Week 4 August 2025, Devotion Part 2

Thus says the king, “Put this fellow in prison, and feed him with scant fare…until I come in peace.”  1 Kings 22:27

 Ahab had warned against listening to this professional killjoy and promptly sulked when Micaiah sarcastically wished him good luck. He seethed with rage when the prophet told of the superior council in heaven at which a spirit stood up with a scheme so Ahab would not have a leg to stand on. “I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.” Ahab’s death warrant had obviously been signed. The horn waver promptly slapped Micaiah, while the king ordered incarceration and a diet of deprivation for him. That is the last we hear of his fate. The king could not return in peace to alter it. Although Ahab had disguised himself and sneakily presented his royal visitor as the prime target, a Syrian archer’s “random” shot wounded him mortally.

What is the sign of a true prophet? According to Micaiah, he “who is like Jehovah” – the meaning of his name – must like his own company best because he will have so much of it. “As the LORD lives, what the LORD says to me, that I will speak.” Have we faced the isolation that comes with such keen perception and unpopular iron-horned faith? Part 2 of 2

Comment: To me it’s a ”ha-ha” moment of derision as I picture the 400 Baal prophets do their perfectly choreographed bobbing before their master whose lust for Syrian blood is at its peak.. It’s not funny to witness how stupidly gullible Jehoshaphat agrees to mount his chariot dressed in full royal regalia, clueless as to why flashy Ahab puts on drab garb  The triumphant “ha!” moment occurs when an enemy archer’s “random” shot delivers the mortal wound.  I do hate it when the “h” and “a” put on the somber meaning of things that “haunt” me. The memory of the one true prophet languishing in solitary confinement with “scant fare” haunts me.  Ahab didn’t return as planned and who knows to what extent it caused turmoil in his house or enhanced Jezebel’s vengeful cruelty.  The historically well documented account fails to divulge Micaiah’s fate.  When King Zedekiah had Jeremiah thrown into a cistern and “left to rot,” it bothered an Ethiopian eunuch named Ebed-Melched so much that he begged for permission to pull him out of the deep mud hole. First he threw down rags for Jeremiah to put under his arms, then with the help of 30 men, got him pulled out.  Psalm 46:1 spells out reassurance for the believer in every age, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”  As for this very day’s “superior council in heaven,” my heart leaps for joy that God’s holy plans for our nation’s future cannot be thwarted, regardless of our warmongering or gullible leaders.  Isaiah 46:10 blows all the bobbing, blabbering rhetoric on YouTube to shame. The verse states, “Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.’”   That makes for our undeniable “Aha!” moment.  1 Kings 22.