1 Kings 20:38 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And disguised himself with ashes upon his face As a man in a very sorrowful condition. Houbigant reads it, He had his eyes covered with a bandage, supposing that the genuine, reading of the text is, not אפר, apher, but אפד, aphed, which signifies a bandage; whence comes the Hebrew word ephod; something bound round. Several of the versions render it, with a veil: and thus the Hebrew doctors understand it. It is probable, it was a cloth or bandage of some kind, wherewith he bound up his wound, which probably was in his face: for it was made in a conspicuous place, that it might be visible to Ahab and others.