Elijah the Tishbite is the towering prophetic figure of the books of Kings, active in the northern kingdom of Israel in the ninth century BCE under Ahab and Jezebel, whose promotion of the worship of Baal he opposes with uncompromising fury. He appears abruptly, announces a drought as the word of the God of Israel, is fed by ravens and by a widow whose oil and meal do not fail, and raises her dead son.
His defining confrontation is on Mount Carmel, where he challenges the prophets of Baal to call down fire upon their sacrifice; their god is silent through a long day, and then the God of Israel answers Elijah's prayer with fire from heaven. Triumphant yet then in fear of Jezebel, he flees into the wilderness to Horeb, the mountain of God, where he encounters God not in wind, earthquake or fire but in a still small voice, a sound of thin silence, one of the most quoted phrases in scripture.
Alone among the figures of the Hebrew Bible, Elijah does not die: he is taken up to heaven in a whirlwind, in a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire, his mantle falling to his successor Elisha. That deathless departure made him, for all that followed, a figure who might return.