Angel Appearing to Elijah
Artist: Ferdinand Bol (Dutch, 1616–1680)
Date: c. 1642
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: The Leiden Collection, New York City, NY, United States
The Angel Appears to Elijah
The painting depicts an episode from the Old Testament (I Kings 16:29–34 and chapters 17–19). In this complex and rather gory story, Ahab, the king of Israel (reigned ca. 874–53 BC), and his wife, Jezebel, reject the God of the Israelites and build an altar for the worshippers of Baal. The prophet Elijah then challenges the priests of Baal to set up a sacrificial altar to rival his own. When only Elijah’s sacrifice is consumed by fire, the people reject the false god, Baal, and turn again to the God of the Israelites. At Elijah’s instigation, the people then seize the prophets of Baal, and Elijah kills them. After Jezebel subsequently threatens to kill Elijah, the prophet flees into the wilderness where he sits under a juniper tree and prays for death before falling asleep. The moment that Bol depicts is when an angel comes to Elijah and says: “Arise and eat.” Elijah eats and drinks, but then he falls asleep again, whereupon the angel returns and exhorts him once more to get up and eat. Thus fortified, Elijah “went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God.”
