Scripture Daily

Context No. 848 of 4322 · 1 Kings

Context · Reflection

1 Kings 13:23-34: in context

23After he had eaten bread and after he drank, he saddled the donkey for the prophet whom he had brought back. 24When he had gone, a lion met him by the way and killed him. His body was thrown on the path, and the donkey stood by it. The lion also stood by the body. 25Behold, men passed by and saw the body thrown on the path, and the lion standing by the body; and they came and told it in the city where the old prophet lived. 26When the prophet who brought him back from the way heard of it, he said, “It is the man of God who was disobedient to the LORD’s word. Therefore the LORD has delivered him to the lion, which has mauled him and slain him, according to the LORD’s word which he spoke to him.” 27He said to his sons, saying, “Saddle the donkey for me,” and they saddled it. 28He went and found his body thrown on the path, and the donkey and the lion standing by the body. The lion had not eaten the body nor mauled the donkey. 29The prophet took up the body of the man of God, and laid it on the donkey, and brought it back. He came to the city of the old prophet to mourn, and to bury him. 30He laid his body in his own grave; and they mourned over him, saying, “Alas, my brother!” 31After he had buried him, he spoke to his sons, saying, “When I am dead, bury me in the tomb in which the man of God is buried. Lay my bones beside his bones. 32For the saying which he cried by the LORD’s word against the altar in Bethel, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, will surely happen.” 33After this thing, Jeroboam didn’t turn from his evil way, but again made priests of the high places from among all the people. Whoever wanted to, he consecrated him, that there might be priests of the high places. 34This thing became sin to the house of Jeroboam, even to cut it off and to destroy it from off the surface of the earth.

This is the grim end of a strange story. A man of God had been sent to Bethel to prophesy against Jeroboam's idolatrous altar, and God had given him one strict, personal instruction: do not eat or drink there, and do not go home the way you came. He obeyed, until an old prophet caught up with him and told him a lie, claiming an angel had said to bring him back for a meal. The man of God believed the other man's word over the clear word God had given him directly, and he turned back and ate. Now, on the road home, a lion meets him and kills him, and stands beside the body without eating it or touching the donkey, an unnatural stillness that marks the death as no accident but judgment.

The old prophet who deceived him hears, retrieves the body, mourns over him as a brother, and buries him, asking to be laid in the same grave. It is a sad, tangled scene, and its sharpest lesson is about the man who died. He had God's word, plain and personal and unmistakable. What undid him was letting someone else's claim of a newer, contrary message from heaven talk him out of it. It did not matter that the other man was a prophet, or that he invoked an angel; the word God had actually given stood, and abandoning it cost him everything. And the chapter ends by noting that after all this, the split altar and the dead prophet and the visible judgment, Jeroboam still did not turn from his evil way. Even a sign like that leaves a hardened heart exactly where it was.

The man of God let another person's claim of a new message override the clear word God had given him directly, and it cost him his life. Where am I being talked out of something God has plainly shown me, by someone else's confident claim of a different word?

Sources