Book of Common Prayer

19 Ach’av told Izevel everything Eliyahu had done and how he had put all the prophets to the sword. ² Then Izevel sent a messenger to say to Eliyahu, “May the gods do terrible things to me and worse ones besides if by this time tomorrow I haven’t taken your life, just as you took theirs!” ³ On seeing that, he got up and fled for his life.

When he arrived in Be’er-Sheva, in Y’hudah, he left his servant there; ⁴ but he himself went a day farther into the desert, until he came to a broom tree. He sat down under it and prayed for his own death. “Enough!” he said. “Now, Adonai, take my life. I’m no better than my ancestors.” ⁵ Then he lay down under the broom tree and went to sleep. Suddenly, an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat!” ⁶ He looked, and there by his head was a cake baked on the hot stones and a jug of water. He ate and drank, then lay down again. ⁷ The angel came again, a second time, touched him and said, “Get up and eat, or the journey will be too much for you.” ⁸ He got up, ate and drank, and, on the strength of that meal, traveled forty days and nights until he reached Horev the mountain of God.

⁹ There he went into a cave and spent the night. Then the word of Adonai came to him; he said to him, “What are you doing here, Eliyahu?” ¹⁰ He answered, “I have been very zealous for Adonai the God of armies, because the people of Isra’el have abandoned your covenant, broken down your altars and killed your prophets with the sword. Now I’m the only one left, and they’re coming after me to kill me too.” ¹¹ He said, “Go outside, and stand on the mountain before Adonai”; and right then and there, Adonai went past. A mighty blast of wind tore the mountains apart and broke the rocks in pieces before Adonai, but Adonai was not in the wind. After the wind came an earthquake, but Adonai was not in the earthquake. ¹² After the earthquake, fire broke out; but Adonai was not in the fire. And after the fire came a quiet, subdued voice.

3 Are we starting to recommend ourselves again? Or do we, like some, need letters of recommendation either to you or from you? ² You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. ³ You make it clear that you are a letter from the Messiah placed in our care, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets but on human hearts.

⁴ Such is the confidence we have through the Messiah toward God. ⁵ It is not that we are competent in ourselves to count anything as having come from us; on the contrary, our competence is from God. ⁶ He has even made us competent to be workers serving a New Covenant, the essence of which is not a written text but the Spirit. For the written text brings death, but the Spirit gives life.

⁷ Now if that which worked death, by means of a written text engraved on stone tablets, came with glory — such glory that the people of Isra’el could not stand to look at Moshe’s face because of its brightness, even though that brightness was already fading away — ⁸ won’t the working of the Spirit be accompanied by even greater glory? ⁹ For if there was glory in what worked to declare people guilty, how much more must the glory abound in what works to declare people innocent!

¹⁸ So all of us, with faces unveiled, see as in a mirror the glory of the Lord; and we are being changed into his very image, from one degree of glory to the next, by Adonai the Spirit.