Bible Study - 2 Chronicles 18:6-11

Jehoshaphat Questions the Four Hundred Prophets

All right, 2 Chronicles 18, I'll read verses 1 through 11. I am as you are, my people as your people. We will be with you in the war. And Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, inquire first for the word of the Lord.

Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, 400 men, and said to them, Shall we go to battle against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain? And they said, Go up, for God will give it into the hand of the king.

But Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here another prophet of the Lord, of whom we may inquire? And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, Micaiah the son of Imla.

But I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but always evil. And Jehoshaphat said, Let not the king say so. But the king of Israel summoned an officer and said, Bring quickly Micaiah the son of Imla.

Now the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, were sitting on their thrones, arrayed in their robes. And they were sitting at the threshing floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria. And all the prophets were prophesying before them.

And Zedekiah the son of Canaanah made for himself horns of iron and said, Thus says the Lord, With these you shall push the Syrians until they are destroyed. And all the prophets prophesied so and said, Go up to Ramoth Gilead and triumph.

The Lord will give it into the hand of the king. Amen. All right, verse six says, But Jehoshaphat said, Is there not a prophet of Jehovah besides that we may inquire of him? All right. Why is Jehoshaphat dissatisfied?

Well, we've got these 400 prophets already that are prophets of God, but it is evident to him one way or another that these are not good prophets. It could be the way that they are speaking, the way that they seem to be pleading to convince them.

It could be just that he already knows that the plan is against God's plan. And maybe that is what is nagging at him. But it is interesting that after having 400, you would say, Well, the one that's going to really tell us is going to be the 400 and first.

That's when you have statistical significance. I don't know. So how does this relate to the preceding context? Yeah, it is interesting that he has aligned himself with Ahab, but then he seems to know that he's done wrong.

He seems to know that there's something off about this whole situation if he is requiring a 400 and first prophet. So just to explain the trajectory once again, in chapters 16 and 17, Jehoshaphat, everything is going very well for him.

He is obeying the Lord and everything. Excuse me, just chapter 17. He is obeying the Lord and everything, and God is prospering him greatly. And so here begins a significant downturn in the history of Judah and that he makes an alliance with Israel.

So the kingdoms are split at this point, right? Israel is the northern kingdom. Judah is the southern kingdom. And he should not make an alliance because Ahab is an especially bad idolater on top of the fact that the kingdom of Israel is just in general an idolatrous kingdom, having set up two temples that they weren't authorized to with golden calves that they would call Yahweh, but are not, of course.

Micaiah and the Meaning of an Evil Report

All right, verse 7. And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, there is yet one man by whom we may inquire of Jehovah, but I hate him for he never prophesies good concerning me, but always evil. He is Micaiah, the son of Imlah.

All right, so what prophesying evil means here is speaking unpleasant truths. It's not, you know, actually evil in the sense of moral evil. So similar to Joseph, right? He brought an evil report about his brothers.

And a lot of people make a lot of that that I just don't see in the text. You know, Joseph was, this was his sin, you know, against his brothers. He brought an evil report. Maybe he's a tattletale, but just an evil report means it's got bad news.

You have a righteous prophet being said to have an evil report. So evil here means calamity, right? A natural evil, just calamity. All right, why is this a reason for Ahab to hate Micaiah? Well, most people do not love the truth.

That's something I've pointed out a lot lately. People do not love the truth. They like things that are pleasant. They are willing to believe lies if they are pleasant. They are pleasant lies. What verses exist between this first and the corresponding one in 1 Kings?

So just to recap, 1 Kings, 1 and 2 Kings were written before Chronicles. The chronicler, when he writes, a lot of the narrative comes from 1 and 2 Kings, also from 2 Samuel and other books even. And any kind of modifications or different framings that he provides shows his distinct intention with the narrative.

He's going to emphasize the things that he wants to emphasize because while 1 and 2 Kings are about the nation of Israel as a whole talking about both kingdoms, Chronicles is just about the kingdom of Judah and it's writing to the exiles trying to emphasize specific truths.

So what are the differences that the chronicler is emphasizing here? Remember what I've pointed out before that some of the differences in Kings, the story really is about Ahab, right? Jehoshaphat is just kind of along for the ride.

But here, the whole story is about Jehoshaphat. He's the main character and the whole point of this is him sinning by working with Ahab. So a lot of what's said in here is reframed so that it's primarily about Jehoshaphat and his involvement.

