27. At noon Elijah started making fun of them: “Pray louder! He is a god! Maybe he is daydreaming or relieving himself, or perhaps he's gone on a journey! Or maybe he's sleeping, and you've got to wake him up!”
28. So the prophets prayed louder and cut themselves with knives and daggers, according to their ritual, until blood flowed.
29. They kept on ranting and raving until the middle of the afternoon; but no answer came, not a sound was heard.
30. Then Elijah said to the people, “Come closer to me,” and they all gathered round him. He set about repairing the altar of the Lord which had been torn down.
31. He took twelve stones, one for each of the twelve tribes named after the sons of Jacob, the man to whom the Lord had given the name Israel.
32. With these stones he rebuilt the altar for the worship of the Lord. He dug a trench round it, large enough to hold almost fourteen litres of water.