Bible Commentaries

1 Kings 16:7

Notice:—

I. The prophet who denounced the altar and the sacrifices in Bethel (chap. 1 Kings 13:1-7). Such men as this prophet are said to speak the word of the Lord, or sometimes in the word of the Lord. He testifies to Jeroboam that the juices and springs of life are renewed from an invisible source, that it is Another than the dead thing he is worshipping who can dry them up or give them their natural flow. The withering of the king's arm was a protest on behalf of regularity and law and for a God of regularity and law, with whom are the issues of daily life and death. The other part of the sign is precisely of the same kind. The altar is rent, and the ashes are poured out from the altar, as a sure and everlasting testimony that law and order shall not be violated with impunity by any ruler under any religious pretext.

II. The yielding of the prophet to the temptation of the old prophet to eat bread with him teaches us: (1) that even a true prophet, a prophet of God, might be deceived; and (2) that he must be deceived if he yielded to any pretences of inspiration on the part of any man when what he said went against a sure witness and conviction as to his own duty; (3) that a prophet not habitually a deceiver might on a certain occasion wilfully deceive, in the plain language of Holy Writ might lie. The characteristic quality of the prophet when he is true is obedience. If he once forgets the invisible Ruler and Lawgiver, no one will commit such flagrant errors, such falsehood, such blasphemy.

F. D. Maurice, The Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament, p. 107.

References: 1 Kings 16:21-34.—Parker, Fountain, Jan. 18th, 1877. 1 Kings 16:25.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. xii., p. 147. 1 Kings 16:30.—J. Baines, Sermons, p. 154. 1 Kings 16:34.—J. R. Macduff, Sunsets on the Hebrew Mountains, p. 132. 1Ki 16—Expositor, 3rd series, vol. v., p. 47.