In his letter to the Galatians, Paul speaks of those who “trouble” their congregations:
“[T]here are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ” (1:7).1
The word “trouble” caught my attention here, because in 1 Kings 18:17, King Ahab refers to Elijah the prophet as the “troubler” of Israel.2
“When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, ‘Is it you, you troubler of Israel?’”
I wondered if there was some connection. There are in fact some thought-provoking ties between Elijah and Ahab’s story and the rhetoric of Paul in Galatians. Whether Paul had any of them specifically in mind as he wrote doesn’t seem provable, but I think the parallels taken together do help illuminate a subtext that is present in Paul’s argument: The Judaizers who were infiltrating the Galatian churches were actually introducing a kind of idolatry, a new Baalism into the Israel of God.
Troubling Israel, Anathema, and Idolatry
Of course, a coincidence of the English word “trouble” in the two texts means little. Paul uses the word tarasso in Galatians, which means to mentally agitate or disturb, or put into perplexity and unrest.3 In the Greek Old Testament, Ahab’s word is not Paul’s tarasso, but diastrepho, which means to twist, corrupt, turn aside, or pervert. Diastrepho here is translating the Hebrew word achar, which most often speaks of objective, external calamity or danger.4 In the case of Ahab and Elijah, the immediate “trouble” was drought and famine, but the LXX translators’ use of diastrepho may suggest that they understood Ahab’s accusation to not really be about the famine—external trouble—but to insinuate that Elijah has perverted Israel religiously. Whether Ahab had the drought primarily in mind or not, Elijah himself certainly gives “trouble” a clear religious spin in his response:
“And [Elijah] answered, ‘I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father’s house, because you have abandoned the commandments of Yahweh and followed the Baals’” (1 Kings 18:18).
Ahab is the first king to establish Baalism in Israel (cf. 1 Kings 16:31-32) and he became Elijah’s primary religious rival, so both senses of “trouble” (external calamity and perversion/corruption) work here contextually.5 Paul uses a different word altogether, so it may be doubtful that he has Ahab in mind in Galatians 1:7. Though notably in the next line, Paul does say that the troublers “want to distort the gospel of Christ,” with “distort” translating metastrepho, a verb with the same root as diastrepho, and with basically the same meaning. Thematically at least, spiritual perversion is at the forefront in both cases.
What we have is Elijah calling Ahab out as the “troubler” of Israel, since he has perverted and corrupted Israel by introducing Baalism and with it the “trouble” of God’s covenantal discipline: drought and famine. Then we have Paul calling the Judaizers “troublers” in that they are perverting the gospel of Christ and making themselves and their followers likewise liable to the covenant curses (Galatians 3:10-11; 4:30; 5:19-21). Paul actually uses the curse formula twice in Galatians 1:8-9, “let him be accursed” (anathema), which is the language of the Old Testament “ban” (herem), people or places or things connected with idolatry and devoted to destruction. As God instructs the Israelites on their entry into Canaan:
“The carved images of their gods you shall burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, lest you be ensnared by it, for it is an abomination to the Yahweh your God. And you shall not bring an abominable thing into your house and become devoted to destruction (herem/anathema) like it. You shall utterly detest and abhor it, for it is devoted to destruction [herem/anathema]” (Deuteronomy 7:25-26).6
Paul sees the false teachers in Galatia as introducing a spiritual perversion to the people of God that warrants calling down God’s destruction, as could idolatry in Israel. While Paul never says the Galatians are positively embracing a different god, he does say that they are deserting God (1:6), and if they embrace the Judaizers’ teaching they are “severed from Christ” (5:4).
Limping Between Two Opinions
When Elijah confronted Ahab, Elijah instructs him to call the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:18-20), which Ahab does, and in a public display before the people of Israel, Elijah challenges them in v. 21:
“How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”
The devotion of the Israelites to Yahweh was half-hearted. They were willing to humor their king and entertain a rival deity in Baal, and Elijah (whose name, appropriately, means “Yahweh is my God”) calls this “limping between two opinions.” He wants Israel to decide and be wholly devoted one way or the other. The question of divided loyalty is evident in Galatians as well. Paul expresses astonishment that they have “so quickly” turned to a different gospel (1:6). The Galatians are torn between the Spirit and the flesh, starting with the former but drifting into devotion to the later (3:3), and they are in danger of turning back to their former, godless ways, which Paul defines as “slavery” (4:8-9).
