1 Kings 18:14 (KJV)

Passage

And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here: and he shall slay me.

Nearby Context

1 Kings 18:12 And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from thee, that the Spirit of the LORD shall carry thee whither I know not; and so when I come and tell Ahab, and he cannot find thee, he shall slay me: but I thy servant fear the LORD from my youth.

1 Kings 18:13 Was it not told my lord what I did when Jezebel slew the prophets of the LORD, how I hid an hundred men of the LORD’s prophets by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water?

1 Kings 18:14 And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here: and he shall slay me.

1 Kings 18:15 And Elijah said, As the LORD of hosts liveth, before whom I stand, I will surely shew myself unto him to day.

1 Kings 18:16 So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him: and Ahab went to meet Elijah.

Study Lenses

The verse centers on "thou", "sayest", "tell", "lord", "behold", "elijah", "here", and "shall". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "thou" and "sayest", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.

The nearby context moves from verse 13's "Was it not told my lord what..." into verse 15's "And Elijah said As the LORD of...", so "thou" and "sayest" belong inside that flow. In 1 Kings context, the local focus is covenant, worship, and faithfulness.

A plain takeaway is to answer the verse's own emphasis on "thou" and "sayest" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.