When Elijah was twiddling his thumbs on Mount Carmel – waiting for the Baal prophets to finish their ranting (1 Kings 18:25-26) – perhaps he stood in the vicinity of this photo and absorbed the view. Of course, his eyes would have picked out a wildly different scene. Two settlements on Haifa Bay may have caught his attention: the small Haifa al-Atiqa below him, and the larger town of Acco to the north. Though Acco was originally meant to fall within Israel’s territory (Judges 1:31), by the time of Elijah it was still the domain of Phoenicians (Canaanites, who worshipped Baal).
Fast-forward over 2800 years, and much has changed since Elijah stood on Mount Carmel. The view today is dominated by the Israeli port city of Haifa, the nation’s third-largest city. As of 2019, its metropolitan area contained over one million people.
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