2 Kings 1:3

Elijah the Tishbite See on 1 Kings 17:1. For a similar message to the prophet cf. 1 Kings 21:17. We know from 2 Kings 4:25 that Elisha was often to be found on Mt Carmel where there was most likely a school of the prophets (see 2 Kings 2:25). It may be that Elijah also made his most settled dwelling there. At this time he went and took up a position on some height (see below, verse 9) which commanded the road by which the messengers were journeying from Samaria to Ekron.

the king of Samaria When the city of Samaria had been built and made the royal residence, the name -Samaria" soon came to be used as the equivalent of -Israel" for the kingdom of the ten tribes. See before 1 Kings 21:1.

Is it not becausethere is not a God in Israel R.V. Is it because there is no God in Israel. The Hebrew could employ a double negative, as the Greek sometimes does, but the sense intended is given in English by the single one. This rendering the A.V. employs in Exodus 14:11 where the original is in the same form as in the verse before us: -Because there were no graves in Egypt"; and for a similar double negative in the Hebrew of Ecclesiastes 3:11 the A.V. gives -so that no man can find out". The same form of phrase is repeated below in verses 6 and 16.

The LXX. takes away the first word of the Hebrew in the next sentence, וִלָכֵן = Now therefore, from its connexion and renders it as a separate phrase, and as if it had been וְלֹא כֵן = καὶ οὐχ οὔτως, putting ὄτι, which has nothing to represent it in the Hebrew, as the connecting particle of the next clause. The same misreading occurs in verses 6 and 16.