1 Kings 18:2

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

Elijah went to show himself to Ahab. The famine was sore in Samaria.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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חָזָ֥ק

châzâq

H2389

“strong”

Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute

Appears 56× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Exodus 3:19

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H2388

TWOT: 636a

strong, stout, mighty - strong - severe, sharp, hot - firm, hard - a strong one (substantive)

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 →

8: words
8: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Shared distinctive vocabulary

חָזָ֥ק strong H2389 occurs in 54 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

2 verbs
4 nouns
1 adjective
1 preposition

Verb forms

וַיֵּ֨לֶךְ֙ Qal · Sequential Imperfect
לְהֵרָא֖וֹת Niphal · Infinitive Construct

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 13 words from the Hebrew and 14 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 8 Hebrew tokens and 13 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.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to 1 Kings 18:2 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Leviticus 26:26 When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver your bread again by weight: and you shall eat, and not be satisfied.
Deuteronomy 28:23–24 Your sky that is over your head shall be brass, and the earth that is under you shall be iron.
2 Kings 6:25 There was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until a donkey's head was sold for eighty [pieces] of silver, and the fourth part of a kab of dove's dung for five [pieces] of silver.
Psalms 27:1 Yahweh is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? Yahweh is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?
Psalms 51:4 Against you, and you only, have I sinned, And done that which is evil in your sight; That you may be proved right when you speak, And justified when you judge.
Proverbs 28:1 The wicked flee when no one pursues; But the righteous are as bold as a lion.
Isaiah 51:12 I, even I, am he who comforts you: who are you, that you are afraid of man who shall die, and of the son of man who shall be made as grass;
Jeremiah 14:2–6 Judah mourns, and the gates of it languish, they sit in black on the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up.

Jeremiah 14:18 If I go forth into the field, then, behold, the slain with the sword! and if I enter into the city, then, behold, those who are sick with famine! for both the prophet and the priest go about in the land, and have no knowledge.
Joel 1:15–20 Alas for the day! For the day of Yahweh is at hand, And it will come as destruction from the Almighty.
Hebrews 13:5–6 Be free from the love of money, content with such things as you have, for he has said, "I will in no way leave you, neither will I in any way forsake you."

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

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 18:2 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַיֵּ֨לֶךְ֙ אֵֽלִיָּ֔הוּ לְהֵרָא֖וֹת אֶל אַחְאָ֑ב וְהָרָעָ֖ב חָזָ֥ק בְּשֹׁמְרֽוֹן

Elijah went to show himself to Ahab. The famine was sore in Samaria.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX 1 Kings 18:2 Septuagint · lemma form

καί πορεύομαι ηλιου ὁ ὁράω ὁ αχααβ καί ὁ λιμός κραταιός ἐν σαμαρεία

And Eliu went to appear before Achaab: and the famine was severe in Samaria.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

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 אֵלִיָהוּ לְאִתְחַזָאָה לְאַחְאָב וְכַפְנָא תַקִיף בְּשׁוֹמְרוֹן:

(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 18:2 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 18:2 And Elijah went to shew himself unto Ahab. And [there was] a sore famine in Samaria.

Ver. 2. And Elijah went to show himself unto Ahab.] Though a bloody persecutor of the prophets, and to Elijah a professed enemy. Faith quelleth and killeth distrustful fear.

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.

Joseph Benson's Commentary

1Ki 18:2. Elijah went — In this he showed strong faith, resolute obedience, and invincible courage, in that he durst, at God’s command, run into the mouth of this raging lion. There was a sore famine in Samaria — Which made it the more dangerous for him to appear in Ahab’s presence; lest, being so sorely afflicted, he should in his rage cause him to be killed before he could deliver his message to him.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Tyndale Open Study Notes

Tyndale Open Resources

18:2 Elijah continued to obey the Lord’s commands (see 17:5, 10), despite the personal danger of appearing before Ahab.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown

Elijah went--a marvellous proof of the natural intrepidity of this prophet, of his moral courage, and his unfaltering confidence in the protecting care of God, that he ventured to approach the presence of the raging lion.

there was a sore famine in Samaria--Elijah found that the famine was pressing with intense severity in the capital. Corn must have been obtained for the people from Egypt or the adjoining countries, else life could not have been sustained for three years; but Ahab, with the chamberlain of his royal household, is represented as giving a personal search for pasture to his cattle. On the banks of the rivulets, grass, tender shoots of grass, might naturally be expected; but the water being dried up, the verdure would disappear. In the pastoral districts of the East it would be reckoned a most suitable occupation still for a king or chief to go at the head of such an expedition. Ranging over a large tract of country, Ahab had gone through one district, Obadiah through another.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

2. And there was a sore famine] R.V. with more strict adherence to the original, And the famine was sore.

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 Elijah went to show himself unto Ahab,.... Which showed his cheerful and ready obedience to the will of God, and his great courage and magnanimity, to face a king enraged against him, and that sought his life:

and there was a sore famine in Samaria; the metropolis of the kingdom, where Ahab kept his court, and therefore must be sensible of it, and bore the greater indignation against the prophet who had foretold it.

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

Samaria, and the vicinity. The people could procure corn from a distance. But Achab is solicitous to find grass, ver. 5.

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).

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

Elijah went to show himself unto Ahab; wherein he shows a strong faith, and resolute obedience, and invincible courage, that he durst at God’s command run into the mouth of this raging lion; which was a degree of martyrdom.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Daniel D. Whedon

2. Sore famine in Samaria — While it is clear, from 1Ki_17:12-14, that the famine extended beyond the kingdom of Israel, it is still probable that it was especially oppressive in Samaria, and the provinces immediately adjacent.

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

And Elijah went to show himself unto Ahab. And or Now. It would, perhaps, have been better to begin a new verse here, as this is the beginning of a parenthesis, explanatory of the circumstances under which king and prophet met. It was the famine led to Obadiah"s encountering Elijah on the road there was a sore famine in Samaria. The effect of a three years" drought would be to reduce the entire people to the verge of starvation. The severity of the famine was no doubt mitigated, as on a former occasion, (Gen_41:57) by the importation of corn from Egypt.

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

John Wesley's Explanatory Notes

Elijah went - Wherein he shews a strong faith, and resolute obedience, and invincible courage, that he durst at God's command run into the mouth of this raging lion.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

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 8 words (8 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is châzâq (“strong”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

How does “strong” (châzâq) shape what this verse is saying?
Exodus 3:19 shares the word «strong» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
The verb «וַיֵּ֨לֶךְ֙» is Qal Sequential Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Joseph Benson's Commentary read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

This verse counts 8 Hebrew ↔ 13 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 4 words in this verse.
8 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 8 words in this verse.