The Prophets 1: Without Honor

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

This summer we shall follow some salient OT prophets. During each of the three summers past we have spent the sunny months learning the faith from the witness of the OT. We have followed Moses and David, Abraham and Solomon; and this summer we shall follow the prophets. Zondra has given us a good start with her two sermons on Ezekiel, who is a relatively late prophet (about 590 BC). Today I shall return near to the beginning of the prophetic movement to see what the background and heritage of a later prophet like Ezekiel might have been. I want to focus on Michaiah-ben-Imlah who was active during the reign of Ahab in the Northern Kingdom of Israel (874-853 BC, almost three hundred years prior), and not only because he illustrates an earlier stage than Ezekiel of prophetic activity but also because the story about him is in itself both so charming and so instructive.

There are two biblical kingdoms at this time, David’s kingdom having split after the death of Solomon (931BC) into North and South, Israel and Judah respectively, with their respective capitals at Samaria and Jerusalem and Ahab and Jehoshaphat the respective kings. The two states had been at loggerheads but now there is a time of reconciliation, Jehoshaphat’s son had married Ahab’s sister and the king of Judah was at the court of the king of Israel on a visit. The latter asks the former to join him in a foreign military expedition and before they make an agreement they consult their advisors. These turn out to be a gang of wild men in a rage, “The King of Israel (Ahab) and Jehoshaphat king of Judah were both sitting on their thrones in full regalia, at the threshing floor outside the gate of Samaria, with all the prophets raving in front of them. Zedekiah son of Chenaanah had made himself iron horns. ‘Yahweh says this’ he said. ‘With these you will gore the Aramaeans till you make an end of them.’ And all the prophets prophesied the same. ‘March to Ramoth-Gilead ‘ they said ‘and conquer. Yahweh will deliver it into the power of the king.” (1 Kings 22:11-12).

Jehoshaphat is impressed but not convinced. He wants a second opinion. “Is there anyone else we can ask?” says he innocently, and Ahab replies with amusing candor, “Yes there is always Micaiah, but why bother with him? He never, ever gives me an encouraging prophecy.” However, since Jehoshaphat insists, Micaiah is sent for and prophesies success, to which Ahab says, “You are lying Micaiah, give us your usual dismal assessment!” So Micaiah prophesies disaster and that’s what comes to pass. King Ahab is killed and the dogs lick his blood from the wheels of his chariot as had earlier been prophesied.

We note first that the prophets worked together in groups, and used dance, song, acting out and possibly narcotics to induce states of ecstasy in which they believe they discovered the will and plan of the god. This type of divining was widespread in the ancient world, part of the anthropology of our race. Prophets at this early stage were what elsewhere we call shamans, or witch doctors. The basic premise of shamanism is that where rational control ends divine possession begins and in such a state a shaman sees and hears the truth. At the time of Jesus, 800 years after the time of our story the Romans still would not go into battle before they had slaughtered a sheep and inspected its entrails for the omens. If the omens were bad they would postpone the attack. Part of the fascination of the study of the biblical prophets is to see how voices of sobriety and criticism can be heard within the noise of this superstition as the prophets emerge as revealers of God and moral guides. Criticism is the key; someone stands apart from the raving group and says, “The Emperor is wearing no clothes.” (For this reason I regard Hans Christian Andersen as Europe’s greatest philosopher and his “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” as the climax of Western philosophic thought).  

In Michaiah’s time there were scores of false prophets and few that were true. The former grew fat on the approval of powerful men, whose plans they endorsed, in groups that comforted them, the latter led a lonely life on the margins of power and grew thin in their integrity. The former were the forerunners of the Pharisees, the court preachers and the presidential advisors, the latter were the precursors of Jesus. For Jesus was also a prophet without honor in his own land and among his own people. He was, of course, a prophet and more than a prophet, the fulfillment of all the hope expressed in the true prophecy of the Bible, and despite, or perhaps because of that we rejected him decisively. One of the saddest things about us is our reluctance to accept the truth; we would rather sacrifice our children than admit that we were wrong. For that reason the prophets are without honor, especially if they are our friends or acquaintances.

