1 Kings 18:38

38. The fire of the Lord fell See marginal references. This miraculous fire descended from heaven in flaming proof that it was no result of fraudulent practice. Chrysostom says he was personally knowing to fraudulent practices of idolaters whereby fire was kindled on the altar by means of a concealed excavation underneath; and an old tradition says that these priests of Baal had a man hidden under their altar on Carmel, but he was suffocated before he could kindle the fire. “There is an exultant triumph in the words in which the sacred historian describes the completeness of the conflagration. The fragments of the ox on the summit of the altar first disappear; then the pile of wood, heaped from the forests of Carmel; next the very stones of the altar crumble in the flames; then the very dust of the earth that had been thrown out of the trench; and lastly, the water in the trench round the altar is licked up by the fiery tongues, and leaves the whole place bare.” Stanley.