Original subtitles

Who sends the rain?

Who lifts the wheat from the dust?

Who fills the belly of every child in Sidon? How

many

prophets of the Hebrew God are left, my queen?

A hundred fled this moon.

They say there is a hand inside my own palace that hides them, that feeds them.

Find me that hand, and I will cut it off.

Cut it.

I did not cross the sea to share this sky with the god of shepherds.

One kingdom, one god, one throne.

This land will forget his name.

I will erase it myself.

Profit by profit.

Bring me the next one.

Burn the altars!

Kill a hundred, kill a thousand!

That bronze you poured never made the sun rise!

Not one single morning!

There is a God who fits in no statue.

He was here before the first storm, and he will be here when the last of you

is dust under a sandal.

The Lord lives, Jezebel! The God of Israel lives!

Listen to them.

Three years I have given this people everything a king can give.

What more does a god want from a king than a full belly for his people?

Nothing. Baal asks nothing but a whole kingdom and no other name spoken in it.

That is why the hills still whisper Ihab.

Because you left a door open.

A door?

You mean the prophets?

I mean the prophets.

A hundred fled this moon alone.

Someone feeds them.

Someone inside these walls opens the granary at night.

Find me that hand, husband.

I did not cross the sea to share a sky.

Who are you?

Who brings this desert beggar before the throne of Israel?

I have stood in the court of the King of Heaven tonight.

I did not come to your gate for your leave, Ahab.

I came by his word.

Look at what you have built, Ahab.

A house of ivory over a land of mud.

A thing your wife carried in her baggage like a knife.

Guard your tongue, old man.

You stand in my hall. I stand in the hall of a man who is afraid of his own

wife.

And calls it peace.

So you are the hand, the little prophet who lived.

What is the name of the god you would set against mine?

He has no image you can carry.

You say Baal gives the rain, then let him give it.

Let him thunder. I will wait.

Hear me, Ahab, and hear the god you have forgotten.

I stand tonight in the presence of the living God of Israel, and I speak his

word to you.

There shall be neither dew nor rain these years, but according to my word,

not one drop of mist on a single leaf.

Now count the days, Ahab.

Count them in the dust that gathers on your feet.

Seize him!

Guards, take him! Take it!

50 days east of the Jordan, in a crack in the earth.

He told me to come, and I came.

He told me to hide, and I hid.

I sealed the sky with my own mouth, and you send me to the last thread of water

in a dying land.

And even here it runs thinner each morning.

I did not send you to the green country, Elijah.

I sent you here.

A man cannot hear me over the shouting of crowds, so I have taken the crowds

away. You sealed the sky by your mouth, and now I dry it under your feet so that

you learn a thing no throne room could teach you, that the hand which shut

heaven cannot open it.

Only I can drink of the brook and watch what I do with the birds.

Ravens. Of all the birds under heaven, he sends me ravens, the thief of the

air.

He did not make the raven gentle, he made it obey.

That is the harder thing.

If the Lord can make a raven deny its own hunger,

He can keep one stubborn old man alive at the bottom of a ditch.

So be it. I will wait.

There it is, the last of the water.

The sky I shut is closed over me too.

There is no ditch far enough east to hide a man from his own word.

You understand more than you did fifty days ago.

The brook is dry because I have somewhere better to feed you.

Arise and go to Zarephath.

which belongs to Sidon and dwell there.

Behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain you.

Zarephath, Sidon, you dry up my brook and send me to drink from the land that

wants me dead, Jedabel's own country.

And a widow, you say, to feed your prophet.

I have never once understood you.

And you have never once been wrong.

So I will go.

A god who can shut a raven's hunger and open a widow's hand only needs me to

walk.

Woman, bring me a little water in a vessel that I may drink.

And bring me, I pray you, a morsel of bread in your hand. I have no bread

baked, my lord, only a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil in a crisp.

See, I am gathering two sticks to go and prepare it for me and my son, that we

may eat it. Fear not. Go and do as you have said, but make me a little cake of

it first and bring it to me.

For thus says the God of Israel, the jar of meal shall not be spent, nor the

crisp of oil fail, till the day the Lord sends rain upon the earth.

You ask the first mouthful from my son's last meal.

He is inside that house behind me, waiting for it.

And the first word out of your mouth is give.

Give water.

Give bread.

I do not know your God.

He is not the God of this land.

This is Sidon, the coast of Baal.

And Baal has starved us the same as your Israel.

I am not asking you to feed a beggar, woman.

I am asking you to trust the God who sent me to your gate.

You think I chose this door?

I am a hunted man.

There is a queen who would give a province for my head.

And that queen was born in this land.

In Sidon.

Your Sidon.

Of all the doors in all the world, the God of Israel sent his prophet to hers.

To a starving widow on the coast of Baal.

Ask yourself why.

Words. The priests of Baal had words too.

Every festival, every drought, give to the god and the god gives back.

I gave.

My husband gave too.

Until the fever took him.

Then stop giving to a god who only takes.

I am telling you the opposite.

Feed your son first.

Tip the jar.

And count what is left in your hand when you think it is empty.

Come then.

