Under the House of Omri, the prophetic tradition was suddenly reinvigorated in the north by the astonishing figure of Elijah. He came from an unidentified place called Tishbe, in Gilead east of the Jordan, right on the fringes of the desert. He was a Rechabite, a member of that ultra-austere, wild and fundamentalist sect, ‘an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins’. Like nearly all Jewish heroes, he came from the poor and spoke for them. The tradition said he lived near the Jordan and was fed by the ravens.194
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