1 Kings 18:11 (ASV)

Passage

And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah [is here].

Nearby Context

1 Kings 18:9 And he said, Wherein have I sinned, that thou wouldest deliver thy servant into the hand of Ahab, to slay me?

1 Kings 18:10 As Jehovah thy God liveth, there is no nation or kingdom, whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee: and when they said, He is not here, he took an oath of the kingdom and nation, that they found thee not.

1 Kings 18:11 And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah [is here].

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

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

Study Lenses

The verse centers on "thou", "sayest", "tell", "lord", "behold", "elijah", and "here". 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 10's "As Jehovah thy God liveth there is..." into verse 12's "And it will come to pass as...", 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.