18:40 slew them there. Elijah must have had help in order to execute some 850 false prophets in one evening. Evidently a very large crowd of Israelites had gathered at Carmel to see the great confrontation between one prophet of Jehovah and hundreds of prophets of the Baalite nature cult. God had clearly demonstrated to them that Elijah’s God (who had been accepted as Israel’s God when the nation was young) was true and the Baalim were false gods. They were quickly ready not only to capture the false prophets but also to assist Elijah in carrying out God’s sentence of death on them.