1 Kings 13

A prophet’s last supper before meeting a lion

Prophet predicts king will sacrifice pagan priests

1King Jeroboam went to the altar at the golden calf shrine [1] at Bethel to burn some incense as a sacrificial offering. But a man, prompted by the LORD, had come up from Judah to criticize the pagan shrine. 2He spoke directly to the altar there.

“Bad news for you, altar! I’ve got terrible news for you, and this comes from the LORD. A son is coming from David’s family—a boy named Josiah. [2] He’s going to offer sacrifices here. But he’ll be sacrificing your priests who serve on hilltop shrines. They won’t be burning incense anymore. They’ll be burning. And they’ll leave behind a pile of their bones. 3Here’s how you’ll know the LORD has sent this message. This altar will get torn down. And the ashes of sacrifices burned on it will get thrown out as trash.”

4When the king heard that, he pointed at the man of God and said, “Arrest him!” But when the king stuck out his hand, it was bent up, withered, and paralyzed. He couldn’t even pull it back in. 5The altar collapsed and its ashes poured out onto the ground—exactly the sign the man had given.

6The king said to the man, “Ask your God to fix my hand and make it like it was before.” So the man did, and the LORD did. The king had his good hand back.

Invitation to a royal meal

7Jeroboam gratefully invited the man to a meal. “Come home with me. We’ll have a meal together and I’ll give you a gift.”

8But the man sent by God said, “No thank you. You could offer me the best half of your kingdom and I still wouldn’t step inside your house, eat a bite of your food, or even take a drink of the water here. [3] 9God told me not to. The LORD said, ‘When you go up there, don’t eat any food, drink any water, or come back home the same route you left.’” [4] 10So, he left Bethel and went home a different way.

An old prophet of Bethel

11There was an old prophet who lived in Bethel at the time. One of his sons told him what the man from Judah said to the king. [5] 12The prophet asked, “Where did he go?” And his sons pointed to one of the trails toward Judah. 13The man told his sons, “Saddle my donkey.” They did, and off he rode.

14The prophet found the man resting in the shade of an oak tree. The Bethel prophet asked, “Are you the man God sent from Judah?” The traveler said, “Yes, I am.”

A little lethal lie

15The Bethel prophet said, “Come home with me. We’ll eat some food.” 16But the man from Judah said, “I can’t do that. 17The LORD told me not to eat or drink anything for as long as I’m up here.”

18The Bethel prophet lied and said, “No need to worry about that. I’m a prophet, too. God sent me a messenger with these words: ‘Bring that man back to your house and give him food and water.’” 19The man from Judah believed him. So, he went with him, ate some of his food, and drank some water.

God at the dinner table

20They were still sitting at the table when the LORD put words into the mouth of the Bethel prophet.

21Raising his voice, the old prophet told the man from Judah, “This comes from the LORD: You disobeyed my explicit instructions. My orders were clear. 22I told you ‘Don’t eat their food. Don’t drink their water.’ Yet you came back to this place, and you ate their food and drank their water. For that, your dead body won’t make it to your family tomb.’” [6]

23After the meal, the family from Bethel saddled him on one of their donkeys. Fed and hydrated, the man headed home to Judah. 24He didn’t make it. A lion jumped him along the trail and threw his body on the ground. The lion and the donkey both stood by the corpse. [7] 25It was such an odd sight that some travelers reported it to the Bethel prophet.

A prophet buries a prophet

26The prophet said, “Oh no. That has to be the body of the man from Judah. He disobeyed the LORD, so God sent a lion to kill him.” 27He told his sons, “Saddle my donkey.” They did.

28He found the body. Strangely, not only had the lion not eaten the man, but the lion and the donkey were both still standing there beside it. 29Bethel’s prophet lifted the corpse onto the donkey and brought it back to town, for a time of mourning and burial.

30He put the man’s body in his own family tomb and said, “Oh, my brother. What a tragedy.” 31The old prophet told his sons, “When I die, bury me with this man of God. Lay my bones beside his.

Predicting the end of Jeroboam’s dynasty

32I’m telling you this. I am certain that he got everything right when he predicted what will happen to the altar in Bethel and to the hilltop shrines in Samaritan cities.”

33These remarkable events did nothing to change Jeroboam. He kept appointing priests to hilltop shrines. Anyone who wanted to be a priest, he made a priest. 34This was sinful. Jeroboam would pay for that sin by losing what might have been a family dynasty of kings, generation after generation. Instead, his dynasty died quickly. [8]

Footnotes

Intro Notes to 1 Kings

113:1

The text says only that he went to the altar. But Bethel was one of only two main worship centers he set up earlier which featured a golden calf (1 Kings 12:18).

213:2

Josiah wouldn’t come for another 300 years. He ruled the southern kingdom of Judah from about 640-609. By then the northern nation of Israel was gone, defeated by Assyrian invaders from what is now northern Iraq. Israelite survivors were then deported as captives and exiles. Yet some who were left behind along with settlers who moved in began worshiping at the pagan shrines. Josiah launched a “Temple-only” reform movement, destroying all pagan worship centers and killing their priests. He wanted the Israelites to obey God’s law and worship only at the Jerusalem Temple built by Solomon.

313:8

The writer didn’t explain why the man shouldn’t eat or drink there. Maybe the point was simply to show the importance of obeying God. But another guess might connect the orders to kosher food laws and Jewish cleansing rituals. The message God’s order conveyed may have been: You’re ritually unclean, unacceptable to God, and unfit company for a man of God. So, hasta la vista, baby.

413:9

There was a main route between Bethel and Jerusalem, in Judah. Students of the Bible can speculate why God told the prophet to go home by another route. Perhaps it could have been safer, if someone in Bethel didn’t like his message and decided to set up an ambush on his route home. But then there’s the fact of the lion on the other route. That could make this look a bit like a suicide mission, with death by disobedience.

513:11

The fact that the man of Bethel didn’t bother to join the king at the pagan shrine suggests he might have been an Israelite who worshiped God, but who lied from time to time.

613:22

Anyone for dessert? Oddly, the story reads as though they finished the meal. If so, perhaps they figured they might as well since the deed was done.

713:24

Given that lions eat donkeys, too, this particular donkey might sound like a closely related animal with a demeaning name. But the scene conveyed the idea of God at work, painting the picture of a miracle in living color.

813:34

Jeroboam was the first king of the northern tribes of Israel. He ruled for roughly 20 years, from about 930-910 BC. His son Nadab became the next king, but he survived for only about a year. One of his commanders, Baasha, murdered him and became king for about the next 25 years. Jeroboam’s dynasty was little more than one and done.