Walter Jacob
Carmel represented the conflict with Baal as a rain god. Elijah , as others earlier and later understood rain, along with agricultural pests and human enemies, to be agents of God (Deut. 28). Solomon 's dedication of the Temple made this clear(1 Kings 22ff.). During much of the biblical period there was a struggle between two theologies, those who considered the natural world governed by idols and those who saw it as a part of God 's domain. This was a major theological problem.
There were limits to this struggle, as the forces of nature may have been hostile and sometimes clearly dangerous and could encroach on the agricultural domain of human beings, but the natural world per se was never seen as“the enemy.” What is missing in Scripture is the fear of hostile forces of nature, dragons, or other mighty animals at the edge of the world. The awesome natural world could be destructive at the command of God , such as the earth swallowing Korah and his group in the desert(Num. 16:1-3), but this was not carried over into a general fear of earthquakes. The queen of Sheba, who came for a distant land, was not portrayed as coming from a land at the outer edge of the world. The frightening messages of ancient mythology are absent from the Bible . Even when Jonah was swallowed by a giant fish(Jonah 2:1), it was shown in a positive light as a divine act and presented with some humor. Much earlier, when the patriarchs wandered through the Land of Canaan and encountered the terrible destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah(Gen. 19:24), it left no permanent scar. None of the heroes of the Bible ever hesitated to go into the natural world because of its dangers. David fled into the desert and established himself there. Moses did not hesitate to wander into the land of Midian which was also basically unsettled territory. Elijah without hesitation left for the desert and Mount Sinai, a land completely uninhabited and filled with wild dangers of every kind.
The natural disasters that occurred, such as droughts, floods, and earthquakes, were not given independent cosmic significance, and the natural world remained as an instrument of God used to chastise. Natural phenomena were not seen individually, but within a larger theological framework.
What accounted for this very different world view? The entire world was seen as God 's creation and therefore subservient to the will of God . It meant that there were no essentially hostile forces in the world. There was no prolonged