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Jeroboam Leads Israel Back to Idol Worship
51
How a Prophet Was Tricked Into Disobeying
The prophet was about to return to Judea, when Jeroboam said
to him, “Come home with me and refresh yourself, and I will give
you a reward.”
“If you were to give me half your house,” the prophet replied, “I
would not go in with you; nor would I eat bread nor drink water in
this place. For so it was commanded me by the word of the Lord,
saying, ‘You shall not eat bread, nor drink water, nor return by the
same way you came.’”
1 Kings 13:7-9
.
While traveling home by another route, the prophet was over-
taken by an aged man who claimed to be a prophet but who lied
to him: “I too am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me
by the word of the Lord, saying, ‘Bring him back with you to your
house, that he may eat bread and drink water.’” Again and again he
repeated the lie until the man of God was persuaded to return.
God permitted the prophet to suffer the penalty of transgression.
While he and the one who had invited him were sitting together at the
table, the false prophet “cried out to the man of God who came from
Judah, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Because you have disobeyed
[38]
the word of the Lord, and have not kept the commandment which
the Lord your God commanded you, ... your corpse shall not come
to the tomb of your fathers.”’”
Verses 18, 21, 22
.
This prophecy of doom was soon fulfilled. “So it was, after he
had eaten bread and after he had drunk, that he saddled the donkey
for him. ... When he was gone, a lion met him on the road and killed
him. And his corpse was thrown on the road, and the donkey stood
by it. The lion also stood by the corpse. And there, men passed by
and saw the corpse thrown on the road. ... Then they went and told
it in the city where the old prophet dwelt. Now when the prophet
who had brought him back from the way heard it, he said, ‘It is the
man of God who was disobedient to the word of the Lord.’”
Verses
23-26
.
If the prophet had been permitted to go on in safety after disobey-
ing, the king would have used this to justify his own disobedience.
The split altar, the withered arm, and the terrible fate of the one who
dared disobey an express command of the Lord—these judgments
should have warned Jeroboam not to persist in wrongdoing. But, far