Comments on: Why did God send a lying spirit? (1 Kings 22:22)

By: Jonathan Morgan

Jonathan Morgan — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:22:00 +0000

Firstly, I wouldn’t guarantee that “spirit” is the same as “angel” (though it could be – I’ve just never imagined it that way). However, my first point about taking it literally would be to say that literally it wasn’t an angel giving a message to the prophets to pass on, but a spirit actually in the mouths of the prophets making (?) them say the message whether they wanted to or not. To me this raises very severe questions like:
1. Do these prophets have no choice?
2. How come Zedekiah seems so confident in his message if it is really not him who is really saying it, but a spirit inside his mouth?

It was thinking about these kinds of questions (prompted by your comments) that made me conclude that the key to the whole question was that these prophets *wanted* to prophecy whatever the king wanted to hear to get money, power and importance. If you conclude this, then it is not hard work to make people do what they already want to do.

By: Whane The Whip

Whane The Whip — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 01:01:00 +0000

I think perhaps we are looking at the story differently. I think you see it is a figurative representation. I see it as a story that was intended to be taken literally. So for example when you say “Nor, even if you accept the vision as literal, does it say … an angel delivering a message from God.” I do take it as a literal representation and as such it does say exactly that in:

“21 Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, ‘I will entice him.’22 And the Lord said to him, ‘By what means?’And the spirit said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’**And the Lord said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.**’”

By: Jonathan Morgan

Jonathan Morgan — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 13:39:00 +0000

What they were prophesying was false. That alone would make them false prophets. Nor, even if you accept the vision as literal, does it say anything about the spirit speaking with the prophets, or it being an angel delivering a message from God. Nor in that case would God be limited to speaking only to true prophets. However, I see this example as similar to the example of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart. This only happened after Pharaoh had hardened his own heart, and was an example of God working with a choice and a character that Pharaoh had already chosen and showed to make his plan work. In the same way here, these prophets seem highly representative of the group of false prophets spoken against in the books of the prophets. They wanted to make pleasant prophecies so they would be rewarded for it. To be known as official prophets in such a large group must have meant that they had done this before (while the true prophet of God had a reputation for giving unpleasant prophecies because he was actually God’s prophet and God was not happy with Ahab). It then seems reasonable to me that God works with the choices they have already made.

By: Whane The Whip

Whane The Whip — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 06:48:00 +0000

Sorry, no. According to the story, the prophets correctly heard the lie of god delivered to them. That makes them true prophets since they correctly corroborated what was said to them by the angel. It would be the reliability of the prophets to correctly identify and deliver the message that made them ideal targets of the lying spirit sent by god. I.E., the lying spirit could only deliver the prophecy to real prophets because they alone would be able to hear. However one prophet saw the lie of god and explained in great detail of how it was all some elaborate scam to send the king to his death, he however was inclined to believe that the story was made up… and according to the story it was not made since in the end, he was killed.

Even if you find none of that agreeable, it still does not explain away the fact that god sent an angel to lie, therefore god is a liar, regardless of what the prophets did. If I lied to you, and you didn’t catch it… I would still be a liar.

By: Jonathan Morgan

Jonathan Morgan — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 06:32:00 +0000

The prophets were false prophets. They were already used to prophesying what the king wanted to hear. They were doing what they wanted to do: God was just making sure it would happen.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:50:00 +0000

I did a Ctrl-F on Job to see if someone raised this point. Landed squarely on your comment .

By: Whane The Whip

Whane The Whip — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:48:00 +0000

No, the lord did not send a “lying spirit”, the lord lied and the angel delivered the lie since the angel is only a messenger, not the author. This is a very long winded over-complicated article to explain away the obvious hook in the story, that god lies. There are other references to “lying spirits” too, all under control of god… according to the Bible. The real question 1 Kings 22 begs is, since god is so powerful, why not just snap his fingers and kill off the king instead of setting up nations to go to war… just to kill one man.

By: O. B. Server

O. B. Server — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 17:40:47 +0000

What about Job, chapters one through four? That seems a very similar idea. Not a lying spirit per se, but a Satan-caused quick series of negative ‘coincidental’ events, that were immediately subject to about 30 chapters of Satanically-prompted darkened “counsel by words without knowledge?” Earlier we are told God asks (Satan) to consider Job – and then proceeds to allow Satan to suggest to God to “put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath” – which the Lord does.

Apparently, things are not so simple.

By: RJC

RJC — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 10:20:46 +0000

A simpler interpretation is that when people insist on going their own way (sin or selfishness) eventually God gives them what they want.

By: Caleb

Caleb — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 04:05:16 +0000

Thank you so very much for publishing this I feel as well that this may be the appropriate way to interpret the passage as I have been struggling with it.

A further way of understanding is by saying that if the king wouldn’t listen to the prophecy when it portrays what is negative then maybe he will listen to it if he portrays the negative truth in a positive light. So in a sense Micaiah is re-presenting the prophecy in a way that the king might “like” it. So the prophecy is in a sense ironic.

Another way to possibly understand the passage is to look at it as being representative of the fact that noone can do anything without God allowing it, so at first God is inquiring, in story fashion, who will entice the king. Then God sees that the lying spirit will and since God allows people to have free will God knows that this can only lead to disaster for the king.

Either way if God had wanted a downfall for the king then he wouldn’t have had Micaiah warn him.