18:1 Some time later, in the third year of the famine, the Lord told Elijah, 1 “Go, make an appearance before Ahab, so I may send rain on the surface of the ground.”
1 tn Heb “the word of the
1 tn The noun translated “small flocks” occurs only here. The common interpretation derives the word from the verbal root חשׂף, “to strip off; to make bare.” In this case the noun refers to something “stripped off” or “made bare.” HALOT 359 s.v. II חשׂף derives the noun from a proposed homonymic verbal root (which occurs only in Ps 29:9) meaning “cause a premature birth.” In this case the derived noun could refer to goats that are undersized because they are born prematurely.