1st Kings 22: End of Ahab’s life

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In 1st Kings 22, we read about the final events that lead up to Ahab’s death.  For those of us who are trying to walk a righteous life, the mistake and foibles of the unrighteous can still provide us powerful lessons, including the danger of making promises in haste and only listening to part of God’s instruction rather than all of it, but probably the most important lesson from this final chapter of Ahab’s life is that God does not need 400 voices to teach you His truth. He only needs one.

If you recall there was a prophet of God who spoke with Ahab in 1st Kings 20 and this prophet is most likely Micaiah son of Imlah who is God’s prophet in this chapter as well. The kings of Israel don’t seem to have learned any lessons from the sins of their predecessors. 

Ben-Hadad is still the king of Aram, aka Syria at this time. Three years before Ahab had defeated Ben-Hadad utterly and yet showed compassion on him and entered a treaty with him and Ben-Hadad was able to bribe Ahab for his life. Ahab called Ben-Hadad his brother and let him go instead of capturing him. 

As part of this treaty, Ben-Hadad was supposed to give back all the cities of Israel back but he lied. Ahab’s lust for money blinding him to Ben-Hadad’s lies. Ramoth-gilead was one of those cities that Ben-Hadad had agreed to return but never did. It’s a town only 40  miles away from Samaria. 

Jehoshaphat’s daughter in law is a daughter of Ahab, that is why Jehoshaphat is in Samaria to visit Ahab. 

Ahab tells Jehoshaphat:

“Do you know that Ramoth-gilead belongs to us, and we are still doing nothing to take it out of the hand of the king of Aram?”  Jehoshaphat stuck his foot in his mouth and made an agreement with Ahab before asking the Lord if the plan was a wise plan. He says, “I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses.”

But then Jehoshaphat realizes they should ask a prophet of the Lord for advise first. So Ahab brings these prophets to him, “about four hundred men, and said to them, ‘Shall I go against Ramoth-gilead to battle or shall I refrain?’ And they said, ‘Go up, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.'” (1st Kings 22:6)

Jehoshaphat is suspicious even in the face of this seemingly overwhelming  agreement. He asks, “Is there not yet a prophet of the LORD here that we may inquire of him?” (1st Kings 22:7) Jehoshaphat doesn’t have anyone to compare this men to at this point. How did he figure this out? Jehoshaphat understands something about witnesses that is not spelled out in this verse. 

Ahab knows of one more prophet, who is a prophet of God,  Micaiah son of Imlah. Initially Micaiah son of Imlah said the same thing as the other prophets but both  Jehoshaphat and Ahab knew something was up, despite their shortcomings. 

The main representative of the prophets here was Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah. He had prophesied that Ahab’s war against Aram for Ramoth-gilead would be successful. When Micaiah contradicted Zedekiah, he said:

“Then Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah came near and struck Micaiah on the cheek and said, “How did the Spirit of the LORD pass from me to speak to you?” (1st Kings 22:24)

Zedekiah was the senior prophet here. 

This lying spirit did not go to the prophets of Ba-al or Astoreth, but to the prophets of the Lord. How did Jehoshaphat discern this? We find it in 2 Chronicles 19:1-4 , which was recorded after Ahab had died. 

Only one person went out to meet Jehoshaphat when he returned and that was Jehu the son of Hanani the seer.  Jehoshaphat knew that God did not require 400 prophets or even a dozen prophets. When  Jehoshaphat was sitting there listening to all this, he knew that is now how God talks to him or anyone else. God only needs one prophet. When God called a prophet to speak to a king, it was one on one. 

How do you rectify the issue of having only one prophet with needing two or more witnesses. The 400 prophets are only one witness. The 400 prophets were not independent witnesses, they were all on the king’s payroll of King Ahab. Prophets are not on the king’s payroll. They aren’t a good witness because of their conflict of interest. 

Now, going back to Micaiah. He initially says the same thing the other prophets but when both Ahab and Jehoshaphat press him for the truth, Micaiah reveals something about how the Kingdom of heaven works, although was revealed to him in vision and not a literal occurrence. Although God can not lie, he did find an angel who spread the false prophesy among the prophets. 

These 400 prophets on Ahab’s payroll believed they were prophesying in God’s name. They had no reason to believe they were being lied to. They all heard the same thing. It was not easy to discern and test this spirit, but we are not just supposed to test the spirits but we are also to examine ourselves. 

They should have noticed that this spirit was unusual because it spoke to all 400 of them at the same time. 

When God wants someone to believe something, you are going to believe it. 

Ahab must have believed what Micaiah said because he disguised himself as a common soldier when he went into the battle. Yet, Ahab didn’t believe Micaiah enough to stay away from going battle in the first place. 

Somehow the armies of Aram were able to discern that Jehoshaphat was not the king they were looking for and an unnamed Aramean archer shot Ahab and he died a slow, painful death. 

It says that Ahab’s chariot had lots of blood in it and it was washed in a pool and we are told that the “harlots” bathed in the same pool. In the Hebrew, this word is זוֹנָה zanah (Strong’s lexicon H2181), which also means weapon. It depends on the context. I like that because both weapons and a harlot can kill if you use them the way they are intended. 

In the pagan religion of this time, by bathing in the blood of the king, they were bathing in the blood of their god.

Identifying witnesses and discerning what is and what is not true. You have to know who the witnesses are. You have to know if they are truly independent. Whether you are a king or not, you need to exercise discernment. Somehow they knew that Micaiah was speaking the truth even though he was the only one. Even though Ahab and Jehoshaphat knew that Micaiah was telling the truth, they went out into battle anyway. Jehoshaphat couldn’t pull back from his promise to Ahab that he had made in haste.  Jehoshaphat had to learn from this experience, which is hard to do. It’s hard to change course. 

Speaker: Daniel Agee.  Summary: Tammy.