The Lying Spirit from God and False Prophets

What would you do if you discovered that an lying spirit had been sent by God to speak through a prophet in order to deliberately lure someone to their death? This is exactly what happened to King Ahab in 1 Kings 22, and we shall explore this timely passage in this article. But before we do, we shall toe dip into prophets, and some tests which can be applied to the 1 Kings 22 passage.

What Are Prophets and What Did They Do?

Prophets are those who relay the words of God to other humans. Throughout the Bible there are many different prophets, all with their own characters and idiosyncrasies which we may raise an eyebrow or two at. Some saw visions or had dreams, some met spiritual beings which relayed a message from God, others would use some authorised divinatory methods (yes, you read that right – see here for more about this).

Back then, prophets were the way God spoke what was to be made known to people about how to live well, before being written and codified, and finally summed up by the teachings of Jesus (Hebrews 1:1-2).

Testing Prophetic Messages

How were people to know that the message coming through really was from God, and not the subconscious desires of the prophet? Well, we have a some principles from Scripture which can aid us:

… any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak—that prophet shall die.’ You may say to yourself, ‘How can we recognize a word that the Lord has not spoken?’ If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.

Deuteronomy 19:20-22 (NRSV)

Such was the intent to crack down on false prophecy that the death penalty was to be enacted upon such false prophets. Now, I’m not advocating anything as strong as this, but certainly the people of God took this issue seriously. The bottom line was – don’t listen to them, they’re talking rubbish and you shouldn’t be frightened of them.

In the New Testament, 1 John 4:1 tells us “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. ” The lesson here: test the messages against time tested teachings regarding Jesus.

So, prophecy can be tested via two means:

1. God will not be contradictory – ie if God tells you one thing in certain places (e.g. Scripture) and a “prophetic word” tells you something in direct opposition to those things, then that “word of knowledge” is to be treated suspiciously.
2. Any predictions which come through do not come true are not of God. Period!

Just because someone said “God’s told me …” don’t simply accept their word for it without questioning it, even if you’re told that questioning them is a lack of faith – it’s not, it’s biblically prescribed to test their words.

Having laid these foundations, let’s turn to the passage 1 Kings 22 (if you can, try and have this passage open as you read this article further).

The Evil Spirit in the Prophets!

The Story of 1 Kings 22

Peace has existed between the nations of Aram and Israel. The Judean (Jehoshaphat) and Israelite (Ahab) kings join forces to organise war against Aram in order to recapture Ramoth-Gilead for Israel. Jehoshaphat recommends Ahab get his prophets together to see if what they’re about to do is in line with God’s will. Ahab’s 400 prophets unanimously tell him that he will be victorious. Jehoshaphat is a bit sceptical, so asks if there might be any prophets who have a different message (the folly of an advisory team made up entirely of “Yes men” is evident – note to all leaders!) Ahab says there’s a prophet called Micaiah, but Ahab hates him as his prophecies are all doom and gloom towards him. Wise Jehoshaphat says to listen to what he says anyway, so they organise a public meeting between him, Ahab’s entire school of prophecy and the two kings.

In the meantime, Ahab’s chief prophet, Zedekiah, has fashioned a couple of horns of iron: horns being symbolic of military strength and power, and iron being a highly valued metal militarily and cutting edge technology of the time. He uses them as a visual aid to add weight to Ahab’s school of prophecy that Ahab will be victorious.

Micaiah appears and prophecies predictably (in Ahab’s opinion) that Ahab will lose the battle. Ahab smugly turns to Jehoshaphat and says “Told you so!”

Then Micaiah reveals his vision of Yahweh and the Divine Council meeting together. Yahweh has appointed it time for Ahab to die, so consults his council members as to how to go about this. Discussion ensues and a spirit comes forth with a plan: go into Ahab’s prophets and give them a false message which will lead Ahab out to battle, where he’ll be killed. Yahweh says, “Okay, that’ll work. Make it so!” Hence Micaiah implies that Ahab’s school of prophecy is deceived by this lie that Ahab will be victorious in battle – Ahab has been appointed by Yahweh to die through these lies.

