1 Kings 22:5

THE FALSE PROPHETS FAIL TO CONVINCE JEHOSHAPHAT

"And Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, Inquire first, I pray thee, for the word of Jehovah. Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and said unto them, Shall I go against Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall I forbear? And they said, Go up, for the Lord will deliver IT into the hand of the king. But Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here a prophet of Jehovah besides, that we may inquire of him?"

"The king ... gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men" (1 Kings 22:5). This writer rejects the common opinion among scholars that these were prophets of JEHOVAH.

(1) They are not introduced as prophets of Jehovah, but as "the prophets."

(2) Their message was not given in the name of Jehovah, but in that of [~'Adonay], a term that in that culture applied as well to Baal as to the covenant God of the Hebrews.

(3) Besides that, their message was as deceitful and crooked as any that ever came out of the pagan Oracle of Delphi. Strip the word "it" out of their crooked message (Note that it is italicized in the KJV), and what did they say? The Lord shall deliver into the hands of the king! "Deliver what? Ramoth-gilead ... or Israel? Into the hands of the king ... What king? Ahab or Benhadad? This is exactly the way the Delphian oracle replied to Pyrrhus: "Pyrrhus the Romans shall overcome; thou shalt go; thou shalt return never in war shalt thou perish."[8] Opposite meanings depending upon the punctuation are mingled.

(4) The fourth reason why these prophets must not be thought of as prophets of Jehovah is in the fact that Jehoshaphat requested that they consult "a prophet of Jehovah," which barely falls short of the declaration that the four hundred were not prophets of Jehovah, nor does the word besides in the text cancel that implication. In fact, Farrar affirmed that, "The word implies that Jehoshaphat did not believe that these were true prophets."[9] Cook affirmed that, "In all probability, these were not real prophets of Jehovah, as evident from Jehoshaphat's dissatisfaction with them, and from their strong antagonism against Micaiah."[10]

(5) In addition to all this, we learn from the TRUE prophet Micaiah just exactly whose prophets those men were. They were not prophets of Jehovah. Micaiah called them, "His prophets (1 Kings 22:22) and thy prophets" (1 Kings 22:23); they were Ahab's prophets, not God's prophets!

(6) Note also that their number was "four hundred," information that is totally irrelevant unless the narrator intended us to identify these false prophets with the "four hundred priests of the Ashera" (1 Kings 22:18-19) who avoided being slain by Elijah. Those were clearly the only "four hundred priests" supported by Ahab, and the fact of their being called "priests" does not mean that they were not also false prophets. There is no record that Ahab ever slew those "four hundred," and if now we must suppose that he had "four hundred" other religious pretenders in his employ, we would have to conclude that he was in the priest and prophet business, which supposition is antithetical to everything we know about Ahab.

(7) If these "four hundred" false prophets were, in any sense, prophets of Jehovah, why had not Jezebel slain them? Hammond concluded that, "They were the priests of Bethel and Dan, the successors to those appointed by Jeroboam."[11] However, this writer has never believed that Jeroboam's appointees were in any sense true servants of Jehovah. The fact that Jezebel had not killed them proves that they were prophets of Baal or the Ashera. We have read all that the commentators say in their attempt to deny the true identity of these false prophets, but none of them has said anything that compromises or refutes these seven reasons.

Two conflicting opinions of Jehoshaphat and Ahab regarding the institution of prophecy are visible in this episode. "Jehoshaphat regarded a prophet as an instrument of God to reveal God's will to a community, whereas Ahab regarded a prophet as an agent of the throne to influence God"![12]