1 Kings 13:14

14. Went after the man of God What was his object? Some have surmised that it was merely to show him becoming hospitality. But he must have learned from his sons that the man was forbidden to accept the hospitality of any one. More probable is the opinion that he was moved with jealousy and chagrin that a prophet should come from a distance to reprove the king’s idolatry, while he himself had uttered no word of disapproval; and to this may be added Kitto’s supposition, “That his single but guileful object was to lay his king under an essential obligation, by making the man of God contradict himself in a matter which he alleged to be most binding and urgent upon him, and of thus reducing the moral weight and authority of the message he had delivered.” But he adds, “We entirely acquit him of intending to involve the man of God in the disastrous consequences which ensued.” It is nowise impossible that still other impulses also moved him, for his soul at such a time might well have been the seat of excited and conflicting feelings. And while his first emotions were probably those of jealousy and shame, he may also have felt a burning desire to meet and talk with some true prophet, in hope that such intercourse might raise him from his present spiritual poverty and indifference. It was this very conflict of opposing impulses that makes his character so strangely mysterious.

Sitting under an oak Rather, the oak; some tree well known from its association with this or some other memorable incident. There was nothing necessarily wrong in his thus resting under the tree; but some find here the beginning of his fall. This stay delayed his journey, and enabled the tempter to overtake him; and while sitting under the oak the thought of Jeroboam’s promised rewards may have inclined him, Balaam-like, to yearn for the wages of unrighteousness.