How Do You Stop a Drought?
Rain makers, miracle workers and Rip van Winkle
There is a drought in Europe. It is not one of tragic proportions, that causes mass starvation, suffering and death. In England we have even had a couple of days of heavy rain since the drought was proclaimed. But a drought it is, nevertheless.
Droughts, real, long-lasting droughts in hot places are devasting events. When the prophet Elijah warned his bête-noir, the abominable King Ahab, that there would be no dew or rain in the coming years we can scarcely imagine the terror and fear that he caused. The drought that came shaped Elijah’s career: the warning he gave to Ahab was his very first prophetic utterance and his greatest miracle was when he brought the thirst to an end by defeating the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel.
Elijah’s victory over the prophets of the idol Baal is one of the great bible stories. It has drama, tension, humour and of course a moral. Elijah had challenged King Ahab to a contest to prove the falsity of his worship of Baal. It was a contest in which Elijah, singlehandedly, would confront and defeat the prophets of Baal; all 450 of them.
Elijah told Ahab to summon Baal’s prophets to Mount Carmel. When they were assembled he instructed them to build an altar and to call on their god to send fire from heaven. Elijah said he would do the same but he would call on the God of Israel. Each side, we assume, was confident they would win; it would be their divinity who sends the fire.
The 450 prophets did as Elijah instructed; they spent all day dancing, praying, entreating, slashing themselves with swords, doing all sorts of dreadful idolatrous things, but Baal sent no fire from heaven. Around midday Elijah began to mock them: “Shout louder!” he suggests “Perhaps he is meditating or answering the call of nature. Maybe he has gone on a journey or is asleep!”
Eventually the prophets of Baal gave up and it was Elijah’s turn. He built an altar, dug a moat around it, doused it in water, did whatever he could to stop it catching fire. He uttered a short prayer and fire immediately shot down from heaven, consuming even the stones of the altar. Despite doing everything he could to prevent the altar from catching fire, he had won the contest. Those watching fell on their faces, acknowledging God’s divinity.
There was still the matter of rain though. Elijah went to the top of Mount Carmel, bowed down and put his face between his knees (a posture that Jewish mystics would copy generations later). He told his servant to look out from the top of the mountain towards the sea but he saw nothing. He told him to look again, but still nothing. This happened seven times. Eventually the servant said, “I see a little cloud, about the size of a man’s hand coming up from the sea.” Within moments, the sky was black with clouds, the wind was howling and rain was bucketing down. The drought was over.
Every culture has its stories of rainmakers and rainmaking rituals. James Frazer’s encyclopaedic Golden Bough contains pages and pages of them. Hanina ben Dosa who lived in the early part of the 1st century CE had a somewhat self-centred attitude to his power. Finding himself caught in a downpour one day, he complained: “Master of the universe; the whole world is happy (because it was raining), but I am suffering.” The rain stopped. When he got home he said, “Master of the Universe, I am happy but the whole world is suffering.” It began to rain again.
Hanina ben Dosa was one of several charismatic, wonder working charismatics who lived in Israel between 100 BCE and 70CE. Honi Ham’agel was another. The name Ham’agel means ‘circle drawer’, suggesting that he used magical devices to perform his miracles. During one very severe drought the people of his town urged him to pray for rain. It must have been spring because he told them to take their Passover ovens indoors so they didn’t get wet when his prayers succeeded. He prayed, but no rain came.
Honi drew a circle on the ground and stepped inside. “Master of the universe” he said, “your children have turned to me because I am like one of your household. I swear that I will not move from here until you have mercy on your children.” Drops of rain began to fall, a drizzle, nothing more. Honi was not pleased. “I didn’t ask for this” he retorted, “but for rain that fills cisterns and ditches and caves!” Immediately the heavens opened. Sheets of rain cascaded down, threatening to inundate the whole earth. Honi grew angry. “I didn’t ask for this! I asked for rain of kindness, blessing and generosity.” Only then did it begin to rain normally.
When he heard what Honi had done Shimon ben Shetach, the leader of the nation, summoned him. “If you were not Honi “ he said, “I would have excommunicated you. But what can I do? You treat God petulantly and he does as you ask, just as a father does for a nagging child.”
This story was first recorded in the Mishnah, complied around 220 CE, about 250 years after Honi lived. But there is a much older story about Honi that appears in the works of Josephus, the Jewish-Roman historian who lived in the second half of the 1st century CE. He was writing about the period in Israelite history when the nation was under Hasmonean rule. Civil war had broken out between two brothers, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, who were battling for the throne. When Hyracanus’s supporters heard that Honi was in their midst they urged him to bring about the downfall of Aristobulus, just as he had brought about the end of the drought. Honi refused. Instead he prayed that neither side would prevail. When Hyrcanus’s supporters heard this they were furious. They stoned Honi to death.
The rabbis of the Talmud, who were no fans of the Hasmoneans, might well have known the story that Josephus told. They may have found it disrespectful that a story was circulating about the saintly, wonder-working Honi being stoned to death by one of the warring Hasmonean camps. It was a stain on his memory.
This may explain why the Talmud told another story about Honi. Seeing a man plant a carob tree he asked him why he was planting something whose fruit he would not benefit from. The man replied that his ancestors had planted trees for him and so he was planting for future generations.
Just then Honi fell asleep. When he awoke he saw that the man who had been planting had gone, but that someone was gathering carobs from a well-established tree growing there. He told Honi that he was the son of the man who has planted the tree.
Confused, Honi went home. The house was full of people he didn’t know. He asked if Honi lived there. “No” they said “but his grandson does”. Honi eventually realised that had been asleep for seventy years.
Unlike Rip van Winkle, nobody recognised Honi. He was alone in the world. The Talmud, providing him with a more appropriate ending than the legend in which he was stoned to death, relates that he prayed for mercy and died.
For most of history rainmaking miracles and rituals were essential, because people invariably attributed the withholding of rain to supernatural causes. Sometimes they believed a drought had been caused by a malevolent spirit or through a curse laid by an enemy. Most frequently though they attributed the cause of drought to the gods, who were angry at the way people had been behaving. The only way to get the drought to end was to change their behaviour and try to appease the gods.
It's not so easy today. We no longer believe that the gods are angry when it doesn’t rain. But we do still believe it is the result of our behaviour. Most scientists attribute climate change to our destruction of the environment; egregious human activity that requires huge, urgent changes in our collective lifestyles. Achieving net zero will not be easy, but it is far more likely to be effective than appeasing the gods. But I can’t help thinking that appeasing the gods would have been a whole lot easier.