And Elijah went to shew himself unto Ahab. And there was a sore famine in Samaria.
Elijah went - a marvelous proof of the natural intrepidity of this prophet, of his moral conrage, 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 on 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 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.