Deuteronomy 18:20 "But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die."
Exodus 22:20 "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed."The Deuteronomy verse may or may not count. Deuteronomy is after Kings, where Elijah's story is found, but many of God's laws are eternal. [CORRECTION: I have been informed that Deuteronomy is, in fact, before Kings. I'm not sure why I thought it came after.] However, the question of whether the Deuteronomy verse counts or not is moot because the Exodus verse certainly does. Exodus was well before Kings, and the Law of Moses wasn't fulfilled until Jesus' time. The question now is whether or not it means what Elijah seems to think it means.
When my mom shared Exodus 22:20 with me, she added that we sometimes think that this is referring to eventual, spiritual destruction, and I think that she's mostly right. God is certainly capable of executing His own judgments, and He would probably rather we not take matters into our own hands. Certainly, is this law was/were in force today, it would almost have to be interpreted spiritually. However, the Israelites lived in a different time, a time when stoning people wasn't as unthinkable as it is now. Perhaps, when God gave the Israelites this law, He intended for them to enforce it.
And enforce it, Elijah did. In fact, that might be part of the reason he chose that particular challenge: attempting to sacrifice a bullock each to their respective gods. These Baalish prophets, all 450 of them, participated in a sacrifice, or at least an attempted sacrifice, to a false God. This would, theoretically, make all 450 of them worthy of death, a sentence that Elijah then carried out.
So it seems that, according to at least one interpretation of one aspect of the Law of Moses, Elijah's actions may have been justified.
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