[632] Amos ix. 3: "And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence." The phrase shows the security and seclusion of these caves and thickets, the haunt once of lions and bears, and still of leopards and hyænas.
[633] The LXX. adds that he inflicted vengeance because Elijah was not found: "Καὶ ἐνέπρησε τὴν βασιλείαν καὶ τὰς χωρὰς αὐτῆς ὅτι οὐχ εὔρηκέ σε" (1 Kings xviii. 10).
[634] Obadiah seems to have believed in miraculous transference of the Prophet from place to place. Comp. Ezek. iii. 12-14 (where "the spirit" may be rendered "a spirit," or "a wind"), viii. 3; 2 Kings ii. 16; Acts viii. 39; and the Ebionite Gospel of St. Matthew. "My mother, the Holy Ghost, took me by a hair of the head, and carried me to Mount Tabor" (Orig. _in Joann._, ii., § 6; and Jer. _in Mic._ vii. 6). So in Bel and the Dragon 33-36 (Abarbanel, _Comm. in Habakkuk_) the prophet Habakkuk is said to have been taken invisibly to supply food to Daniel in the den of lions. "Then the angel of the Lord took him by the crown and bare him by the hair of his head, and through the vehemency of his spirit" (_Midr. Robshik Rabba, "in the might of the Holy Ghost"_) "set him in Babylon."
[635] 1 Kings xviii. 15, LXX., "The Lord God of Israel" has now become to him more prominently "the Lord God of Hosts."
[636] The phrase had already been applied to Achan (Josh. vii. 25).
[637] _I.e._, were maintained at Jezebel's expense. The subsequent narration is silent as to the presence of the prophets of the Asherah, and Wellhausen thinks that the words here are an interpolation.