Wha huh?
June 24, 2008
This is more of a rhetorical question post, simply because of the nature of it, but if you do have an answer, I am curious to hear.
What the heck are we supposed to do with 1 Kings 13? How are we supposed to take it, especially with the way it ends? Why does the old prophet lie? And then want to honor the guy he lied to?
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Full Circle 
The old prophet was probably not all he was cracked up to be. I basically picture him rolling his eyes and saying, “ok, which way did that guy go? I’ll go get him.” He probably thought the guy was crazy and didn’t need to go out in the desert and die. He told him what he needed to hear in order to get him to come home with him. “yeah, I’m a prophet too and an angel told me you need to get you butt in out of the sun and eat something.” I don’t think there was malice in his actions. I think he felt like he was doing the right thing.
The fact that the prophet from judah disobeyed God and then died was a message for the King. God wanted him to change his ways and so essentially sacrificed the prophet to make the king see that He wasn’t kidding around. As a king, there would be more benefit if he followed God, which outweighed the life of one prophet. There seemed to be a lot more triage in the old Testament.
You also have to take into account that in the eyes of the people who originally witnessed or heard about these events the prophet was also rewarded. He was laid in the tomb of the king with honor and mourned as a brother. Pretty good deal for a nobody from Judah.
oops. misread the end there. He was put in the tomb of the prophet. Again, evidence though that the prophet didn’t intend to get him killed.
These are just wonderings/speculations. Maybe the old prophet was afraid that the new prophet would take his place. He acted a lot like Herod finding out about baby Jesus. Maybe he wanted to test the new prophet and see if he really had God’s annointing. When the voice of the Lord came to the old prophet maybe he realized that the new prophet really WAS telling the truth to Jeroboam and then when the new prophet got killed the old prophet felt really guilty. His guilt prompted him to honor the new prophet reaffirm that the new prophets words were true.
This doesn’t account for the whole “where’s the justice” feeling but it just seems like there has to be more to the story than, “Yeah, but the new prophet shouldn’t have disobeyed God not matter what…” You know?