Now an old prophet lived in Bethel. And his sons came and told him all that the man of God had done that day in Bethel. They also told to their father the words that he had spoken to the king.
Verse 11 moves from the king to a quiet household in Bethel, where an old prophet hears his sons' report of the day. One question hangs over everything that follows: why was a prophet of the Lord living in the town God had just condemned?
A prophet settled in the wrong place
The text gives no hint that this man joined in Jeroboam's calf worship. Commentators still point to where he lived as the root problem.
H. L. RossierAt Bethel there was an old prophet. He was not living there by command of the Lord, for the Lord was not using him in His service. He was living there with his family. Perhaps, we might even say probably, he had nothing to do with Jeroboam's false religion. But his presence alone at Bethel approved what was going on there, and the prophet from Judah understood this. Whether he wanted to be or not, the old prophet was tied to the evil. The result of that tie was that he, a prophet, was not let into the secret of God's thoughts. He learns them from others — from his sons who repeat the words of the Lord to him. God shows neither Himself nor His thoughts to a servant found in an association that dishonours Him.
Why he could not have been the messenger
One writer weighs the word "old" itself, and what living in a bad setting had cost him.
W. W. FeredayThe one who led the man of God from Judah astray was himself a prophet of the Lord. The Holy Spirit calls him "an old prophet" (1 Kings 13:11)… Like Lot before him, he lived in bad surroundings, and "bad company ruins good morals" (1 Cor. 15:33). Large numbers of godly people gave up everything in the Northern Kingdom to escape Jeroboam's idol worship. They went south into Judah and Jerusalem, where there was still some regard for the law of the Lord (2 Chron. 11:13-17). But the old prophet stayed in Bethel! … He was not the kind of man God could use to denounce in public the wickedness of Jeroboam and his followers. That is why there was a special mission for the man of God out of Judah.
Others put it as a simple question of consistency: how could he rebuke a darkness he shared in?
The Bible TreasuryThere was "an old prophet" in Israel at that time — another man of God, I have no doubt, but, like Lot, found in a place where he ought not to have been, and where he could not act in character as a prophet; for how could he reprove the darkness with which he was more or less in fellowship?
What the sons' report stirred up
One writer points to what the report touched in him, and to the faith he lacked.
Leslie M. GrantAn old prophet lived in Bethel. But he did not have the energy of faith to resist Jeroboam's idol worship. His sons told him of the man of God who came from Judah, what he had done and what he had spoken for the Lord to Jeroboam (v.11). These things clearly spoke to the old prophet's conscience. He thought he should have some contact with the man of God from Judah.
One writer names the motive underneath his interest in the man of God:
H. L. RossierWhat was his interest in acting this way against him? It was this: if the man of God would listen to him, it would be like a divine approval of his position at Bethel.
A danger that looked like kindness
The old prophet's appeal came wrapped in good things: age, hospitality, a shared calling, even a word said to come from an angel.
Hamilton SmithTo refuse such an appeal would appear to be slighting a fellow prophet. It would also look like disrespect for old age. And it would look like indifference to brotherly kindness that was so ready to show hospitality. Above all it would look like ignoring a direct word of the LORD given by an angel. Yet the story shows what lay behind all these plausible reasons that nature might plead. The enemy was at work to undermine the word of the Lord by drawing the man of God into a wrong association.
The first slip came earlier
One commentator points to something earlier still. The man of God sat down when God had never told him to.
William KellyHe was not told to sit under an oak. There was the beginning of it. There was his first failure, and there is no failure — there is no ruin — that takes place at one step. There is always a departure from the word of the Lord that exposes us to the power of the devil. And it is not first, I repeat, Satan's power. It is first our own failure, our own sin, our own disobedience.
Summary
- Dwelling. His sin was where he lived, not what he believed. Staying in Bethel approved what God had just condemned.
- Barrenness. Because of where he lived, God passed him over. He heard the day's news from his sons, not from the Lord.
- Silence. He was not a man God could use against Jeroboam's evil, so the special mission went to a man from Judah.
- Seduction. Unable to speak for God, he worked to draw the man of God into his own position — approval by association.
- Sitting. The man of God's ruin began with a pause under an oak that God never ordered. No collapse happens in one step.