The humility of this answer is as conspicuous as its firmness. Its profound religiousness saves it from the charge of being defiant. Micaiah recognizes himself merely in the position of a servant or medium, who has nothing of his own to say; who is not called upon to invent an answer or to play the clever man in the presence of the kings. He was simply as a trumpet through which God could blow His own blast, or a pillar on which God would inscribe his own message, or a voice which God would use for the declaration of His own will. It is unjust to attribute obstinacy or any form of self-will or self-worship to Micaiah. If he had consulted his natural inclination alone, he would have sought favor with the king, and the logical effect of his subsequent position would have been that Ahab would have endeavored for ever to silence him by constituting him the prince and leader of the four hundred prophets. Micaiah said, in effect, what was said centuries afterward: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.”
Micaiah lived in God, for God, and had nothing of his own to calculate or consider. Until preachers realize this same spiritual independence, they will be attempting to accommodate themselves to the spirit of the times, and even the strongest of them may be betrayed into connivances and compromises fatal to personal integrity and to the claims of truth.
Now came the critical moment. Now it was to be seen whether Micaiah was to be promoted to honor, or thrust away in contempt and wrath. It is easy to read of the recurrence of such moments, but difficult to realize them in their agony. Yet these are the moments which make history in its sublimest lines.
It is not too much to say that there have been points of time at which if certain men had given way the whole economy of the world have been wrecked.
The king addressed himself to the prophet, saying: “Shall we go against Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall we forbear?” The answer of Micaiah must have been a surprise to all who heard it, for he said: “Go, and prosper; for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king.”
This is an answer which can not be understood in print. It was evident, however, that Ahab was in no doubt as to its meaning, for the tone of the prophet was a tone of almost contemptuous irony. If King Ahab had taken Micaiah’s literal answer, he would have gone forth to the battle comforting himself with the thought that he was carrying out the will of Heaven; but he knew in his own soul that Micaiah was not uttering that which expressed the reality of the case. With anger the king said unto him: “How many times shall I adjure thee that thou tell me nothing but that which is true in the name of the Lord?”
Then Micaiah replied in symbolic language, the full meaning of which was vividly clear to the mind of Ahab; for, turning to Jehoshaphat, he said: “Did I not tell thee that he would prophesy no good concerning me, but evil?”
Thereupon Micaiah charged the whole band of prophets with being under the inspiration of a lying spirit, and thus he put a stigma upon their judgment and extracted from it every particle of dignity and authority.
But this was not to be borne, for Zedekiah went near and smote Micaiah on the cheek and taunted him as being the only prophet in Israel. Micaiah had to bear the sarcasm conveyed in the inquiry: “Which way went the Spirit of the Lord from me to speak unto thee?”
Micaiah, like a true prophet, leaves his judgment to the decision of time. He will not stoop to argue, or to exchange words either of anger or of controversy; he simply says that Zedekiah will one day see the meaning of the whole prophecy, and until that day controversy would be useless.
Micaiah had to pay for his intrepidity. He was carried unto Amon, the governor of the city, and to Joash, the king’s son, and was to be put in prison and fed with the bread of affliction and with the water of affliction until Ahab returned in peace.
Micaiah thus disappears from history. Of his fate we know nothing; but there can be no difficulty in forecasting it a cruel death. Micaiah knew well the meaning of the king’s message. It may be difficult for the commentator to explain the expression, “bread of affliction and water of affliction,” but Micaiah knew the full meaning of the terms, and yet, while their cruel sound was in his ears, he looked at the king and said: “If thou return at all in peace, the Lord hath not spoken by me.”
Micaiah also made his appeal to the people, and thus committed himself to the verdict of history, saying: “Hearken, O people, every one of you.”