The prophet intends to carry out a ruse to get the king's attention and to set a scene to illustrate the pronouncement he's going to make against him. Before going out to find the king, the prophet asks a man to wound him so he will appear to have been involved in the battle. "By the word of the Lord one of the company of the prophets said to his companion, 'Strike me with your weapon,' but he refused. So the prophet said, 'Because you have not obeyed the Lord, as soon as you leave me a lion will kill you.' And after the man went away, a lion found him and killed him." (1 Kings 20:35-36)
This seems like a very strange event but the author of 1 Kings makes it clear to us that the prophet was given a message from the Lord and that the Lord directed him to set a particular scene for the king of Israel. This prophet asked "his companion" (another prophet) to strike him and the other prophet refused. If the man who refused did not realize this was a command of the Lord, then he was not a true prophet or else he lacked enough faith to ever be an effective prophet. If he cannot obey the Lord's word spoken through a prophet he knows and trusts, how will he ever be able to stand up and proclaim the Lord's message to unbelievers? Prophets in the Bible must be so full of faith that they can stand face to face with wicked kings to deliver the Lord's word. The man who ends up eaten by a lion might have become a liability to the whole company of prophets at some later date, perhaps betraying them somehow due to his lack of faith.
The first prophet asks another man to strike him and he obeys. "The prophet found another man and said, 'Strike me, please.' So the man struck him and wounded him. Then the prophet went and stood by the road waiting for the king. He disguised himself with his headband down over his eyes." (1 Kings 20:37-38) This man may be a known prophet in Israel since he has to disguise himself in order to approach the king. If the king realizes he's a prophet standing by the roadway waiting to speak with him, he might pass him by, not interested in hearing anything he might have to say. Worse yet, he could order him killed if he's in the mood to do so, since Queen Jezebel would like to see all the prophets of the Lord killed.
"As the king passed by, the prophet called out to him, 'Your servant went into the thick of the battle, and someone came to me with a captive and said, 'Guard this man. If he is missing, it will be your life for his life, or you must pay a talent of silver.' While your servant was busy here and there, the man disappeared.'" (1 Kings 20:39-40a) This isn't the first time we've seen a prophet present a fictional story to get a king's attention. Remember when the prophet Nathan presented a fictional legal case to King David in order to get him to face up to his sins of adultery and murder? (This occurred in 2 Samuel 12 if you're interested in rereading it.) The prophet in today's passage tells Ahab, "An enemy soldier was captured and placed in my custody but I lost him. I was warned that if I lost him I'd be executed if I could not pay a talent of silver." This is approximately seventy-five pounds of silver and at today's prices would be worth $28,416! There's no way a soldier of King Ahab's day would have had that kind of money at his disposal; even in our own day that's more than a lot of people make in a year working full-time. So if the man telling this story had really been a soldier and if he had really lost a prisoner in his custody, losing the prisoner meant certain death because he could not have paid a talent of silver.
King Ahab assumes the man is bringing his case before him hoping to be granted a pardon. But the king feels the man brought his own trouble upon himself. If the man knew he could not pay a talent of silver, he should never have let the prisoner out of his sight. "'That is your sentence,' the king of Israel said. 'You have pronounced it yourself.'" (1 Kings 20:40b)
"Then the prophet quickly removed the headband from his eyes, and the king of Israel recognized him as one of the prophets. He said to the king, 'This is what the Lord says: 'You have set free a man I had determined should die. Therefore it is your life for his life, your people for his people.'" (1 Kings 20:41-42) The prophet exposes King Ahab's hypocrisy. Ahab believes the fictional soldier in the story deserved to die because he lost an enemy prisoner who had been condemned to death. But Ahab was well aware that the Lord wanted the Syrian army defeated and its king executed, yet he failed to complete the mission and he made a peace treaty with the king. Ahab is no different than the fictional soldier who allowed a prisoner to escape. If the soldier was duty-bound to obey the orders of a military superior, how much more was Ahab duty-bound to obey the orders of God?
As we noted earlier, this is not the first time we've found a prophet presenting a fictional case to a king. But unlike King David, King Ahab doesn't repent of his sin. "Sullen and angry, the king of Israel went to his palace in Samaria." (1 Kings 20:43) The prophecy against King Ahab will be fulfilled in Chapter 22 in a military conflict with the very nation with which Ahab made a treaty in Chapter 20.
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