What is at stake for the Galatians, the “opinions” they are “limping between,” are two ways in which to seek righteousness before God: The old covenant as expressed in their submission to circumcision and the yoke of the Law, or the new covenant in the blood of Christ:
“Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace” (5:2-4).
Paul insists that “a person is not justified by works of the Law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (2:16). Those who would persist in holding to the old covenant will only find themselves under its curse, because it is a covenant that has proven ineffectual for salvation (3:10-14). As in Habakkuk’s day, the Law has shown itself “paralyzed” and justification must be sought elsewhere (Habakkuk 1:4; cf. 2:4, Galatians 3:11). For Paul and for the Galatians, it must be one of the other: Christ or Torah; Yahweh or Baal. They can’t straddle a fence.
Torah as Baalism?
Perhaps it’s too jarring to parallel the Law of God with Baalism. Of course, God’s Law is good, and it has its place. Paul elsewhere acknowledges this (Romans 7:12). God’s Law can be nothing less than holy and righteous. It is not idolatry of any sort. Still, in Galatians, when it comes to the question of saving efficacy and the meaning of what God has done for the world in Christ, Paul’s rhetoric does indeed tend to put the Law covenant on the same practical level as the Galatians’ former pagan idolatry:
“[W]e also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years!” (Galatians 4:3-10)
In this passage, Paul speaks of Israel’s bondage under the Law as a childhood of “slavery” to the “elementary principles of the world” (stoichea tou kosmou). What precisely Paul refers to by this phrase is debated, but what’s significant to notice is that he speaks of the gentile Galatians’ former paganism in exactly the same terms. They were “enslaved to those that by nature are not gods,” and in submitting to the Judaizers they would be turning back again to the “weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once again” (v. 9). What is important to see here is that Paul in essence equates Israel’s life under the Law with the life of the gentiles under paganism. It’s not an absolute equation. Paul does not deny that the Law is God’s own revelation. He says elsewhere that possessing the oracles of God was in fact the primary advantage of the Jews over the gentiles (Romans 3:2). But here in Galatians Paul’s point is that in light of the Christ event, the status of the Law has been radically relativized, so much so that embracing it as the source of life and righteousness would be just as foolish as reversion to pure paganism, an idolatry that merits a divine anathema.
As Ahab “troubled” Israel with his imposition of idolatry, now the Judaizers trouble the Galatians. So perhaps it is no accident that we find Paul wishing that the Judaizers would just go ahead and “emasculate themselves” (Galatians 5:12). Self-mutilation is just what the priests of Baal do (1 Kings 18:28).7
The Israel of God
It’s also worth noting that Paul speaks of the church in a unique way in Galatians 6:16—he calls them, “the Israel of God.” Some question who exactly Paul references here, but it seems clear to me that he is speaking of the church—believers in Christ. He has defined the “sons of Abraham” in Galatians as those in Christ (3:7, 29), and argued that the “present Jerusalem” who is in slavery is on the verge of being disinherited (4:25-30). So it would be quite odd if he referred here to any entity besides the believing church as “the Israel of God.”8 But I highlight this reference because in the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal, when Elijah is about to demonstrate the superior power of Yahweh, we find the name of Israel oddly emphasized:
“Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Yahweh came, saying, “Israel shall be your name,” and with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Yahweh.” (1 Kings 18:31-32).
In the context of the story of Elijah, this note serves to highlight the theme of a preserved remnant within Israel who have remained faithful (1 Kings 19:18), a faithful remnant to which Paul himself elsewhere draws attention (Romans 11:1-4). Galatians likewise highlights the theme of the identity of the true Israel.
None of what I have pointed to here demonstrates that Paul actually had the Elijah and Ahab story in mind as he composed Galatians. I am only claiming that there are some provocative and illuminating parallels. But there is one other detail worth exploring.
Paul’s Trip to Arabia
In 1996, N.T. Wright wrote an article about Galatians 1:17, where as part of his autobiography Paul mentions a brief trip to Arabia soon after his conversion, from where he returned to Damascus.9 Wright argues that Paul mentions this trip because he means to cast himself in the mold of Elijah, who did the same thing. Paul writes that upon his encounter with Christ:
“I did not immediately consult with anyone; nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.”
When Elijah had finished his confrontation with the prophets of Baal, Elijah also went to Arabia, to Horeb the mountain of God (the same place as Sinai and in Arabia; cf. 1 Kings 19:8 and Galatians 4:25), and from there to Damascus (1 Kings 19:15). Elijah was considered by the Jews in Paul’s time to be, along with Phineas, a model of righteous zeal, and Wright suggests that Paul casts himself as Elijah in Galatians in a twofold sense, different before and after his conversion.