Chief prophet, Zedekiah, is outraged at the challenge to his team and physically slaps Micaiah down for his perceived insolence and fact he didn’t go through him as a channel to say these things to the king. Ahab then puts Micaiah in prison, but not before Micaiah says that if what he’s said doesn’t come true, God hasn’t spoken through him (see prophecy test point 2 above), thus showing a level of self awareness in his words.

Ahab goes into battle and is killed as Micaiah prophesied, and as Yahweh decreed. Zedekiah presumably goes into hiding for his life after being discovered to be a false prophet (see the implications for being discovered to be a false prophet in the Deuteronomy 18 passage above).

Analysis

This passage (and its duplicate in 2 Chronicles 18) gives an insight into the way God engages the created heavenly order in achieving God’s plans. It si Yahweh who has decided the time of death for Ahab, but the modus operandi is opened up for discussion, with a variety of different possibilities being put forward. Eventually, a certain spirit comes forward and suggests that it could be a lying spirit. What the heck? Firstly you’ve got a spirit there offering to be deceptive in front of God – I thought God couldn’t stand evil in his presence, yet here we are! And not only that, God actually permits it, saying it was a good idea, and that it would succeed! What’s going on?

Has God used evil spirits elsewhere in Scripture? The writers of the Hebrew Bible often portray evil spirits as agents ‘sent by God to accomplish God’s plan in the lives of individuals, and the nation of Israel.’ [1] For example: ‘… God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the lords of Shechem’ (Judges 9:23). Another example: ‘Now the spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him… See now, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. … when the evil spirit from God is upon you’ (1 Samuel 16:14-16), and ‘The next day an evil spirit from God rushed upon Saul’ (1 Samuel 18:10).

In the DDD entry for Evil Spirit of God, ‘Neither the evil spirit in Judg [sic] 9 nor the evil spirit in 1 Sam 16-19 is personified… On the other hand, “the lying spirit” (hārûaḥ) introduced in 1 Kgs 22:21, although never explicitly described as ‘evil’ is , might be cited as an example of an evil spirit that is personified and depicted as at least partly independent of Yahweh.’

So, it seems that God withdraws his presence when humans behave in evil manners. But, just like in nature, the supernatural vacuum becomes a target for other beings, often with evil intent. We’ve seen in another article that evil spirits are at war with human beings, because we are legitimate children of God, whereas they stemmed from illegitimacy. These beings relish in the ability to cause chaos and destruction. It can be seen that this particular spirit acted with evil intent to sow lies that were destructive for Ahab.

Was God to blame for this situation? No… Ahab’s time had come. How he was to die was debated and a solution found that would fit the ego of Ahab and lead to his departure from this life. Could Ahab have chosen to listen to Micaiah instead of his 400 prophets? Yes. But then why would God say it would succeed if Ahab still had free choice? Because God knew that method would work as Ahab’s ego was massive – but it wasn’t necessarily predestined to happen. Just like when David asked God if the people of Keilah would surrender him to Saul (1 Samuel 23) and God said “Yes, they will”; David then fled the city and so the people of Keilah couldn’t surrender David to Saul, despite God saying they would!

Modern Prophets

In these modern times, there has been a resurgence amongst certain teachings which are raising those who claim to be prophets of God. Some however have seen their prophecies turn out to be spectacular failures – think of how many times. Harold Camping pronounced the Second Coming of Jesus and yet we’re still here. Some have predicted certain election results based upon quasi-religious notions of the Lord’s appointed, even calling upon angels of various continents to do their will (under the guise of it being “God’s will”), laughing manically at the very prospect of their “anointed leader” not becoming the ruler of the land. These predictions, predictably (?) turned out to not come true, and what are we to make of that? Perhaps not stone them, as in Deuteronomy 18, but we can certainly not fear further prognostications they may utter forth if they are unrepentant of their false prophecy and attempt to save face by forking (a “cold reading” term) to try and explain the prophecy meant something else instead.

Just like in Ahab’s time, has God allowed lying spirits today to enter the mouths of those who claim to be prophets yet their prophecies are false?

Bibliography

Van der Toorn, K., Van der Horst, P. W., et al (1998), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. Lieden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers.

Wright, A. T. (2015). The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6:1-4 in Early Jewish Literature. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Footnotes

[1] Wright, 1.

[2] DDD, 320.