The Man of God from Judah (1 Kings 13:1-34)

2022-11-08

There are several unnamed prophets in the Bible, but there is one significant unnamed prophet from Judah. He is simply known as “the man of God.”

When Jeroboam had set up his idols in Israel, this man of God prophesied against the altar in Bethel. There were two parts; first, in the future, a king named Josiah would dig up the bones of the false priests that served the altar and burn their bones on the altar. Second, the altar would split open and spill its ashes out. The second part happened right then. When Jeroboam ordered the man of God to be seized, his hand dried and was immoveable. When asking for mercy, the man of God asked the Lord, and He healed the king. The Lord often shows mercy even to the willfully disobedient.

The man of God could not go with the king when he offered reward. The prophet could neither eat nor drink and could not go the same way home because of God’s commandment. The man of God was true to the Lord’s command at this point.

On the way home, an old prophet sought the man of God to dine with him, lying to him and assuring that he had heard from the Lord saying it was fine. The man of God succumbed, but the old prophet received a real word from the Lord afterward, declaring that the man of God would die for disobedience. On the way home, the man from Judah was slain by a lion, though his donkey and his corpse remained intact, with the lion remaining there. The old prophet buried the man of Judah in his own grave. Don’t take anyone at face value when they contradict what the Lord clearly has said! Even if they are normally godly people who serve the Lord!

The first part of the man of God’s prophecy was fulfilled later when we read this:

And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount, and sent, and took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it, according to the word of the LORD which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words. Then he said, What title is that that I see? And the men of the city told him, It is the sepulchre of the man of God, which came from Judah, and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the altar of Bethel. (2 Kings 23:16-17)

When the Lord makes a promise, you can be assured it will happen.

The man of God should not have trusted the old prophet. However, shame on that old prophet! He apparently was a real prophet who just lied in that instance, because he really received messages from the Lord at other times. Maybe he lied because he wanted to meet a fellow prophet given the apostasy of the day... who knows why he lied to him. The old prophet and his sons sincerely mourned his loss: “And he laid his carcase in his own grave; and they mourned over him, saying, Alas, my brother!” (1 Kings 13:30). They sincerely cared for this prophet, and they probably regretted their actions. The man of God sinned, but this old prophet is not innocent. This old prophet is surely one of the most annoying people in the Bible.

Lying can kill people. It did here.

This is a part of the Old Testament Prophets series. To go back to the table of contents, proceed here.