Now I have been wondering what to say on this Fourth of July weekend to help us apply this Bible story to our lives. Clearly it testifies that those who are called to speak God’s word must not fail to speak truth to power, and those of us whose call is not that lofty are, nevertheless, expected to live our Christian lives not just as psychological beings, but also as political beings, and so must try to speak and do the truth as citizens as much as we try to speak and do the truth   in our inner lives and in our interpersonal relations.

Our story also brings to the fore the difficulty of telling truth from falsehood. Ours is the age of lies. Do you remember Mohammed Sahaf? He was the Iraqi information minister who went on television every day to declare categorically that there were no American forces in Bagdad, while those forces were shelling the building from which he was making his presentation and could be seen in the background of the picture.  He has achieved an ironic fame on the internet as a saint of the public relations industry. His operating principle was that if you tell a lie, make it a big one, and never apologize, never explain. Why does this remind me of our story? because he was, like the gang of encouraging prophets, only doing his job. Metaphorically he put on his horns every morning, like Zedekiah ben Chenaanah, and told the world that Saddam would triumph. 

Why does the story remind me of our current situation? Because it tells of two allies planning an invasion, of the weaker asking for more intelligence than the stronger offers, and then both rejecting that further evidence, which in the course of things turns out to be true. We have just seen two allies invade a third country for reasons that turned out to be fraudulent – no wmds discovered and no links with bin Laden demonstrated. The assurance that the local inhabitants would rise up to support the invasion and occupation is turning out to be false and costly in blood and treasure. The intelligence agencies that warned against this optimistic assessment - the DIA and the CIA- were neglected and a third intelligence entity was created within the Pentagon, the two year old Committee on Special Plans. This committee of nine specially selected interpreters of intelligence paid special attention to the input of the Iraqi expatriate Iraq National Congress, from which presumably the assurance of a popular uprising of support came, and whose leader Chalabi was flown into Iraq early on in the mistaken belief that he would be hailed by the populace. So on the one hand we have a group telling the rulers what they want to hear and assuring them of easy victory, and on the other the warning voices calling from within the intelligence community and from the public at large. We also have a ruler who refused to hear the negative “prophesying” -what the Pope and the leaders of most mainline Protestant churches had to say, would not even receive them , - but accepted the spiritual advice and support he wanted to hear from a chosen few. Why does this remind me of Ahab, Jehoshaphat and Micaiah ben Imlah?

Could it be because the two situations are essentially comparable, and that our Bible story is helping us to see the depths of our current history? If this is so then we have discovered another very important role that the prophet plays. He helps us to see the marks of God at work in history. The problem of true and false prophecy is the problem of telling when the history is of God and when not. In our day we have policy analysts working with intelligence data; in those days it was prophets pro and con. The only general rule they had was that if a prophet prophesied a negative outcome he was probably speaking the truth, if a positive outcome, we had to wait and see. The reason for this is clear, positive prophecy is in most instances self-serving, negative prophecy self-abnegating. This is the simple check known as cui bono (whose benefit?). The analysts who tell the boss what he has already decided he wants to hear are the counterparts of the prancing prophets of old.

Let’s stop here for the time being. Whatever else we have learned today we have surely seen that our God cannot be confined to the private sphere. All the world is His business, especially those places and times where and when we decide to kill one another. When those times and places are poisoned by moral fraud, as they always are more or less, they cannot be made immune from criticism by separating the religious from the political on principle. There is no separate sphere called the political that is beyond the purview of God’s Word. God has something to say to the nations, and those called and appointed to speak for Him must address the whole horizon of God’s concern.  Our Lord Jesus warns us that those who answer such a call will be without honor, especially among their friends and family. So be it. Let’s continue this journey next week.

Amen.