1 Kings 22:18-22: a reflection

18The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “Didn’t I tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil?” 19Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the LORD’s word. I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the army of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left. 20The LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead?’ One said one thing, and another said another. 21A spirit came out and stood before the LORD, and said, ‘I will entice him.’ 22The LORD said to him, ‘How?’ He said, ‘I will go out and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ He said, ‘You will entice him, and will also prevail. Go out and do so.’

The prophet Micaiah tells King Ahab a vision he has seen, and it is a strange and sobering one. He sees the Lord on his throne, asking who will entice Ahab to go up to battle and fall, and a spirit volunteers to be a lying spirit in the mouth of Ahab's prophets. The scene pulls back the curtain on something disturbing: Ahab, who has surrounded himself with prophets who tell him only what he wants to hear, is being handed over to the very deception he preferred.

This passage is not saying that God delights in lies. It is showing a solemn kind of judgment: when a person insists on hearing only flattery and refuses the truth, God may at last give him what he wants, letting him have the comforting deception he has chosen. Ahab had rejected the true word of God again and again. The lying spirit is, in a sense, the harvest of his own long preference for pleasant falsehood over uncomfortable truth.

There is a searching warning here about what we choose to listen to. If you seek out only the voices that flatter you and turn away from the ones that tell you hard truths, you may end up, like Ahab, deceived by the very counsel you preferred. Ask God for a love of the truth even when it stings, and for the humility to welcome the word that corrects you. It is far safer to hear a hard truth from God than a comforting lie from anyone else.

Lord, Ahab surrounded himself with voices that flattered him and was finally given over to the deception he preferred. Guard me from that. Give me a love for your truth even when it wounds, and the humility to welcome the word that corrects me. Keep me from seeking only comfortable lies, and let me always choose your hard truth over pleasant deception. Amen.