I KINGS 22:19-23

Q: Does this passage actually teach that God takes part in purposeful lies?

There are actually three other problematic passages that involve God sending a deceiving spirit to cause false prophets to give false testimonies. This happens in the parallel passage in II Chronicles 18:18-22; Deuteronomy 13:1-3; and Ezekiel 14:7-11.

In the first of these passages, a heavenly agent of God (probably an angel) volunteers to lure the evil King Ahab to his death by placing a lying spirit in Ahab's prophets so that they will falsely prophesy success in battle. God agrees to the plan. As in Job 1-2, God is seen to be ultimately responsible for all actions in heaven or on earth, whether we interpret them as good or bad from our perspective. However, much of what we call evil falls under God's permissive will accomplished by other parties rather than as a result of His direct will and action.

In the Deuteronomy passage, Moses states that if false prophets tell the people of Israel that they should turn to other gods, they should not listen to them because God is testing their loyalty to Him. The prophets, however, still apparently have control over their own actions since they are to be stoned as punishment. It is uncertain, then, whether God actually enticed them into speaking falsehoods, especially in light of the direct teaching in James 1:13 that “God tempts no man.”

The Ezekiel passage concerns a situation in which people reject the teachings of God's true prophets and seek after false prophets instead. Ezekiel states that God will mislead them even further into speaking falsehoods and that they will be punished along with those who consult them.

All three of these passages are similar to the Exodus story of God's hardening pharaoh's heart after pharaoh had already hardened his own heart in order to show up his disobedience in even stronger contrast before judging him. John Wenham in his book The Enigma of Evil puts it this way: “Language which speaks of God sending lying spirits highlights the fact that God's attitude toward sin is not passive, allowing it to go on undisturbed. God is active; he so orders circumstances that sin is brought out into the open and judged. From the standpoint of those who listened, therefore, the lying spirits are said to have been sent by God, though from the viewpoint of the spirits themselves they were merely allowed to do what they wanted to do.” This same general process is taught in the New Testament in 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12.