There is a room over my stairs my husband built it for a guest we never

had it is yours For as long as this guy stays shut

Mother

did you bring the fire?

Is he going to eat with us?

He eats first, Hiram. Then you.

Then me. That is what I have agreed.

Why?

Because he says his God will fill the jar.

And I have nothing left to lose by pouring.

Mother, it's still coming.

I felt the bottom of it this morning.

With my own hand, there was nothing.

And now it does not end.

It will not end, woman.

Not while the drought lasts.

You asked why he sent me to your door.

Now you have your answer.

The God of Israel keeps a fuller table here, in one poor house in

Sidon, than Baal keeps in all his temples.

Eat, and give your son to eat.

And tomorrow, pour again.

And the morning after that, every morning, until the day the rain comes

back.

Every morning.

Thirty mornings I have poured from that jar.

Thirty. I stopped counting the days of the drought and started counting the

days of the bread.

Mother says a bird brought you bread.

Is that true?

Ravens, Hiram.

They brought me bread in a ditch until the water ran out.

And then he sent you here.

And then he sent me here.

He has not kept down a mouthful in three days.

It smells like mourning.

Eat it for me, Hiram.

Just the corner of it.

I don't want it, Mother.

Mother, I'm cold.

You are not cold.

Hiram, you are burning.

It is the fever.

It is the same fever.

Hiram.

Hiram, wake up.

He does not wake.

He does not wake. There is no breath left in him.

The child is gone from us, woman.

Do not say us.

What have I to do with you, O man of God?

You, in my house, eating my endless bread at my endless table, is this the

rent your God charges for it?

Thirty mornings your God fed him.

He let me watch his face face fill out.

He let me hear him laugh again.

He let me forget, and then he came in the night.

Was that the fuller table you praised, Prophet?

A fuller table in Sidon?

Take your miracle back.

Take your jar and your oil.

I would rather have had nothing and had him.

Give me your son.

I will carry him up to the room you gave me, and I will not come down till God

has answered me.

Give him to me.

Why this house, Lord?

Why this one of all the widows in the world?

The one who took me in, in the land of my enemy, when your own Israel would

have sold me?

She had nothing.

She gave me her last, and she gave it first.

Is this how the kindness is paid back?

Tell me that, and I will carry it down those stairs and call it good.

I stood before kings for you.

I sealed the heavens at your word.

I never understood one step of it.

I am not asking now, Lord. I am holding on.

Give the child back.

I do not know how to say your name, but if you are what he says you are, you are

in this house.

You have been eating at my table.

Let the breath come into this child again.

Let him open his eyes.

Let him hear his mother's voice.

He breathes. He breathes.

See?

Your son lives.

Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth

is truth.

I called your God the God of another land.

He is not.

He is the God who came into my house in Sidon and would not let it

close.

Is it truly you, my lord Elijah?

After three years, you walk out of the rock into the middle of my road as if

the whole kingdom was not turning over every stone to find you.

It is I.

Go, tell your lord Elijah is here.

What have I done to you?

that you would hand your servant to Ahab to be killed.

There is no nation, no kingdom, where my king has not sent men to hunt you.

Three years he has scoured the whole earth for the sound of your name.

I have feared the Lord since I was a boy.

When that woman began cutting down his prophets, I hid a hundred of them,

fifty in one cave and fifty in another.

If one frightened man in those caves had whispered my name under the lash, it

would not have been one grave, my lord. It would have been a hundred and one,

and mine dug the deepest.

Tell me I did not keep the lord's prophets alive for three years, only to

be killed for the lord's prophet on this road.

I carried them bread and water in the dark, night after night, with the very

hands that poured her husband's wine at noon.

You have not hidden them in vain, Obediah.

Heaven has counted every loaf you carried into the rock.

The same God who kept those hundred alive keeps me until the sun goes down

today.

I stand in the presence of the living God of Israel and I speak his word.

I will show myself to Ahab this very day.

I will not flee.

I will not vanish.

Go and bring him.

And when he asks who sent for him, tell him it was the drought.

Come at last to speak with the man who called it Baals.

So it is you.

Three years I turn over every well from Dan to the sea.

And here you stand in a dry riverbed as if you owned the rain.

Is it you?

You, troubler of Israel.

I have not troubled Israel.

You have.

You and your father's house, in that you have forsaken the commandments of the

loi and follow the bars.

I troubled Israel?

Cattle rotting in the beds where rivers ran.

Mothers grinding the last of the seed corn.

The young and the old alike going down into the dust. And you tell me the fault

is mine.

You sealed the sky with your own mouth, and then you crawled into a hole

for three years and let it kill my people.

You searched three years for the man, and you never once

searched for the sin.

Hear me, Ahod.

Your priests have burned offerings to Baal on every high place, and the rain

did not come.

Your wife has filled 400 tables in his name while your people ate dust.

You tore down the altars of the living God. This drought is not my curse upon

Israel. It is Israel's own debt, come due at last, and paid back into

Israel's own dust.

I only spoke the words.

You and your house wrote every one of them.

Then what would you have me do?

Beg a god I cannot see to send the rain your own mouth shut off?

I would have you stop limping.

