Why did fear grip Elijah in running from Jezebel?

1 Kings 19:2-3 Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, "So may the gods do to me and even more, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time." (3) And he was afraid and arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.

In verse 2, she sent a messenger to Elijah saying 'So may the gods do to me and even more, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.' She was not going to lie down and do nothing and I think that Elijah possibly underestimated her. This woman was like a caged tiger... she came out fighting and sent a message and a threat. She really had it within her power to take his life there and then but she didn't actually do that. Instead, she gave him one days' notice of her intention to take his life. Now, I don't know about you but if you were going to take someone's life you probably wouldn't give them a day's notice so that they had the chance to escape. So what was her intent? I believe it was to instill fear into the heart of Elijah and it worked. When you get to verse 3 you really get to the crux of it all. We read 'when he saw that he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba which belongs to Judah and left his servant there.' And when he saw that...what was the 'That' which he saw, do you think? I believe that Elijah in his heart believed that things were going to be different back at the palace, but when he saw Jezebels response he knew that they were not. Her response was totally negative. In Elijah's mind the battle was already over. God had presented Himself to the people, and they were no longer divided between two opinions. Their hearts were coming back to Him. The false priests had been executed. God had shown up but there was this one woman who actually refused to submit which caused him to go from victory to defeat in one moment. Everything is about what we see and how we respond to it that matters. This is how it is for us, for we are no different from Elijah. James says that Elijah was a man just like we are and he had the same strengths and weaknesses. We are all the same. One day we can be on the mountaintop and then running for our life the next, and it can happen so quickly! Elijah was not ready for the things which he saw in Jezebels message, and this is what caused him to be so afraid...

I remember a time when I was 12 years old and I played soccer for the area I lived in. On one occasion we had to play an away game in another town and were billeted out with strangers. On the first day I was there my billet took me for a walk into the school grounds and I got into a fight with another boy. He rushed home to get his older brothers who were aged about 17 and 19. My friend said 'You'd better run!' So I ran as fast as I could with these two guys chasing after me and I can still remember how the adrenalin kicked in. They were only about 200 hundred meters behind me. I ran down a street and into a shop jumped right over the counter and lay on the floor. The shop keeper took one look at my face and said Ooh! When the boys arrived at the shop they asked if the shopkeeper had seen a young kid. The shopkeeper told them 'Yep - he went that way.' After they had gone I came out of the shop and went in the opposite direction - not knowing where I where I was or how to get back to the place I was billeted at. However my friend had rushed back and told his parents who came looking for me in their car. I had been wandering the streets for about half an hour when they found me...very scary!

So back to Elijah for he is filled with panic and fear and he is running. He is running for his life. He actually ran about 80 miles. It doesn't say how long it took him but that is about the distance from Jezreel to Beersheba in Judah. Fear is an interesting thing. Here are a couple of quotes that I read:

Fear is the little dark room where negatives are developed.

That is so true for us as well as Elijah. There are lots of things that we are afraid of. Everyone is afraid of different things. There are lots and lots of little things that we shouldn't be afraid of but actually are. Fear is that little dark room where all you see is the negatives which seem unfortunately to dominate us.

The other quote is:

To him who is dominated by fear everything rustles.

This is so true because when you are afraid, when you are bowing out of circumstances, everything seems to be heightened and to be a problem. It is in our DNA to respond to fear in this way. In the first instance when Adam and Eve fell, what was their initial response? They fled from God because they were afraid. He called to them 'Where are you?' and they replied 'We are afraid because we are naked.' Fear is all part of being fallen and sinful. If our worries, insecurities and anxieties are allowed to dominate us they will cause us to fall.

From: The downward slide - from faith to fear to depression