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1 Kings 13
Bethel, from its vicinage to Judah, seems to have engaged the particular attention of Jeroboam, though, in fact, his sacerdotal establishment there, so near to Jerusalem, was alone sufficient to apprise observant persons of the hollowness of his alleged object; for this place being but little to the north of Jerusalem, it was absurd to allege the inconvenient distance of the latter city as a ground for setting up his golden calf at Bethel.
On a day of high festival, Jeroboam himself, censer in hand, was officiating at the altar of Bethel—when a stranger, with the marks of recent travel on him, stood forth, and in the name of the Lord prophesied against the altar, declaring that a time should come when a child named Josiah should be born to the house of David, who should burn on that very altar the bones of its dead priests. To accredit his word, the altar was on the instant rent, and the ashes scattered around. Without this sign, the prophecy of an event which did not take place for three hundred and fifty years, would have wanted authority with those who knew not the utterer; and therefore was it given.
Probably a prophecy against Jeroboam’s own person, instead of against the insensate altar, would have touched him less nearly. It showed that his policy would come to naught, and that the power he was establishing with so much solicitude would be utterly subverted, while the house of David would still subsist in its strength; for only so could a king of that house be able to do this upon that altar in his dominions.
The king grasped the full meaning of this message, and it filled him with rage against the man who had dared to deliver it then and there. He stretched forth his hand to seize him; but the limb suddenly stiffened, and he could not draw it back again. The prodigy, which touched his bone and flesh, humbled the king a little; and he implored the prophet to intercede with the Lord for him, that his arm might be restored. The man of God did so; and, at his supplication, vigor was restored to the arm which had been raised against him. Grateful for this, Jeroboam said to the prophet, “Come home with me, and refresh thyself; and I will give thee a reward.” But he alleged that the command had been laid upon him to deliver his message and return, but not by the way he came, without making any stay, or eating, bread, or drinking water, in that place. So he remounted his ass, and commenced his journey home.
He had come out of Judah, but who he was we are not told, and must be content not to know. The Jewish commentators generally suppose that he was the same with Iddo the seer, who is recorded in 2Ch_9:29 to have had visions against Jeroboam. But as Iddo lived to write the history of Rehoboam’s son Abijah, who died but little before Jeroboam, Note: 2Ch_13:22. the conjecture is only tenable on the supposition that the incident, although recorded here, really happened near the very close of Jeroboam’s reign. Shemaiah—the same whose mandate stayed the march of Rehoboam’s army—has also been named; but the like objection applies, as this prophet lived to write the history of Rehoboam, who died in the eighteenth year of Jeroboam. Note: 2Ch_12:15.
The good man was plodding homeward with the satisfying consciousness of having becomingly discharged an important and perilous duty, when evil came upon him from a quarter he could little have suspected.
There was in Bethel an old temporizing “prophet,” of Balaam’s cast, who, although he had sufficient regard for appearances to be absent from the king’s sacrifice, allowed his sons to be there. From them he heard what had passed, and avouched the verity of the prediction which the man of God had delivered. Yet, with this conviction on his mind, he formed the resolution of going after the stranger, to induce him to come back and accept the hospitalities of his house. We cannot allow him the excuse of thoughtless hospitality, which some have urged in his favor. As one having himself his eyes opened, he must have felt that the stranger had alleged a true and valid reason for his departure, and could not but know the imperative nature of the obligation under which he acted. His determination to bring him back must, therefore, have had some proportionate ulterior object, although we entirely acquit him of intending to involve the man of God in the disastrous consequences which ensued. He may have had a vague impression that his disobedience would not escape some kind of punishment; but had he been aware how awful and immediate that punishment would be, he would probably have paused. It is our own impression that this man was one of the numerous class who
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He soon overtook the home-bound prophet, and his invitation having received the same answer as that before given to the king, the profane old reprobate urged, that he also was a prophet, and had received a counter-command from God, to follow and bring him back. The poor prophet was too guileless himself to suspect that any one of this venerable appearance could be daring enough to fabricate such a statement, and he therefore turned his ass’s head, perhaps not unwillingly, back to Bethel.
It was while they sat at meat in the house of the Bethelite prophet, that a true word from God came to the latter, which, we are willing to believe, he received with real concern, and delivered with reluctance. It was, that inasmuch as the prophet from Judah had “disobeyed the word of the Lord,” in coming back to the place where he had been forbidden to rest or to eat bread, “his carcass should not come unto the sepulcher of his fathers.” This amounted to a declaration, that he should not reach his home alive or dead; for if he did, he would of course come to the sepulcher of his fathers. We read of no accusation or reply on the part of the seduced prophet, or any excuse on the part of his seducer. The matter was too solemn for bandying words; and both understood too clearly where the real pinch of the matter lay. The beguiled prophet, being himself in the direct receipt of divine intimations, had no right to act upon a contradiction to the mandate imparted to himself, on any less direct authority than that from which he had received it; and his easy credulity had brought discredit upon the high mission entrusted to him, and marred much of the good effect it might have produced upon the minds of the king and people. For this he must die, while the guiltier man incurs no punishment—even as a soldier on high and responsible duty, suffers death for offences which would scarcely incur blame at another time, and in other men. It is the responsibility, the breach of duty, less than the act, which constitutes the crime.
As one doomed to death, but not knowing in what shape it was to come, the stranger set forth. Was he to be smitten with disease or lightning? Were robbers to set upon him and slay him? Were walls to fall down and crush his devoted head? Of a thousand deaths which lurk ambushed for the life of man, which was the one destined to smite him down? He knew not—perhaps he cared not; but he could scarcely guess that which really came to pass. A lion came forth against him and slew him; and the brute so acted, as to evince to all beholders that he also had a mission, and that his native instincts were under control. It is said that lions like not to fall on man when they have other prey; it is also said, that an ass is choice food to a lion; and it is certain that a lion destroys to eat. Yet here the lion assails the man, and leaves the ass unmolested; and having inflicted the appointed death, the beast attempts not to devour or carry off the carcass, but leaves it in the road, and stands watching by, along with the trembling ass, as if to guard the corpse from other beasts, until witnesses should come to avouch what had been done, and to take away the body.
Truly this was the finger of God. The old Bethelite thought it so, when he heard what had happened. He felt that it devolved on him to remove the body and give it sepulture. He went, therefore, and beheld the lion still keeping guard over the corpse; but the fierce creature suffered him to remove it without molestation, and then slowly retired as one whose work was done.
The old Bethelite deposited the corpse in his own grave “and they mourned over him, saying, Alas, my brother!” Believing the prediction of the stranger to be certain of fulfillment, he directed his sons to bury his own corpse in the same grave; and the bones of the seducer and the seduced being thus intermingled in the tomb, it so happened, as the former probably intended, that his bones thus escaped, at the appointed time, the defilement to which they would otherwise have been subjected. The tomb of the prophet that came out of Judah was then recognized, and for his sake the contents were spared from dishonor.