First, Saul of Tarsus, full of “zeal” for the traditions of his fathers (Galatians 1:14), had sought to imitate Phineas in killing the idolatrous in Israel and Elijah’s slaying of the prophets of Baal in his own persecution of Christians—who he considered perverse followers of a blasphemous charlatan (Numbers 25:6-9; 1 Kings 18:40). Wright suggests that Saul of Tarsus considered Christians to be “renegade Jews of the worst sort. They were, in Saul’s eyes, no better than Baal worshipers. It was [his mission] to cut them off, root and branch.”
But after his conversion, Paul could see himself as Elijah in a different respect. When Elijah encountered God on the mountain, God sent him back to Damascus tasked with anointing Hazael as king over Syria, and Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel (1 Kings 19:15-16). So now Paul, no longer the zealous persecutor, having encountered God in the risen Christ likewise returned from Arabia proclaiming Christ as the new king. Paul could still see himself as a new Elijah (cf. Romans 11:1-5), but in a different respect. Wright says, “Saul, having taken the Elijah of 1 Kings 18 as his role model in his persecuting zeal, took the Elijah of 1 Kings 19 as his role model when confronted, after his zealous triumph, with a totally new reality that made him question his whole life and mission to date.”
Wright does not suggest it, but if Paul indeed formerly thought of Christians as on par with Baal worshipers, it’s not a stretch to think that now in Galatians he implicitly associates the Judaizers with Baal. Elijah was a man of the Spirit, carried along and performing signs wherever he went, and famously leaving his successor Elisha with a double portion (2 Kings 2:9-14). Paul is jealous for the Galatians to remember that it was from hearing his gospel with faith that they received the Spirit (3:2-5). Not from the Judaizers’ preaching of the Law—which preaching Paul seeks to push aside as so much cutting and raving (cf. 1 Kings 18:28-29 and Galatians 6:12-13).
Conclusion
Paul may or may not consciously allude to the Elijah story as he writes. But it seems fair to conclude that a gospel which would promise righteousness before God on a basis other than, or supplementary to, the work of Christ should be considered an idolatrous Baalism that will only trouble the Israel of God.
Daniel Hoffman received his M.Div from Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, MS) in 2012. He spent five years teaching Bible and history at Cherokee Christian School in Woodstock, GA, and then moved to Gwangyang, South Korea, where he and his wife currently teach English.
- Again in the singular, “[T]he one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is” (5:10). ↩︎
- 1 Chronicles 2:7 refers to Achan in the same way, but there the word is actually being used as a pun on Achan’s name. The LXX translates the Hebrew word into Greek differently in these two references. ↩︎
- Cf. Matthew 2:3; John 11:33. ↩︎
- Though cf. Psalm 39:3. ↩︎
- Baalism was prevalent all throughout the period of the Judges, and seems to have lasted until the judgeship of Samuel, where at his instigation “the people of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtaroth, and they served Yahweh only” (1 Samuel 7:4). But despite Solomon’s embrace of foreign gods (1 Kings 11:1-8) and Jeroboam’s golden calves (1 Kings 12:25-33), we don’t hear about Baal again specifically in either the northern or southern kingdom again until Ahab. ↩︎
- The other person in the Old Testament who gets the title “troubler of Israel” is Achan, in 1 Chronicles 2:7, which specifically links him with the anathema (“Achan, the troubler of Israel, who broke faith in the matter of the devoted thing”). The same Hebrew expression is used of Achan and Ahab, but the LXX uses a different Greek word to translate it which does not appear in the New Testament (empodostates). ↩︎
- 1 Kings 18:28 uses the word “katetemnonto,” which is not in Galatians, but in Philippians 3:2 Paul does refer to those urging circumcision as “the mutilation” (katatomen). ↩︎
- It also seems unlikely that Paul is referring here only to believing Jews, since that would imply that when he says “as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God” he is distinguishing believing Jews from Christians more generally, which is a distinction that his whole letter has been at pains to erase (3:28). Calvin is right: “In a word, he gives the appellation of the Israel of God to those whom he formerly denominated the children of Abraham by faith, (Galatians 3:29), and thus includes all believers, whether Jews or Gentiles, who were united into one church.” ↩︎
- Originally published in Journal of Biblical Literature vol. 115, 683–692, and available here: http://individual.utoronto.ca/stephentu/resources/articles/ntw13.pdf ↩︎