1 Kings 22:6-12

B. THE PREDICTIONS OF THE COURT PROPHETS 22:6-12

TRANSLATION

(6) And the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and he said unto them, Shall I go up against Ramoth-gilead to war, or shall I desist? And they said, Go up, and the Lord will give it into the hand of the king. (7) And Jehoshaphat said, Is there not yet here a prophet of the LORD, that we may inquire from him? (8) And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the LORD, but I hate him for he does not prophesy good concerning me, but evilMicaiah the son of Imlah. And Jehoshaphat said, Let not the king say thus. (9) And the king of Israel called an officer and said, Hasten to Micaiah the son of Imlah. (10) Now the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat king of Judah were sitting each man upon his throne clothed with robes on the flat place at the entrance of the gate of Samaria, and all the prophets were prophesying before them. (11) And Zedekiah and the son of Chenaanah made for himself horns of iron and said, Thus says the LORD: With these you shall thrust through Aram until you have consumed them. (12) And all the prophets were prophesying thus, saying, Go up to Ramoth-gilead and you will prosper, and the LORD will give it into the hand of the king.

COMMENTS

Having primed his court prophets previously, Ahab was not unwilling to comply with the request of Jehoshaphat. The king assembled four hundred prophets, and put to them the question as to whether or not the campaign against Ramothgilead should be undertaken. The four hundred dutifully and unanimously urged Ahab to go up to Ramoth-gilead, and promised him that the Lord (-adonai) would give the city into the hands of the king (1 Kings 22:6). These prophets were not the prophets of Asherah or of Baal, but were renegade prophets of Yahweh who were part of the apostate official calf worship of the Northern Kingdom.[496] They were king-called rather than God-called prophets.

[496] It would appear that Jezebel's persecution of the prophets was limited to prophets of Yahweh who were not amenable to her purposes. The prophets called in by Ahab were those who had saved their lives by compromising with the crown.

It is perhaps significant that at first these prophets hesitated to use the name Yahweh in this perverted prognostication, and used instead the more general term -adonaiLord. Since a true prophet always spoke in the name of Yahwek, Jehoshaphat became suspicious of the four hundred, and asked if there might not be another prophet of Yahweh whose advice might be solicited (1 Kings 22:7).

Indeed there was one prophet[497] yet to be consultedMicaiah the son of Imlah.[498] Ahab frankly admitted that he hated this man of God because he consistently had prophesied evil concerning the king. By this statement Ahab insinuates that Micaiah was motivated by personal dislike for the king and that therefore he was unreliable. Jehoshaphat did not accept this explanation, but instead administered a mild rebuke to Ahab for making such an insinuation about a prophet of God (1 Kings 22:8). Under the circumstances Ahab could hardly refuse to permit his guest to hear what Micaiah might have to say, and so he dispatched an officer to fetch the man of God (1 Kings 22:9).

[497] What has become of Elijah or his successor Elisha? Probably Ahab simply meant there was but one other prophet readily available in the capital.
[498] To conclude that Micaiah was a professional prophet at the beck and call of the king is to misjudge the man. He simply was availablepossibly under house arrest in the capital. There is no reason to think he served regularly in the court of Ahab. His independence is manifested by his courage to speak the truth regardless of consequences. How had Micaiah been able to escape the persecution by Jezebel? Probably that persecution was of short duration and confined to the earlier years of Ahab. During the latter years of his reign there does not appear to have been any interference with the inviolable right of a prophet to speak the Word as he perceived it.

1 Kings 22:10-12 depict the scene into which the prophet Micaiah was about to enter. The two kings dressed in their royal robes were sitting on thrones which had been set up on an elevated flat place at the entrance of the gate of Samaria. The four hundred prophets continued their prophesyings even while Micaiah was being summoned (1 Kings 22:10). In order to convince the dubious king from Judah, Zedekiah, one of the four hundred, hastily constructed horns of iron.[499] These symbolic horns may have been nothing more than two iron spikes held on the forehead. The horn of an animal in the Old Testament times was symbolic of power. The symbol was doubly appropriate here because Moses had compared Ephraim, chief tribe of the North, to a bullock, and had made explicit mention of the horns by which Ephraim would push the people together to the ends of the earth (Deuteronomy 33:17). Zedekiah also underscored his prediction by using for the first time the sacred name Yahweh, probably in deference to the incredulity of Jehoshaphat at the first prediction (1 Kings 22:11). The rest of the four hundred continued to repeat their initial promises of success except that they followed the lead of Zedekiah in substituting the name Yahweh for -adonai hoping thus to satisfy the king of Judah (1 Kings 22:12).

[499] Zedekiah was following customary procedure in thus concretizing his message. Cf. the rending of a new garment by the prophet Ahijah, 1 Kings 11:30 ff.