And a lot of these, the prophecy is even, the way it's described is a little different. Micaiah, Ahab speaks in absolutes which is not in Kings. He says Micaiah always prophesies evil and never prophesies good, right?

And then you also have the statement reordered. See how at the end here it says, he is Micaiah son of Imlah, like all this about him and then he is Micaiah son of Imlah. Like it's this very melodramatic kind of introduction of this guy leaving his name until the end like it's secret and shouldn't be said.

So Ahab is this, you know, he's this tempter in the story, right? He's tempting Jehoshaphat into things. This is going to lead to Judah being corrupt because they end up crossing lines. This was a marriage alliance so the subsequent children involved here are going to be corrupt.

And anyway, Ahab is this greater tempter in the way that his words are, his words are framed and relayed here by the chronicler. All right, yeah, remember that the snake in the garden said that, did, yeah, about, he spoke about God prohibiting man from eating anything.

Did he, you know, say you couldn't eat any tree from the garden? That kind of thing, right? This is kind of like that. Another translation note, the ESV in general, and I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but the ESV harmonizes names.

We looked at that earlier when, oh, who was it? Hiram, was it Hiram? Yeah, Hiram versus Huram, right? One of them, Kings, says Hiram and the other says Huram. I think it's Hiram in Chronicles. But anyway, what we're using here, which is an update of the ESV, or sorry, excuse me, an update of the ASV, actually uses the different names, whereas the ESV that you've got in the pews just uses, picks one and sticks with it for both.

So son of Imla here is without an H, and you'll notice in the ESV it has an H. That is because the spelling of the name changes. There's so much time that's passed from Kings to Chronicles that even the way they spell things has changed.

So yeah, it ends with an aleph instead of a H. But it's kind of trivia, but it is also interesting, because you don't usually think about the Bible that way. You think about it just being as one book that was written.

And maybe there's a big difference between the New Testament and the Old Testament, but it's interesting also to think about and be able to read the Bible with the context that the Old Testament even spans a large period of time.

Now was it in 1 Samuel where it talks about, they went to see the seer, because that's what they called prophets in those days, a seer, right? They even have to explain the vocabulary to this younger audience that doesn't know that what they said in the old days, you know, what words they used.

Jehoshaphat Insists That Micaiah Be Heard

Okay, moving on to the second half of verse 7. And Jehoshaphat said, do not let the king say so. Then the king of Israel called an officer and said, fetch quickly Micaiah, the son of Imla. Okay, so Jehoshaphat believes Micaiah's message should be heard.

You know, he doesn't want Ahab to just dismiss him without consideration. And then, yeah, why does the king of Israel concede? He really wants to persuade Jehoshaphat to go into this war. It is interesting that Jehoshaphat has already agreed to go into the war.

That was the first part we looked at. My people as your people, et cetera. Here he says he's going to go into it, but he just needs to assuage his conscience. So he, yeah, he says he's going to do this.

And then what is the narrative significance of having an officer fetch him? What's going to happen is in the meanwhile, what you're going to see is all the other prophets have this time to get desperate and try to plead and say, no, this is really true.

This is happening. Please believe this before Micaiah shows up, basically. Verse nine, now the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, were sitting each on his throne arrayed in the robes, and they were sitting in an open place at the entrance of the gate of Samaria, and all the prophets were prophesying before them.

All right, so they're each sitting on their throne arrayed in robes. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. One, there's the pomp of it all that Ahab and tempting Jehoshaphat has kind of given him an equal place, making him, it's flattering.

We looked last time at the Proverbs that talk about the rich man who invites you to eat his, or the stingy man who invites you to eat his food, but his heart is not with you. Right, similar kind of thing seems to be going on here.

But also later on, when you see the vision that Micaiah has, God is depicted in a similar situation. He's sitting on his throne, and all the angels are around him, and he's taking counsel with his myriad of angels.

So it's, there's a parallel scene going on in heaven compared to the one that's going on in earth with the two kings and their counsel that's happening. So that's part of the reason for this explanation.

The Threshing Floor, Samaria, and False Worship

All right, and there was the significance of them being an open place at the gate of Samaria. Yeah, this is suggestive of false religion, right? This is literally a threshing floor, and threshing floors are associated with different places of worship.

There is, yeah, there's a threshing floor that was mentioned when Uzzah touched the Ark of the Covenant. There was the threshing floor that David bought that ended up becoming the place where the temple is located, right?

So in Chronicles, threshing floors, these open places, have been places of worship. And remember, this is in Samaria. It just said the word Samaria. Samaria is significant as a place of Baal worship. Why is that mentioned right now, the name of the gate of Samaria?

