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a common house. And this conjecture is raised into a certainty by 2Ki 6:1. In this passage, for example, they are represented as saying to Elisha: “The place where we sit before thee is too strait for us; let us go to the Jordan, and let each one fetch thence a beam, and build ourselves a place to dwell in there.” It is true that we might, if necessary, supply לפניך from 2Ki 6:1, after שׁם לשׁבת, “to sit before thee,” and so understand the words as merely referring to the erection of a more commodious place of meeting. But if they built it by the Jordan, we can hardly imagine that it was merely to serve as a place of meeting, to which they would have to make pilgrimages from a distance, but can only assume that they intended to live there, and assemble together under the superintendence of a prophet. In all probability, however, only such as were unmarried lived in a common building. Many of them were married, and therefore most likely lived in houses of their own (2Ki 4:1.). We may also certainly assume the same with reference to the unions of prophets in the time of Samuel, even if it is impossible to prove that these unions continued uninterruptedly from the time of Samuel down to the times of Elijah and Elisha. Oehler argues in support of this, “that the historical connection, which can be traced in the influence of prophecy from the time of Samuel forwards, may be most easily explained from the uninterrupted continuance of these supports; and also that the large number of prophets, who must have been already there according to 1Ki 18:13 when Elijah first appeared, points to the existence of such unions as these.” But the historical connection in the influence of prophecy, or, in other words, the uninterrupted succession of prophets, was also to be found in the kingdom of Judah both before and after the times of Elijah and Elisha, and down to the Babylonian captivity, without our discovering the slightest trace of any schools of the prophets in that kingdom.
All that can be inferred from 1 Kings 18 is, that the large number of prophets mentioned there (1Ki 18:4 and 1Ki 18:13) were living in the time of Elijah, but not that they were there when he first appeared. The first mission of Elijah to king Ahab (1 Kings 17) took place about three years before the events described in 1 Kings 18, and even this first appearance of the prophet in the presence of the king is not to be regarded as the commencement of his prophetic labours.