לְבַקֶּשְׁךָ֔ (lə·ḇaq·qeš·ḵā) in 1 Kings 18:10: Preposition-l | Verb - Piel - Infinitive construct | second person masculine singular
לְבַקֶּשְׁךָ֔ (lə·ḇaq·qeš·ḵā) in 1 Kings 18:10
Source Word
1 Kings 18:10 token 13 is לְבַקֶּשְׁךָ֔, H1245, parsed Prep-l | V-Piel-Inf | 2ms and aligned with someone to search for you.
How The Form Affects Interpretation
The purpose construction reveals the scale of Ahab's pursuit by making the search for Elijah the stated aim of repeated royal sending.
How To Communicate It
Use the form to keep the danger visible: Elijah is the target of a search that crossed borders and exposed local rulers to sworn demands.
What Not To Say
- Grammatical form should serve context, not override it.
- The lamed marks purpose here, and the second-person suffix identifies Elijah as the person sought.
- Do not turn a coercive royal search into an example of faithful seeking.
- Obadiah's fear should be heard within the threat he describes rather than dismissed as weak faith.
What Does The Label Mean?
Hebrew-verb
Verb
Preposition-l | Verb - Piel - Infinitive construct | second person masculine singular
Piel
Infinitive construct
Not marked
Not marked
Not marked
Prep-l
Second person masculine singular
No finite person, gender, or number is expressed by this infinitive; the second-person feature belongs to its object suffix. The prefixed lamed introduces the purpose of Ahab's sending, and that suffix points to Elijah as the one being sought rather than the searcher.
The form supplies the purpose behind the king's envoys and helps explain why Obadiah fears that reporting Elijah's location could cost him his life.
What The Form Does In This Verse
The infinitive completes the purpose of Ahab's sending and carries a suffix referring to Elijah.
Obadiah's report that Ahab searched nation after nation and required oaths when Elijah was not found.
It names the official search for Elijah that makes Obadiah regard Elijah's requested announcement as dangerous.
It does not describe Elijah seeking God, make all searching virtuous, or prove the search's emotional intensity from the Piel stem alone.
How Much The Form Matters Here
High: The purpose infinitive identifies the international search for Elijah that grounds Obadiah's fear of reporting his location.
Lamed-prefixed Piel infinitive with second-person object suffix. states the purpose for which agents were dispatched. Attached to Ahab's sending action and Elijah as the person sought. Governed by the no-nation-or-kingdom assertion in Obadiah's reply. The narrative supplies coercive scope; the stem should not be made to do that work alone.
What was the purpose of Ahab's repeated sending across kingdoms? Agents were sent to locate Elijah, the second-person object encoded in the form.
Direct: The purpose prefix, infinitive, and object suffix directly support someone to search for you.
The form does not name each envoy; the sending clause supplies an indefinite agent in English. H1245 is morally neutral in isolation, so the king's behavior and demanded oaths determine the coercive force. The Piel label does not by itself quantify persistence or violence.
Seek is always devotional: Identify the seeker, object, and purpose; Ahab's agents are pursuing Elijah here. Piel automatically means search intensely: Use the narrative's cross-border sending and oaths, not a stem formula, to describe the search's reach. Obadiah's fear proves unfaithfulness: His concern responds to a concrete threat of death and should be evaluated within the whole exchange.
How The Interpretation Is Derived
1 Kings 18:10 token 13 is לְבַקֶּשְׁךָ֔, H1245, parsed Prep-l | V-Piel-Inf | 2ms and aligned with someone to search for you.
בָּקַשׁ can describe seeking a person, object, outcome, or God. This clause narrows it to Ahab's effort to locate Elijah through dispatched agents.
The lamed marks the sending's purpose, the infinitive names the search, and the suffix marks the man sought. The following demanded oaths show the search's political reach.
During the drought, Obadiah fears Ahab's retaliation because the king has already pursued Elijah widely and Elijah may disappear before the report can be confirmed.
The episode contrasts coercive royal power, Obadiah's costly service, Elijah's prophetic mission, and the Lord's coming confrontation with Baal worship; the form itself supplies only the search relation.
Ask why someone was sent and whom the suffix names. Then let the compelled oaths and Obadiah's stated fear show what kind of seeking occurs here.
Do not preach this hostile search as a model of earnest devotion or use one stem label to claim a degree of intensity the narrative has already described more reliably.