1 Kings 13:18

The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible

Contextual Overview

¹¹Now a certain old prophet was living in Bethel, and his sons came and told him all the deeds that the man of God had done that day in Bethel. They also told their father the words that the man had spoken to the king. ¹²"Which way did he go?" their father asked. And his sons had seen the way taken by the man of God, who had come from Judah. ¹³So the prophet said to his sons, "Saddle the donkey for me." Then they saddled the donkey for him, and he mounted it ¹⁴and went after the man of God. He found him sitting under an oak tree and asked, "Are you the man of God who came from Judah?" "I am," he replied. ¹⁵Then the prophet said to the man of God, "Come home with me and eat some bread." ¹⁶But the man replied, "I cannot return with you or eat bread or drink water with you in this place. ¹⁷For I have been told by the word of the LORD: 'You must not eat bread or drink water there or return by the way you came.'" ¹⁸Then the prophet replied, "I too am a prophet like you, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD, saying, 'Bring him back with you to your house, so that he may eat bread and drink water.'" The old prophet was lying to him,¹⁹but the man of God went back with him, ate bread in his house, and drank water. ²⁰While they were sitting at the table, the word of the LORD came to the prophet who had brought him back,

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

an angel: Numbers 22:35, Judges 6:11, Judges 6:12, Judges 13:3

But: Genesis 3:4, Genesis 3:5, Isaiah 9:15, Jeremiah 5:12, Jeremiah 5:31, Jeremiah 23:14, Jeremiah 23:17, Jeremiah 23:32, Jeremiah 28:15, Jeremiah 28:16, Ezekiel 13:9, Ezekiel 13:10, Ezekiel 13:22, Matthew 7:15, Matthew 24:24, Romans 16:18, 2 Corinthians 11:3, 2 Corinthians 11:13-15, 2 Peter 2:1, 1 John 4:1, Revelation 19:20

Reciprocal: Genesis 27:19 - I am Exodus 18:17 - not good Leviticus 19:11 - lie one Deuteronomy 13:1 - a prophet 1 Samuel 2:24 - ye make 1 Samuel 21:2 - The king 1 Kings 20:35 - in the word 2 Kings 5:22 - My master 2 Kings 18:25 - Amos I now Proverbs 11:9 - An hypocrite Isaiah 36:10 - General Jeremiah 28:11 - Thus Micah 2:11 - a man Romans 3:7 - if the truth Ephesians 4:25 - putting 1 Thessalonians 4:15 - by the 1 Timothy 4:2 - lies

Cross-References

Genesis 8:20
Then Noah built an altar to the LORD. Taking from every kind of clean animal and clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar.

Genesis 13:4
to the site where he had built the altar. And there Abram called on the name of the LORD.

Genesis 13:7
And there was discord between the herdsmen of Abram and the herdsmen of Lot. At that time the Canaanites and the Perizzites were also living in the land.

Genesis 13:8
So Abram said to Lot, "Please let there be no contention between you and me, or between your herdsmen and my herdsmen. After all, we are brothers.

Genesis 14:13
Then an escapee came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew. Now Abram was living near the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, a brother of Eshcol and Aner, all of whom were bound by treaty to Abram.

Genesis 18:1
Then the LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre in the heat of the day, while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent.

Genesis 23:2
She died in Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went out to mourn and to weep for her.

Genesis 35:27
Jacob returned to his father Isaac at Mamre, near Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron), where Abraham and Isaac had dwelt.

Genesis 37:14
Then Israel told him, "Go now and see how your brothers and the flocks are faring, and bring word back to me." So he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron. And when Joseph arrived in Shechem,

Numbers 13:22
They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, dwelled. It had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

And he said unto him,.... That is, the old prophet said to the man of God:

I am a prophet also as thou art; meaning, that he was a prophet of the true God, and not of any idol deity; that he not only believed in him, and was a worshipper of him, but had revelations from him, and of the same things this man of God had, and that he believed that what he had prophesied of would certainly come to pass:

and an angel spoke unto me by the word of the Lord; was sent and dispatched by the order of the Lord with the following message:

saying, bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water; and so be refreshed, and be fit to proceed on in his journey:

[but] he lied unto him; no messenger nor message being sent to him by the Lord, but was wholly a device and stratagem of his own to persuade the man of God to return with him, that he might have his company and conversation.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

But he lied unto him - It is always to be remembered that the prophetic gift might co-exist with various degrees of moral imperfection in the person possessing it. Note especially the case of Balaam.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse 1 Kings 13:18. An angel spake unto me — That he lied unto him is here expressly asserted, and is amply proved by the event. But why should he deceive him? The simple principle of curiosity to know all about this prediction, and the strange facts which had taken place, of which he had heard at second hand by means of his sons, was sufficient to induce such a person to get the intelligence he wished by any means. We may add to this, that, as he found the man of God sitting under an oak, probably faint with fatigue and fasting, for he had had no refreshment, his humanity might have led him to practise this deception, in order to persuade him to take some refreshment. Having fallen from God, as I have supposed, 1 Kings 13:11, his own tenderness of conscience was gone; and he would not scruple to do a moral evil, if even a temporal good could come of it. Again, is it not possible that the old prophet was himself deceived? for, though he lied unto him, it is possible that he was not conscious of his lie, for Satan, as an angel of light, might have deceived him in order to lead him to deceive the other. He does not say, as the man of God did, It was said to me by the word of the Lord; no: but, An angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord. And I think it very likely that an angel did appear to him on the occasion; an angel of darkness and idolatry, in the garb of an angel of light, who wished to use him as an instrument to bring discredit on the awful transactions which had lately taken place, and to destroy him who had foretold the destruction of his power and influence.