Bethel: The Prophet Who Never Came Back Home

Preface

In the Old Testament, sometimes the Lord gives us a look at the successes of His prophets, but sometimes we get another view. Some prophets were murdered. like Uriah, who fled to Egypt, but was brought back to Judah and executed (see Jeremiah 26:20-23). Other prophets were more or less exiled, such as the 100 prophets whom Obadiah hid during the reign of Ahab and Jezebel (see 1 Kings 18). Amos was basically told to get out of town—ironically, at Bethel itself, some years after this incident according to Amos chapter 7.

The material here follows my previous message, “O Altar, Altar” and begins after the prophet has left King Jeroboam of the northern, ten-tribe kingdom. The prophet is now going back to his home territory in Judah according to God’s command.

But he never made it back to his home, as we will see.

The prophet who lied

1 Kings 13:11-18, NASB: 11 Now an old prophet was living in Bethel; and his sons came and told him all the deeds which the man of God had done that day in Bethel; the words which he had spoken to the king, these also they related to their father. 12 Their father said to them, "Which way did he go?" Now his sons had seen the way which the man of God who came from Judah had gone. 13 Then he said to his sons, "Saddle the donkey for me." So they saddled the donkey for him and he rode away on it. 14 So he went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak; and he said to him, "Are you the man of God who came from Judah?" And he said, "I am." 15 Then he said to him, "Come home with me and eat bread." 16 He said, "I cannot return with you, nor go with you, nor will I eat bread or drink water with you in this place. 17 "For a command came to me by the word of the LORD, 'You shall eat no bread, nor drink water there; do not return by going the way which you came.'" 18 He said to him, "I also am a prophet like you, 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.'" But he lied to him.

I used to think the “old prophet” was a good man, or a true prophet of the Lord, but that may not actually be the case. It is true that some godly people, genuine believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob remained in the northern kingdom, but at this time we don’t have any knowledge of how many were still there. We do read in 2 Chronicles 11 that many priests and Levites from the north came to Jerusalem, according to verse 16, to sacrifice to the Lord. We don’t read that they went back to the north, and who could blame them?

So, the fact that this prophet stayed in the very city where Jeroboam built the pagan altars, made the golden calves, and then declared these were the gods of Israel, makes me wonder how strong and sincere the old prophet’s faith really was. Why didn’t he cry out against the altar, if he were truly a prophet of the LORD? And, why didn’t he stand with the prophet (actually called a man of God) from Judah? These and other questions come to mind.

Even worse, the old prophet went looking for the man of God from Judah and deliberately lied to him. The old prophet offered the man of God from Judah a meal, but the text does not state if he had heard that the man of God had turned down a similar offer from the king himself.

Now the old prophet resorted to a blatant lie. The old prophet said that an angel told him that the man of God from Judah should to go to the old prophet’s house to eat and drink. We can understand this, namely, that the man of God had been resting under the shade of an oak tree. This probably meant that he was either hot, tired, possibly hungry as well (or all of these), even though Judah wasn’t very far from Bethel. This leads us to look at, sadly,

The prophet who died

The writer of 1 Kings records God’s message to the man of God from Judah:

1 Kings 13:19-25, NASB: 19 So he went back with him, and ate bread in his house and drank water. 20 Now it came about, as they were sitting down at the table, that the word of the LORD came to the prophet who had brought him back; 21 and he cried to the man of God who came from Judah, saying, "Thus says the LORD, 'Because you have disobeyed the command of the LORD, and have not observed the commandment which the LORD your God commanded you, 22 but have returned and eaten bread and drunk water in the place of which He said to you, "Eat no bread and drink no water"; your body shall not come to the grave of your fathers.'" 23 It came about after he had eaten bread and after he had drunk, that he saddled the donkey for him, for the prophet whom he had brought back. 24 Now when he had gone, a lion met him on the way and killed him, and his body was thrown on the road, with the donkey standing beside it; the lion also was standing beside the body. 25 And behold, men passed by and saw the body thrown on the road, and the lion standing beside the body; so they came and told it in the city where the old prophet lived.