It's, I don't think it's just to tell you that they're at a gate for random context. Samaria is the place of Baal worship, and Jehoshaphat is, yeah, Jehoshaphat is wrongly interacting with all these prophets who are kind of acting like the prophets of Baal.

If you were reading in Kings, you would have recently just finished the part that talks about all the prophets of Baal cutting themselves and pleading with Baal to light the altar on fire, et cetera, and it never happens.

So it's kind of similar, kind of similar situation, except for these are ostensibly prophets of Yahweh, prophets of Jehovah.

Okay, all right.

And why do all the prophets prophesy before them? In order to persuade, of course. Now, it's not clear why they care so much about persuading, if maybe their jobs depend on it, or they really want to get Ramoth Gilead back, and they're just kind of in favor of anything Ahab's in favor of, could be any of those things.

The Iron Horns and the False Prophecy of Victory

Verse 10, So the language there is a bit old. It should just say, made himself horns of iron. This is like a sign act, right? A lot of the prophets, God commands them to do sign acts. They're supposed to make things or do things to demonstrate truth.

And so these false prophets, so melodramatic, one of them makes a horn or makes horns of iron to represent strength. That is what horns represent in the Bible. And then, yeah, iron, of course, also represents strength.

All right. So all this means that they will have sufficient strength to defeat the enemy. That's the idea of the sign. And maybe two horns because two kings. Maybe that's the case also. All right. And then, is this prophecy from the Lord?

It is not, of course. It's just a melodramatic imagination of a false prophet. We will see that they're not just making this stuff up, though, that there is a lying spirit that has been sent out to deceive them.

We will see that when we see the courtroom scene with God, that one gets sent out to do that. And then, why does he include this specific prophecy? Because remember, this is happening in the meanwhile, while we're waiting for Micaiah to show up.

So why this one? And I think it is because it is a fairly memorable one. And it's showing that he's, yeah, just how desperately they are trying to tempt Jehoshaphat into the sin of getting involved in battles that he's not supposed to, allying with people that he's not supposed to, etc.

This is very similar to, does this remind you of anything? Any other scene in the Bible? In Jeremiah, there's a scene where a false prophet makes a yoke of, or breaks the yoke of wood that's on Jeremiah's neck, right?

And then he says, this is what God will do. You know, because all the prophets at that time are saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. Like, we're going to be free of Babylon. And then, Jeremiah says that he instead makes a yoke of iron in its place.

Seems very similar to that. And that prophet in Jeremiah, whose name is Hananiah, he has a son named Zedekiah, which is kind of interesting, given that this prophet here is named Zedekiah. And it seems like there might be an intentional parallel there.

Yes? Are you referring to the passage where it says, Jesus said, I'm at liberty? It might say something like that. I'm not sure. But the meaning of it is the false prophets are saying, we're going to be free of Babylon.

And God is telling them, no, you just need to go into Babylon. You need to not—you've already been handed over. You've got 70 years. You've got to live there. And they want to believe something different.

Peace, peace, where there is no peace. Okay. And then, one other thing that is interesting about this is that, yeah, Chenanah is a Benjamite name that is elsewhere in scripture. And remember, Benjamin ended up defecting and coming to Judah.

So the fact that you have this Benjamite who is this false prophet in Israel, kind of reinforces this theme of compromise of people who should belong with Judah being in Israel. Okay, verse 11. And all the prophets prophesied.

So saying, go up to Ramoth-Gilead and prosper. For Jehovah will deliver it into the hand of the king. Okay, what does it mean to go to Ramoth-Gilead? Okay, so to actually try to recapture the city from the Syrians.

And then, into the hands of which king will the city be given? I think it's kind of intentional that it doesn't say which king. Because, you know, the false prophecy becomes a true prophecy in a way. Right?

It is given into the hand of a king. But ideally, or obviously, they're intending it to be Ahab's hands. But you see something similar with Caiaphas, right? Caiaphas prophesies that it's good for one man to die so that the people not be scattered abroad.

And his false prophecy ends up being a true prophecy. Because Jesus doesn't die and the people are gathered together, but not in the way that he imagined. So it's kind of similar the way it's vaguely described such that you could say that this actually was fulfilled, just not as they intended.

The Majority Does Not Establish Truth

Okay, all right.

What is the significance of all the prophets saying the same thing? Yeah, I think part of it shows that they are false. Yeah, there's a number of things in scripture that describe the majority or the multitude as promulgating lies.

