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279 Earth shall flock to Jerusalem for justice, peace, and the word of God. This, God vowed, is “an everlasting promise,” God’s covenant “for all generations.” The universality of this vow is attested to in Isaiah 16: 5 and 22: 22; Jeremiah 17: 25, 23: 5, and 30: 3; Amos 9: 11; Habakkuk 3: 13; Zechariah 12: 8; Psalms 18: 50, 89: 4, 132: 10, 132: 17, and so on. These are strong words, unmistakable in their messianic covenant with the House of David, yet they are also full of explosive facets that virtually dictated the course of events in Jerusalem. Linked to that was the matter of the Prophet Eli- jah. Elijah, nicknamed the Thisbite after the name of his town in the district of Gile’ad, was a biblical prophet active in the kingdom of Israel (after the split from Judea) in the ninth cen- tury B.c.E., during the reign of king Ahab and his Canaanite wife, Queen Jezebel. True to his Hebrew name, Eli-Yahu— “Yahweh is my God’”—he was in constant conflict with the priests and “spokesmen” of the Canaanite god Ba’al (“the Lord”), whose worship Jezebel was promoting. After a periot of seclusion at a hiding place near the Jordan River, where he was ordained to become “A Man of God,” he was given a “mantle of haircloth” that held magical powers, and was able to perform miracles in the name of God. His first reporte miracle (J Kings Chapter 17) was the making of a spoonful of flour and a little cooking oil last a widow as food for the rest of her lifetime. He then resurrected her son, who had die of a virulent illness. During a contest with the prophets of Ba’al on Mount Carmel, he could summon a fire from the sky. His was the only biblical instance of an Israelite revisiting Mount Sinai since the Exodus: when he escaped for his life from the wrath of Jezebel and the priests of Ba’al, an Angel o the Lord sheltered him in a cave on Mount Sinai. Of him the Scriptures said that he did not die because he was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind to be with God. His ascent, as described in great detail in JJ Kings Chapter 2, was neither a sudden nor an unexpected occurrence; on the con- trary, it was a preplanned and prearranged operation whose place and time were communicated to Elijah in advance. The designated place was in the Jordan Valley, on the Jerusalem: A Chalice, Vanished