Charles Ellicott Commentary 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 18:12 (ASV)

The Spirit of the Lord shall carry thee. —In this phrase there is perhaps a survival of the original physical sense of the word “Spirit”—the whirlwind which is “the breath of the Lord” (Compare to 2 Kings 2:16; Acts 8:39). To Obadiah it seemed that only by such miraculous agency could Elijah have been removed from the persecution for so long a time, and that, having emerged for a moment, he will be swept away into his hidden refuge again.