GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
2 CHRONICLES 18:5-13
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5 Then the king of Israel brought the prophets together– four hundred men– and asked them, “Shall we go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I hold back?” “Go,” they answered, “for God will give it into the king’s hand.” 6 But Jehoshaphat asked, “Isn’t there one more prophet of the LORD here? We should seek for him.”
Were these four hundred men prophets of the Lord, or prophets of Baal, or something else? This king did indeed have more than four hundred prophets of Baal, but they had been killed by the citizens of Israel in the Kishon Valley when the prophet Elijah showed them to be false on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:40). These prophets will use the name of the LORD, and so we will not call them prophets of Baal, although it’s understandable when a theologian will say that they were. Since most of all of the prophets of Baal (at least in that generation) were dead, it is likely that King Ahab gathered other prophets who would say that they were for the Lord. Were they? More about that in a moment. They would use the Lord’s name but still say whatever the king wanted them to say. In that way these prophets were much like many modern Christian preachers who elevate their own opinions and religious (or social) agendas above the text of the Scriptures, but because they say the Lord’s Prayer and let the people recite the Creed, their pews are generally quiet and cowed.
Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, wondered about all this. Four hundred prophets said just what Ahab wanted, but wasn’t there another prophet of the Lord in Israel? Curiously to us, Ahab does not bring up Elijah nor his young disciple Elisha. Was Elijah still away in the desert of Sinai at this time? We don’t have a precise chronology of the mid-ninth century BC. Elisha might not have been known to Ahab as yet. But there was another man…
7 The king of Israel answered Jehoshaphat, “There is still one man through whom we can inquire of the LORD, but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but only bad things. He is Micaiah son of Imlah.” And Jehoshaphat said, “The king should not speak that way.” 8 So the king of Israel called in one of his officials and said, “Quickly, bring Micaiah son of Imlah here.” 9 Now the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat king of Judah were dressed in their royal robes and sitting on their thrones at the threshing floor by the entrance to the gate of Samaria, with all the prophets prophesying before them. 10 Zedekiah son of Kenaanah had made iron horns, and he declared, “This is what the LORD says: ‘With these you will gore the Arameans until they are destroyed.’” 11 All the other prophets were prophesying the same sort of thing. “Attack Ramoth Gilead and be victorious,” they said, “for the LORD will give it into the hand of the king.”
There are some questions that come with this passage. First: Did Ahab consider the 400 prophets to be true men of God? If he did not, then this was all a sham, and he was guilty of leading his people even further into sin and unbelief. However, if he thought that his prophets were in some way legitimate prophets of God, then he was mistaken, and we learn that a king can be misled by his own state church.
Second: Did Jehoshaphat think that these 400 prophets were genuine prophets of God? What is missing from the accounts both in 1 Kings 22 and here in 2 Chronicles 18 is how Jehoshaphat reacted to Micaiah’s message. Whatever he thought of this 401st prophet, he went along with Ahab in the end and went into battle at Ramoth Gilead.
Would the King of Judah have done this if he didn’t consider all 401 prophets of the Lord? The king is not asking for another prophet as if he didn’t consider the 400 to be true, but in the other sense: Is there another one besides these? That is to say, have we really heard from everyone? “If devout King Jehoshaphat had not considered those 400 as true prophets, he would never have followed their advice in going off to war with the king of Israel and in rejecting the advice of [Micaiah]” (Gerhard, On the Church XXV §108).
Third: What should we make of the visual illustration of Zedekiah? Such a prop was not unknown among the prophets. God commanded Jeremiah to make a yoke along with its straps and wear them on his neck to illustrate that everyone and everything was going to serve Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (Jeremiah 27:2; 28:10). Ezekiel was commanded to make a model of Jerusalem complete with battering rams and siege works against it (Ezekiel 4:1-3). And then there was the linen belt the Lord commanded Jeremiah to buy and then ruin to make a similar point (Jeremiah 13:1-11). The difference between these men and the iron horns that Zedekiah made was that the horns of Zedekiah did not proclaim the truth, whether he thought so or not. They foretold an outcome that was false. Moses made several warnings about false prophets, and one of them was this: “If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him” (Deuteronomy 18:22). Like other false prophets, he was to be put to death (Deuteronomy 18:20).
12 Then the messenger who had gone to summon Micaiah said to him, “Look, as one man the other prophets are predicting success for the king. Let your word agree with theirs, and speak favorably.” 13 But Micaiah said, “As surely as the LORD lives, I can tell him only what my God says.”
Waiting for his turn, the 401st prophet, Micaiah, was ready to enter into the gate of Samaria to give the two kings his message. The servant tried to prompt him: “Just say what everyone else is saying. Predict success for the king.” Micaiah’s response speaks volumes. “As surely as the LORD lives,” he said– he believed that the LORD is the living God, the only true God. It was not the kind of thing that any false prophet could ever say with a clear conscience.
The law in this passage that shows us sin and the sinfulness of our own lives is especially the hatred of King Ahab for the man of God who speaks the word of God. “He never prophesies anything good about me” is not a reason to hate the messenger of God, but to question and hate the errors of one’s own life that make that the case. “The pastor always tells us that what we do is sinful!” Those are the words of a person whose life is filled to the top with sin and more sin, overflowing out onto the carpet. That tells that sinner that they need to change, to stop. It should make the sinner sniff the fumes of hell in the air, drifting up from below like steam coming out of the sewers on a bitter cold winter morning. The law condemns! Condemn in your heart what the law condemns in your life. Stop it. Stop sinning, and turn back to Christ. He will forgive, but keep those sins in your past, and God will bless you through his dear Son.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – 2 Chronicles 18:5-13 Four hundred and one