The prophet Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal and Asherah at Mount Carmel ends below in the Kishon Valley. The Kishon (during the rainy season) flows west below the north face of Mt Carmel and within the plain of Esdraelon, the west sector of the ancient battleground of Armageddon.

While Elijah’s confrontation was not a battle in the military sense, his struggle was a battle against 850 false prophets backed by Israel’s King Ahab and his harpy of a queen, the infamous Jezebel.

The struggle came about after three years of drought and famine, which Ahab blamed on Elijah, who replied that Ahab’s idolatry had brought on the drought; He challenged the king to bring his heathen prophets to Mount Carmel.

1 Kings 18:16-45 tells the story of Elijah’s struggle and how the Lord fought for him. It ends in total victory:

“Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench” (verse 38).

The onlookers, people summoned from all over Israel, fell on their faces at beholding the impotence of the false prophets and cried, “The LORD–he is God! The LORD–he is God” (verse 39). Elijah turned the false prophets over to the onlookers and ordered them to take the impostors and slaughter every one in the Kishon Valley.

The narrative does not pinpoint the location of Elijah’s struggle. However, it was just far enough inland from the Great Sea and the peak of Carmel that intervening trees and elevations to be out of Elijah’s sight at the high point where he went to pray for rain. He had to send his servant seven times for a weather report The seventh time, the servant reported the first signs of a rising storm.

As Elijah’s servant went down to warn Ahab of the coming storm, the wind rose and the sky behind him grew black with clouds. Ahab fled east to Jezreel as a blinding rain broke upon him. The rain and mud mired his chariot and frightened his horses, however, while Elijah outran him all the way, about 16 miles, to Ahab’s country palace in Jezreel, close to the the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite (1 Kings 21).

The biblical narrative does not describe Ahab’s reaction at seeing the prophet waiting for him. God has defeated Ahab’s prophets and humiliated him with a storm that was supposed to be under the control of Baal, lord of storms, and now Elijah has outclassed him. Who knows what excuses Ahab makes to Jezebel? Yet 1 Kings 19 records Jezebel’s anger and its effect on Elijah. But that’s another story about Armageddon for another day.