and when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the LORD, Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifties in a cave and fed them with bread and water.)
Elijah has vanished from Ahab's reach, and the story pauses on a man inside the palace who had saved a hundred lives. He worked for the very house that ordered the killing — so how did God keep His witnesses alive, and what do we make of their rescuer?
Why the Spirit records it
The verse sits in brackets, off to one side of the main action. One writer asks why the Spirit of God pauses to record it:
The Christian's FriendIn a further aside, the Spirit of God describes Obadiah and the service he had given to a hundred of the Lord's prophets. They were in great danger, for Jezebel, in her zeal for idols, was seeking their destruction. Why is this account given? Clearly so that we might know that he was really a servant of the Lord — one who worshipped the Lord, as his very name means. It is true that he tells the fact to Elijah himself, and speaks of his service to the prophets. But without God's own true testimony about him, we might have thought it impossible for a man who "feared the LORD greatly" to hold such a post in the house of a king who had turned away from God to idols.
Faith against the purge
Obadiah risked a great deal, because the queen was hunting these men down:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinObadiah held a high position with Ahab, and he feared the Lord greatly. He belonged to the faithful remnant who did not bow the knee to Baal (1 Kings 19:18). He must have had severe tests of faith and much courage. Hiding the Lord's prophets showed faith and devotion. Jezebel, the wicked idolatrous woman, used the civil power to kill off the true prophets. Her aim was to wipe out completely the men of God who stood for the truth. Revelation 2:20 mentions her again. There she stands for Rome, the harlot, and her spiritual fornication and idolatry. Rome, like Jezebel, has persecuted the Lord's servants and killed them (Rev. 18:24).
A servant in the last place you would look
God's rescuer was inside Ahab's own household. One writer finds both a surprise and an honour in that:
William KellyAhab called Obadiah, who was over his household — and this man, remarkably, "feared the LORD," feared Him "greatly." So wonderful are the ways of the Lord, and so little are we prepared for them. The last place in this world where we would have looked for a servant of the Lord would have been the house of Ahab. Yet so it was… We are in danger of forgetting what is not before our eyes. We are in danger of failing to identify ourselves with what God is doing outside what I have no doubt is the more honourable path. It was a poor place for a servant of the Lord to be, in the house of Ahab. Yet it was a great honour too, for God gave him to feed these prophets by fifty in a cave, right in the face of Jezebel.
The hidden hundred
Elijah saw only his own faithfulness. God saw more:
An Outline of Sound WordsElijah was wholly taken up with his own faithfulness to God, and so he could not take account of what was not hidden from the eye of God. Obadiah, and the hundred prophets of the Lord whom he had delivered from the hand of Jezebel, were not men of the same stamp as Elijah. They did not have the same zeal for God, nor the same energy in testimony. Still, they were not to be counted among those who had thrown down the Lord's altars.
What Obadiah would not do
Obadiah fed the men in the cave, but he stayed in the palace. One writer sets him beside Moses:
W. W. FeredayObadiah would befriend the prophets of the Lord. But he was not willing to leave Ahab's palace to share the cave with them (1 Kings 18:4). Moses did the opposite. He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and he threw in his lot once and for all with the people of God in their poverty and the contempt they suffered (Heb. 11:23-27).
Later Obadiah met Elijah, and pleaded that same kindness in his own defence:
Hamilton SmithThen Obadiah pleads his good deeds. Had not Elijah heard of his kindness in the past to the prophets of the Lord? But it was not a question of bad deeds or good deeds. All of Obadiah's trouble came from the false position he was in. He was a man of the unequal yoke.
Summary
- Sword. Jezebel used the power of the state to kill off the Lord's prophets. She meant to wipe God's witness off the map.
- Shelter. God answered the sword with a cave. He used a man inside the palace — the last place anyone would look for a servant of His.
- Bread. God gave Obadiah the honour of feeding fifty and fifty right in the face of Jezebel. It cost him faith and courage.
- Survivors. The hundred lacked Elijah's fire, yet they had not torn down God's altars. God counts the ones His louder servants overlook.
- Yoke. Obadiah kept the cave supplied but would not live in it. He later pleaded that kindness as his excuse. Good deeds never settle whose house you serve in.