Page:02.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.A.vol.2.EarlyProphets.djvu/1299

 here, he took an oath,” etc.

Verses 12-14
1Ki 18:12-14 “And if it comes to pass (that) I go away from thee, and the Spirit of Jehovah carries thee away whither I know not, and I come to tell Ahab (sc., that thou art here) and he findeth thee not, he will slay me, and thy servant feareth the Lord from his youth,” etc.; i.e., since I as a God-fearing man and a protector of the prophets cannot boast of any special favour from Ahab. מנּערי, from my youth up: “thy servant” being equivalent to “I myself.” From the fear expressed by Obadiah that the Spirit of Jehovah might suddenly carry the prophet to some unknown place, Seb. Schmidt and others have inferred that in the earlier history of Elijah there had occurred some cases of this kind of sudden transportation, though they have not been handed down; but the anxiety expressed by Obadiah might very well have sprung from the fact, that after Elijah had announced the coming drought to Ahab, he disappeared, and, notwithstanding all the inquiries instituted by the king, was nowhere to be found. And since he was not carried off miraculously then (compare the לך and ויּלך, “get thee hence” and “he went,” in 1Ki 17:3, 1Ki 17:5), there is all the less ground for imagining cases of this kind in the intermediate time, when he was hidden from his enemies. The subsequent translation of Elijah to heaven (2Ki 2:11-12), and the miraculous carrying away of Philip from the chamberlain of Mauritania (Act 8:39), do not warrant any such assumption; and still less the passage which Clericus quotes from Ezekiel (Eze 3:12, Eze 3:14), because the carrying of Ezekiel through the air, which is mentioned here, only happened in vision and not in external reality. If Obadiah had known of any actual occurrence of this kind, he would certainly have stated it more clearly as a more striking vindication of his fear.

Verses 15-19
But when Elijah assured him with an oath (צבאות יהוה, see at 1Sa 1:3) that he would show himself to Ahab that day, Obadiah went to announce it to the king; whereupon Ahab went to meet the prophet, and sought to overawe him with the imperious words, “Art thou here, thou troubler of Israel.” (עכר, see at Gen 34:30). But Elijah threw back this charge: “It is not I who have brought Israel into trouble, but thou and thy family, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of Jehovah, and thou goest after Baalim.” He then called upon the king to gather together all Israel to him upon Carmel, together with the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of