You know, don't side with the many to do evil, etc. Yeah, you only need one prophet to say true things. The fact that there are so many almost itself demonstrates that this has got to be something false.

Okay, any questions before we look at the reflection questions here? Yes, yes, yes. And well, they are judging matters here, right? But yeah, not, of course, not universally so. Because, well, interestingly, where David does buy the threshing floor that becomes the place of the temple, it was going to be a place of judgment, or it was a place of judgment where the angel stood above him and, you know, he had to choose one of the three punishments and everything.

So I guess even there it was a situation of judgment, yeah. All right, are there ways Christians wrongly involve themselves in others' affairs? What are the example, what are examples of lies a majority claim are truths from the Lord?

What techniques do false prophets today use to persuade? I do find it interesting how many of, within Christianity, okay, so yeah, within Christianity, they're not talking about outside of it. And remember, this is Judah in Israel.

This is not some very foreign nation. It's just Israel, a compromised version of God's people. Yeah, so many people get very zealous about things that the majority already believes, or very zealous about yesterday's battles.

And yeah, I find that interesting. Something that I mentioned this past Sunday in the message, as we looked at what Jesus said about setting traditions of men up so high that they void the laws of God, is that when people, a lot of times when people preach on this passage, they are talking about battles that have already been won, or they are talking about things that the audience would already agree with, which is interesting given that the whole point of the passage is to attack the traditions that people would hold dearly.

Yeah, but anyway, when people are passionately pleading for what tickles the ears, you don't need prophets to do that. That's not really the nature of prophecy. All right, any other thoughts on these questions or anything?

False Prophets and the Need for Discernment

Yes? Yeah, well, if you say primarily the role, I don't necessarily want to say, yeah, reinforcing truths they already know should come secondary or anything. But yeah, it is important to figure out where the holes the sheep might fall in and be addressing that pretty proactively instead of just, you know, preaching on the same kind of stuff all the time.

Yeah, yes. And what's your name? Denzel. Nice to meet you. I'm Conley.

Right, yeah.

Yeah, well, there's a lot of false prophets of God in the Bible. Balaam is a prophet of Yahweh, right? And he only says true things in his prophecies. He is—his main sin is teaching the Moabites how to tempt the people.

But yeah, you have a number of false prophets of Yahweh in the Bible, and including all the ones that Jeremiah is interacting with, stuff like that. People who claim to speak in the name of the Lord. And I do think it's designed to prepare us for what we experience today, where there are lots of false teachers in the name of God.

And there are times when I've tried to tell people or warn them about some false teacher, and they just won't hear it. But this person cares so much about the fort, but this person, you know, etc., etc., etc.

They just have all these reasons. And there's one time I asked someone, you know, the Bible talks about wolves in sheep's clothing. Of course, it's going to look like they're going to look like sheep.

What is it that I could say about this person that would ever make you think that they could—that they would be false? You know, and this person sat there and thought and didn't realize she didn't have anything to say.

Yeah, some people are just not equipped for that. They're not looking for it. Yeah. One of the other things I said this past Sunday was in that passage in Matthew, where Jesus is talking about the traditions of man being set up so that they make void the law of God.

He quotes Isaiah to the effect that this people's heart is far from me, but they worship me with their lips. That we should be anticipating and expecting there to be a lot of false teaching that comes against true teaching.

And we shouldn't think of that as just something that happens outside our camp, something that happens, you know, just elsewhere and other places. It should be something that we're on guard for all the time, because we're supposed to be—yeah, we're just instructed in so many places in Scripture to expect it.

Any other questions? Yes. Yeah, the prophet's supposed to be inspired by God. Actually, you know, I've received some kind of vision or real word such that it's inspired, you know, and actually the Word of God.

Preacher is just, in his own words as best he can, trying to express the Word of God. So yeah, there's—a prophet, if he ever prophesies falsely, he's supposed to get stoned. If I ever make any mistakes in the pulpit, don't stone me.

Yeah, so that's a difference. However, the Reformers took a lot of the passages in 1 Corinthians and other places where it talks about prophets. I've always taken those as referring to that kind of prophecy that's inspired.

They took a lot of those statements as just referring to preaching, and I have yet to hear out their arguments. So I think they might have something to that. You know, one of the oldest Reform books on preaching is called The Art of Prophesying, and it's a very good book, but yeah, it's an odd book to hear for if you're not used to hearing preaching spoken of as prophesying, but yeah.