You have served two gods for three years, Ahab, one knee bent to each, and

the sky has answered neither.

It is time the whole land saw which one is God.

Not in a temple, where men can lie.

Under the open heaven, where only fire can speak.

So this is what you will do.

Send word through all Israel.

Gather every soul to me at Mount Camelil.

Let no man stay in his house.

Bring the 450 prophets of Baal.

and the 400 who eat at Jezedel's table.

Bring every voice that has cried Baal's name into this empty sky.

Let the whole kingdom climb that mountain and watch whose god is God.

But if it is the Lord, you will have your reign, Ahab, not before.

How long will you go on limping between two opinions?

You want the sky

of the Lord and the altars of Baal at the same time.

One knee to each heaven.

A prayer in each hand.

So choose.

If the Lord is God, follow him.

But if Baal is God, follow him and be done with it.

Only stop limping between the two.

I am the only prophet of the Lord left standing in all Israel.

One man.

Baal's prophets are 450.

Let two bulls be brought.

Let them choose one for themselves.

And make it ready upon the wood, and put no fire under it.

And I will make the other ready in the same way.

You will call on the name of your God, and I will call on the name of the Lord.

And the God who answers by fire, that one and no other, let him be God.

It is well spoken.

Let the God who answers by fire be God.

You are many, and I am one.

So choose your bull first and call first.

The morning is yours.

O Baal, Baal, answer us. Rider of the clouds, lord of the storms, send down

the fire. Show this rabble whose sky this is. Send the fire, Baal, and let

all Israel see.

Cry louder.

Surely he is a god.

Perhaps he is deep in thought and must not be disturbed.

Or perhaps your great god is simply asleep.

So wake him.

Shout into his ear.

He rides the clouds, but there is not a cloud in the sky today.

He rules the storm, and look, there is not a breath of wind but the one off the

sea.

Louder, then.

And let it cost you something.

Maybe a voice is too cheap for him.

Maybe he only hears what a man pays for.

near to me.

According to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob.

Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah.

Bring water.

Four jars filled to the brim and empty them over the wood.

Pour it.

They spent a whole day begging their God to send fire, and could not raise a

single spark on dry wood.

I am going to ask mine to send fire on wood I have drowned.

Pour.

A third time.

Let it be known this day, before all Israel, that the Lord is God in this

land, that I am his servant, and that I have done all this at his word.

Turn this people's heart back to him.

The fire has spoken.

Now the water will speak too.

Get up, Ahab.

Go, eat and drink, for there is the sound of an abundance of rain.

There is no cloud.

There is no wind but the seas.

The sky is shut, prophet.

I shut it with a word, and with a word it opens again.

You just saw fire fall on soaked wood, Ahab.

Do you still weigh the sky by what your own eyes can find?

Go up higher and look toward the sea.

Tell me what you see.

There is nothing, my lord.

Only the sea and the sun going down into it.

Go again.

There there rises a little cloud out of the sea no bigger than a man's hand Go

run tell our hack Harness your chariot and get down this mountain before the

rain shuts the road on you

ha ha ha ha ha

What are you doing here, Elijah?

You know what I am doing here.

You brought me here.

Forty days I have walked.

Forty days and forty nights on the strength of a single meal an angel put

in my hands under a broom tree in the wilderness.

Because I had lain down under that tree and begged you to let me die.

Do you remember?

I asked you to take my life.

It is enough, Lord, I said.

I am no better than my father's.

And instead of the grave, you sent bread.

Twice.

A cake baked on the coals and a jar of water.

And a hand on my shoulder.

Rise and eat. The journey is too great for you.

I walked to the mountain where you gave Moses the law.

And I still do not know why you would not let me sleep.

You want to know what I am doing here?

I am running.

I... who shut the sky over Aham's Hall and faced 850 knives on Camel.

And then one woman sent me one line.

Jedabel swore by her dead gods that by tomorrow I would be as one of her

prophets.

And the man who called fire down from heaven gathered his robe up in both

fists and ran.

Ran with his skirts in his hands, like a beggar caught out in the open. A day

into the desert I sat down under that broom tree and I meant every word.

Enough. Take back the years, the ravens, the widow, the fire.

I cannot carry it one more mile.

I have been jealous for you, Lord God of hosts.

Israel has forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your

prophets.

I am the only one left, and they are hunting me.

Leave this cave, Elijah.

Come up onto the open mountain and wait there, for I am passing this way.

What are you doing here, Elijah?

I am the only one left.

And they are hunting me.

Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.

And when you come, you will anoint Hazael to be king over Aram.

And Jehu, the son of Nimshi, you will anoint to be king over Israel.

And Elisha, the son of Shaphat, of Abelmehola.

You will anoint to be prophet in your place.

You are not the end of anything, Elijah.

You are one link in a chain, older than you and longer than you.

You said you are the only one left.

You are wrong.

I have kept for myself 7,000 in Israel.

7,000 in Israel who never bowed the knee to Baal and never once bent to kiss his

stone.

You have never been alone, my prophet.

You only felt alone.

Now lift up your face and rise and go.

There is a young man plowing a field who does not yet know your name, and he is

waiting for a mantle he has never seen.