1 Kings 18:3

AHAB AND OBADIAH DILIGENTLY SEARCHED FOR SUFFICIENT PASTURE TO SAVE THE HORSES AND MULES

"And Ahab called Obadiah, who was over the household. (Now Obadiah feared Jehovah greatly: for it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of Jehovah, that Obadiah took a hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water). And Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go through the land, unto all the fountains of water, and unto all the brooks; peradventure we may find grass and save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the beasts. So they divided the land between them to pass throughout it: Ahab went one way by himself, and Obadiah went another way by himself."

These verses (1 Kings 18:3-6) are a double parenthesis, first to explain how Elijah happened to meet Obadiah alone; and then verses (1 Kings 18:3b-4) are a parenthesis within the larger one to explain the loyalty of Obadiah to Jehovah. Although a dozen people in the O.T. are called by the name Obadiah, in our commentary on Obadiah (Vol. 2 of the Minor Prophets, p. 241), we attributed its authorship to the Obadiah mentioned here, especially because of the most probable date when Obadiah was written, that Isaiah 848-844 B.C. in the days of Jehoram, as convincingly advocated by Homer Hailey, Deane and Keil.

"Obadiah ... hid them in a cave ... and fed them" (1 Kings 18:4). We are not told where Obadiah hid the prophets; but there were many caves (as many as two thousand, and some of them quite large) "under the western cliffs of Mount Carmel."[5]