bring it to pass at some future time, would the old prophet henceforth live. With it would he die and be

buried - laying his bones close to those of the "man of God," sharing his grave, and nestling, as it were, for

shelter in the shadow of that great Reality which "the man of God" had cast over Bethel. So would he, in life

and death, speak of, and cling to Jehovah - as the True and the Living God.

More than three hundred years later, and nearly a century had passed since the children of Israel had been

carried away from their homes. Then it was that what, centuries before, the "man of God" had foretold,

became literally true (2 Kings 23:15-18). The idol-temple, in which Jeroboam had stood in his power and

glory on that opening day, was burned by Josiah; the Bamoth were cast down; and on that altar, to defile it,

they gathered from the neighboring sepulchers the bones of its former worshippers, and burned them there.

Yet in their terrible search of vengeance one monument arrested their attention. They asked of them at

Bethel. It marked the spot where the bones of "the man of God" and of his host the "old prophet" of

Samaria224 lay.

And they reverently left the bones in their resting-places, side by side - as in life, death, and burial, so still

and for aye witnesses to Jehovah; and safe in their witness-bearing. But three centuries and more between

the prediction and the final fulfillment: and in that time symbolic rending of the altar, changes, wars, final

ruin, and desolation! And still the word seemed to slumber all those centuries of silence, before it was

literally fulfilled. There is something absolutely overawing in this absence of all haste on the part of God, in

this certainty of the final event, with apparent utter unconcern of what may happen during the long

centuries that intervene, which makes us tremble as we realize how much of buried seed of warning or of

promise may sleep in the ground, and how unexpectedly, but how certainly, it will ripen as in one day into a

harvest of judgment or of mercy.

But too many questions and lessons are involved in this history to pass it without further study. Who was

this "old prophet?" Was he a true prophet of Jehovah? And why did he thus "lie" to the destruction of the

"man of God?" Again, why was such severe punishment meted out to the "man of God?" Did he deserve

any for what might have been only an error of judgment? And why did his tempter and seducer apparently

escape all punishment? To begin with the old "prophet" of Bethel - we do not regard him as simply a false

prophet, whose object it was to seduce "the man of God," either from jealousy or to destroy the effect of his

On the other hand, it seems equally incorrect to speak of him as a true prophet of God, roused from sinful

conformity with those around by the sudden appearance of the Judean messenger of Jehovah, and anxious

to recover himself by fellowship with "the man of God," even if that intercourse could only be secured by

means of a falsehood.226

Nor would we describe his conduct as intended to try the steadfast obedience of the "man of God." The

truth seems to lie between these extreme opinions. Putting aside the general question of heathen divination,

which we have not sufficient materials satisfactorily to answer, it is at least certain that not every Navi was a

prophet of Jehovah. That God should have sent a message through one who was not His prophet, need not

surprise us when we recall the history of Balaam. Moreover, it was peculiarly appropriate, that the

announcement of guilt and punishment should come to the "man of God" through the person who had

misled him by false pretense of an angelic command, and at the very meal to which the "man of God" should

never have sat down. Again, it is evident that, from the moment he heard of the scene in the idol-temple, the

"old prophet" believed in the genuineness and authority of the message brought to Bethel. Every stage in

the history deepened this conviction, until at last it became, so to speak, the fundamental fact of his

religious life, which must have determined his whole after-conduct. May it not have been that this "old

Navi" was one of the fruits of the "Schools of the Prophets" - the prophetic order having apparently been

widely revived during the later part of Solomon's reign? Settling in Bethel (as Lot in Sodom), he may have

gradually lapsed into toleration of evil - as the attendance of his children in the idol-temple seems to imply -

without, however, surrendering his character, perhaps his office of "Prophet," the more so as the service of

Jehovah might be supposed to be only altered in form, not abolished, by the adoption of the symbol of the