Elisha is recorded to have done about sixteen miracles to Elijah’s eight. Significant? Probably. Elisha now has a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. We are now connected to one of the greatest forerunners of Jesus.
Many of the miracles of Elisha are pointing us to Jesus –
Only four or five out of all the prophets of Israel and Judah have no revealed genealogy and no identifiable hometown. They seem to ‘come from nowhere’.
Those such as Jeremiah, are identified by their lineage –
“The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin” [Jeremiah 1:1].
Or, Elisha , identified by the words
“ Eli′sha the son of Shaphat of A′bel-meho′lah” [1 Kings 19:16].
But then we find the likes of Malachi, of whom we know nothing. Malachi may be a proper name, or just a generic ‘messenger’ of God,
“The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Mal′achi (messenger)”.
Who was he/she, where did they come from?
Elijah was one of these. We do not know where he came from, or his parentage. Elijah was one of the four or five with no heritage, no identifiable town. But immediately, you may say: didn’t he come from Tishbe, a town in Gilead, east of the Jordan?
“Now Eli′jah the Tishbite, of Tishbe[a] in Gilead.” [1 Kings 17:1].
Well, actually, no he didn’t. This quote is from the RSV, and you will notice a little superscript over the word Tishbe. The accompanying note says ‘Gk: Heb of the settlers’. So, how do we understand Tishbe, a town or ‘of the settlers’? Let’s track the town down, if it exists. The fact is that no one knows if there ever was a Tishbe.
The apocryphal book of Tobit says Tishbe was a place in Upper Galilee ? (Book of Tobit, Tobit 1:2) Or, was it a place in the land of Gilead as suggested by Josephus (Josephus, the Jewish historian Ant. 8:13, 2)? Or is it El-Ishtib, a place due south of the Sea of Galilee, among the mountains of Gilead? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tishbite). All of these references are guesses 700/800 years after the events of 1 Kings. We will see in a moment it is far more reasonable and consistent to go with the meaning of the Hebrew word.
Tishbite (תִּשְׁבִּי) means Captive, stranger, sojourner, immigrant or non-indigenous. So, as Wiki has it: “The word is sometimes interpreted as “stranger,” so that the verse might read “Elijah the stranger from among the strangers in Gilead.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tishbite?oldid=0). Strongs says the word is locative, so it maybe interpreted –
‘from the place of strangers or the non-indigenous’.
There’s more. 1Kings 17:1 with Strongs’ links reads
“And Elijah H452 the Tishbite, H8664 who was of the inhabitants H8453 of Gilead,”.
We have already discussed what Tishbite means, but how about the word ‘inhabitants’?
Hebrew תּוֹשָׁב (towshab) means sojourner, stranger (non – indigenous) and in Gesenius’s Lexicon it appears as:
Of the 14 times this word ‘towshab’ is used in the OT, it is always translated sojourner, or stranger except with Elijah where it is translated as ‘inhabitant’.
In all the other places, it is always applied to gentiles. Elijah is the only exception.
Here is an example: Lev 25:6
“And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for you, and for your servant, and for your maid, and for your hired servant, and for your stranger8453 that sojourns with you”
So, 1 Kings 17:1 “And Elijah the Tishbite , [who was] of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab” should read “And Elijah of the captives or immigrants, [who was] of the foreigners or sojourners of Gilead, said unto Ahab.”
If you google “1 Kings 17:1 Bible Hub”, you get this verse in 25 different versions. Of the 25 versions on Bible Hub only one gets it right – International Standard Version
“Elijah the foreigner, who was an alien resident from Gilead, told Ahab, “As the LORD God of Israel lives, in whose presence I’m standing, there will be neither dew nor rain these next several years, except when I say so.”
One last proof that Elijah was a gentile-
1 Kings 17 6 “And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the brook.”
God sent ravens to feed Elijah. Ravens (crows) are birds of carrion. They eat road-kill. They eat rotten meat. They were unclean in the Jewish law. No law-abiding Jew would eat food from a raven’s mouth. Just imagine if an orthodox Jew was hungry and a pig walked in with a sandwich in its mouth. Would the Jew take the sandwich and eat it? I think not. Elijah saw past the ‘letter of the Law’ to the spirit and gladly ate from the unclean bird at God’s direction. God gave the raven as a sign of the ‘unclean’ Elijah, the gentile who was now cleansed by faith.
One last rather delightful irony. At Passover, for centuries, the Jewish family has reserved an empty seat for the prophet Elijah. The reason for this, as wiki puts it
“Is in honour of Elijah, who, according to tradition, will arrive one day as an unknown guest to herald the advent of the Messiah.” (Malachi 4:5)
Just imagine the reaction to realise that Elijah was a gentile.
Renewed 