Inspiration, Preaching, and the Word of God

Yes. Yeah, I guess what you're saying is that the Spirit is working in the preacher to lead him to preach what he preaches? Right, to bring forward and inspire. Yeah, I guess the difference is they're not expired, right?

The term in 2 Timothy 3, 16 -17, you know, theopneustos, it's God breathe, right? Yeah, the words are actually like—they're not just inspired, they come from him, which is very different than just a statement that he's working in someone.

Yeah.

Yes. Maybe it's Latin. I haven't verified it, but I know it's in a Spanish translation. Inspiration will appear in 2 Timothy 3, 16, and then when you go to 2 Peter, it talks about how Peter mentions the vision, the transfiguration, but they have a more short word of prophecy, and then that word, when you go down in the chapter, the inspiration also, or inspired, also appears there.

But technically, theopneustos only appears in 2 Timothy. Okay, yeah, interesting. Maybe it's the Latin influence behind why people think that connection.

Yeah, so I guess there's several things going on. The difference between the Spirit's work and the one speaking, but then the Spirit's work and the one hearing also. A lot of people make two—they make the wrong distinctions in all this.

So, for example, what I'm getting at is that there's a sense in which, like with the—was it the second Helvetic confession that says the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God, the idea being that even though we don't mean it's the Word of God in that it's infallible, inspired, not all preaching is perfect, but it is the Word of God in as much as it comes from God, it has His authority, in as much as it works in the hearts to transform, which it does, right?

The preaching of the Word of God actually changes people, etc. Even if you don't quote a verse verbatim, if you are proclaiming the truth and expounding the message that He's given, it does have the capacity to change people.

That was one of my main points at the conference last year. I had that one talk called Inspiration and Adaptation, where I was addressing how people treat copyright with different kinds of material, because most of that conference was about how the Word of God shouldn't be copyrighted, and people say, okay, well, maybe the Greek shouldn't be copyrighted, but an English translation can be, or maybe an English translation can be, but not this other teaching that's based on the Bible, or, sorry, maybe the other teaching based on the Bible, but not the English translation, and so on.

And my point was, if it's derivative of the Word of God at all, then it has power as the Spirit works with it in the heart, and thus, like the Second Helvetic Confession, you can say the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God, adaptations of the Word of God are the Word of God, if what the Word of God means is it has some measure of His authorship, and some measure of the capacity for the Holy Spirit to use that in the special way that He has promised to use His Word, not promised to use other things to change the heart.

So, yeah, a lot of people make too stark a difference between those categories that end up making us more like Muslims, right? Muslims, you have to actually read the Qur 'an in Arabic for it to really count.

Anything that's not the precise letter is not the Qur 'an, but that's not how Christians think about the Bible, even though it is a plenary inspiration, all the aspects of it are inspired. But we don't deny the power of the adaptations that come from it.

It is to let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, making melody in your heart to God. So you're supposed to teach each other with adaptations, with songs that are coming from the Word.

Great. Yes. Yeah, so the distinction that our confession makes is that the Greek and the Hebrew are immediately inspired by God, and then as we receive it in English, it doesn't really mention that, but the idea is that there's some kind of immediate inspiration, that it's not the immediate inspiration.

It's still the Word of God in some sense, but not in the sense of being immediately inspired like the Greek and Hebrew. Yeah. Are you asking, is that still the Word of God? Yeah, I'm fine with saying it's watered down.

I know people for polemic reasons are quick to say stuff like the Passion Translation is not the Word of God or something like that, but what I'm trying to answer when I'm thinking about that question theologically is, is it possible for the Holy Spirit to use that to save someone, right?

And by possible, I don't mean, does God have the power? I mean, has He promised that this is the kind of means that He uses? And even that, there are all kinds of corrupt translations out there that I would say, you know, while I'd want to polemically say they're not the Word of God, you know, I still have to acknowledge if someone came to this, God could use it, you know, even though it's corrupt.

In WT? Yeah, I would. I would, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the gospel is in there. They haven't corrupted it so much that you can't find that. Yeah. Okay, yes. Yeah. And then as each person conceptualizes what's being spoken, it's a little different too.

But all right, we should wrap it up here and move into prayer. Let me go ahead and pray for us. Dear Heavenly Father, I thank You for Your Word. And I ask that we would seek You truly and not be distracted by our own wants and desires.

Pray that we would desire the true Word and not something that would come from the multitude who would try to tickle the ears. In Jesus' name, amen.