Albert Barnes Commentary Romans 11:3

"Lord, they have killed thy prophets, they have digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life." — Romans 11:3 (ASV)

Lord, they have killed, etc. This is taken from 1 Kings 19:10. The quotation is not literally made, but the sense is preserved. This was a charge which Elijah brought against the whole nation; and he regarded the act of killing the prophets as expressive of the character of the people, or that they were universally given to wickedness. The fact was true that they had killed the prophets, etc. (1 Kings 18:4, 13), but the inference which Elijah seems to have drawn from it, that there were no pious men in the nation, was not well founded.

And digged down. Altars, by the Law of Moses, were required to be made of earth or unhewn stones (Exodus 20:24–25). Hence the expression, to dig them down, means completely to demolish or destroy them.

Thine altars. There was one great altar in front of the tabernacle and the temple, on which the daily sacrifices of the Jews were to be made. However, they were not forbidden to make altars elsewhere as well (Exodus 20:25). Thus, they are mentioned as existing in other places (1 Samuel 7:17; 1 Samuel 16:2–3; 1 Kings 18:30, 32).

These were the altars of which Elijah complained as having been thrown down by the Jews; an act which was regarded as expressive of signal impiety.

I am left alone. I am the only prophet who is left alive. We are told that when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred of them and hid them in a cave (1 Kings 18:4). But it is not improbable that they had been discovered and put to death by Ahab. The account which Obadiah gave Elijah when he met him (1 Kings 18:13) seems to favour such a supposition.

Seek my life. That is, Ahab and Jezebel seek to kill me. This they did because he had overcome and slain the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 19:1–2).

There could scarcely be conceived a time of greater distress and declension in religion than this. It has not often happened that so many disheartening things have occurred to the church at the same period. The prophets of God were slain; only one lonely man appeared to have zeal for true religion; the nation was running to idolatry; the civil rulers were criminally wicked and were the leaders in the universal apostasy; and all the influences of wealth and power were setting in against the true religion to destroy it.

It was natural that the solitary man of God should feel disheartened and lonely in this universal guilt, and should realize that he had no power to resist this tide of crime and calamities.