Scripture Daily

Context No. 450 of 4322 · 2 Chronicles

Context · Reflection

2 Chronicles 18:16-20: in context

16He said, “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd. The LORD said, ‘These have no master. Let them each return to his house in peace.’” 17The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “Didn’t I tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil?” 18Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the LORD’s word: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the army of heaven standing on his right hand and on his left. 19The LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab king of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead?’ One spoke saying in this way, and another saying in that way. 20A spirit came out, stood before the LORD, and said, ‘I will entice him.’ “The LORD said to him, ‘How?’

King Ahab wants to go to war, and he has assembled four hundred prophets who all tell him exactly what he wants to hear: go up, and God will give you victory. But a visiting king, Jehoshaphat, is uneasy and asks whether there is not one more prophet of the LORD they could consult. There is, Ahab admits, a man named Micaiah, but I hate him, because he never prophesies anything good about me, only evil. That single sentence tells you everything about Ahab. He evaluates prophets not by whether they speak the truth but by whether they say pleasant things about him.

Micaiah is brought in, and after a moment of mockery he tells the truth. He describes a vision of all Israel scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd, because their king, Ahab, is going to fall in the battle. And then he pulls back the curtain on something disturbing. He saw the LORD on his throne, he says, asking who would entice Ahab to go up to his death, and a spirit volunteering to be a lying spirit in the mouth of all Ahab's prophets. The point of that strange scene is not that God loves lies, but that God gave Ahab over to exactly what Ahab wanted, prophets who would tell him what he craved to hear. The true word was fully available; Micaiah spoke it plainly to his face. Ahab was not deceived because the truth was hidden. He was deceived because he had surrounded himself with four hundred flatterers and hated the one man who would tell him the truth, and God let him have the deception he preferred.

That is a warning about the voices I gather around my own decisions. It is easy, and comfortable, to assemble a chorus that affirms whatever I already want to do, and to quietly dismiss the lone voice that tells me the unwelcome truth, on the grounds that they are negative, or that they never seem to be on my side. Ahab had his Micaiah and rejected him, and it cost him his life. Who is the Micaiah in my life, the one voice telling me the truth I do not want, and have I dismissed them while building a comfortable echo chamber of four hundred voices telling me what I already wanted to hear?

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