1 Kings 18:16

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him; and Ahab went to meet Elijah.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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עֹבַדְיָ֛הוּ

ʻÔbadyâh

H5662

“Obadiah”

Noun, Proper

Appears 20× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at 1 Kings 18:3

Full BDB Definition

Origin: act part of H5647 and H3050

TWOT: None

Obadiah = "servant of Jehovah" - the 4th of the 12 minor prophets; nothing personal is known of him but it is probable that he was contemporary with Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel - the prophetic book by him; prophesies against Edom - father of Ishmaiah, one of the chiefs of Zebulun in the time of David - a Merarite Levite overseer of the work of restoring the temple in the time of king Josiah of Judah - chief of the household of king Ahab of Israel; an devout worshipper of Jehovah who at risk to his own life hid over 100 prophets during the persecution of Jezebel - a descendant of David - a chief of the tribe of Issachar - a Benjamite, one of the 6 sons of Azel and a descendant of king Saul - a Levite, son of Shemaiah and a descendant of Jeduthun - a Gadite chief, the 2nd of the lion-faced Gadites who joined David at Ziklag - a prince of Judah in the time of king Jehoshaphat of Judah - a priest, son of Jehiel of the sons of Joab who returned from exile with Ezra - a gatekeeper in the time of Nehemiah - one of the men who sealed the covenant with Nehemiah - perhaps the same as 12

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

10: words
6: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is עֹבַדְיָ֛הוּ Obadiah H5662 — appearing just 20 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

עֹבַדְיָ֛הוּ Obadiah H5662 occurs in 19 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

5 verbs
4 nouns
1 preposition

Verb forms

וַיֵּ֧לֶךְ Qal · Sequential Imperfect
לִקְרַ֥את Qal · Infinitive Construct
וַיַּגֶּד Hiphil · Sequential Imperfect
וַיֵּ֥לֶךְ Qal · Sequential Imperfect
לִקְרַ֥את Qal · Infinitive Construct

Repetition

Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

וַיֵּ֧לֶךְ to walk H3212 ×2
לִקְרַ֥את to meet H7125 ×2
אַחְאָ֖ב Ahab H256 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 15 words from the Hebrew and 18 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 10 Hebrew tokens and 18 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew 1 Kings 18:16 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַיֵּ֧לֶךְ עֹבַדְיָ֛הוּ לִקְרַ֥את אַחְאָ֖ב וַיַּגֶּד ל֑וֹ וַיֵּ֥לֶךְ אַחְאָ֖ב לִקְרַ֥את אֵלִיָּֽהוּ

So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him; and Ahab went to meet Elijah.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX 1 Kings 18:16 Septuagint · lemma form

καί πορεύομαι αβδιου εἰς συναντή ὁ αχααβ καί ἀποἀγγέλλω αὐτός καί ἐκτρέχω αχααβ καί πορεύομαι εἰς συνάντησις ηλιου

And Abdiu went to meet Achaab, and told him: and Achaab hasted forth, and went to meet Eliu.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

On this verse, The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges discusses the Septuagint’s reading. Read the note in Commentary ↓

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

וַאֲזַל עוֹבַדְיָה לָקָדָמוּת אַחְאָב וְחַוֵי לֵיהּ וַאֲזַל אַחְאָב לָקָדָמוּת אֵלִיָהוּ:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on 1 Kings 18:16 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

1Ki 18:16 So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him: and Ahab went to meet Elijah.

Ver. 16. So Obadiah went.] Cured of his fear by the prophet’s oath; and confident that Deo armatus, he would encounter the king.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Tyndale Open Study Notes

Tyndale Open Resources

18:16-18 troublemakers: Although Elijah announced the onset of the drought (17:1), it was Ahab and his family who brought God’s judgment upon Israel by their violations of the covenant and their sponsorship of Baal worship (see Lev 26:19; Deut 28:15, 23; 2 Chr 7:13; Jer 14:1-7; Amos 4:7-8).

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

16. And Ahab went] The LXX. has ‘And Ahab ran forth and went to meet Elijah.’

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

And he answered,.... That is, Elijah, with great boldness and undaunted courage, not fearing the face of the king, being sent to show himself to him in the name of the King of kings:

I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house; they, by their sins, were the cause of all the troubles, those sore evil and sad calamities that were upon them:

in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord: to have no other gods before him, and not to make images, and worship them, which they had done:

and thou hast followed Baalim; the several Baals, the Sun, moon, and stars, the whole host of heaven, worshipped under this name; or, not content with the Phoenician Baal, or Baal of the Zidonians, followed others, see Jdg 2:11.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

Meet Elias, out of respect, (Abulensis) or rather to upbraid him.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Daniel D. Whedon

16. Obadiah went to meet Ahab — It was doubtless better that the king’s mind be a little prepared for the meeting with Elijah, by having the prophet’s presence pre-announced.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Pulpit Commentary

So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him: and Ahab went Very readily, it would seem. Anything was better than suspense and famine. And Elijah"s very return contained in it a promise of rain to meet Elijah.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

unfoldingWord translationNotes

Door43 World Missions Community

told him what Elijah said

"Obadiah told Ahab what Elijah had told him to say"

Is it you? You are the one who brings trouble to Israel!

Ahab asks the question for emphasis to be certain about Elijah's identity. AT: "So here you are. You are the troublemaker of Israel!" (See: Rhetorical Question)

translationWords

Ahab

kingdom of Israel

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

1 Kings, in the Historical, opens this verse with 10 words (6 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʻÔbadyâh (“Obadiah”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

How does “Obadiah” (ʻÔbadyâh) shape what this verse is saying?
How does 1 Kings 18:3, which shares the word «Obadiah», read alongside this verse?
What does the repetition of “to walk” (2× in this one verse) do in this verse?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
«וַיֵּ֧לֶךְ» is a Qal Sequential Imperfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Tyndale Open Study Notes read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

This verse counts 10 Hebrew ↔ 18 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 2 words in this verse.
“to walk” occurs 2× in this single verse.
6 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 10 words in this verse.