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2 Chronicles 18 · a question people ask

Why did Micaiah first tell the king, "Go up, and prosper"?

In the text

The messenger had asked him, "Let your word therefore, please be like one of theirs, and speak good" (18:12), and Micaiah had sworn, "As the LORD lives, I will say what my God says" (18:13). Then, asked whether to go, he answers, "Go up, and prosper. They shall be delivered into your hand" (18:14), close to the prophets' own words: "Go up to Ramoth Gilead, and prosper; for the LORD will deliver it into the hand of the king" (18:11). The chapter doesn't say why he said it, or how. The king himself doesn't take it as the LORD's word: "How many times shall I adjure you that you speak to me nothing but the truth in the LORD’s name?" (18:15). Then Micaiah tells what he saw (18:16). The chapter says no more about his first answer, and these notes don't guess.

From Favor's study of 2 Chronicles 18

2 Chronicles 18: What my God says

2 Chronicles tells something 1 Kings doesn't: "Jehoshaphat cried out, and the LORD helped him; and God moved them to depart from him" (18:31). And in Hebrew moved there is the verb of 18:2, where Ahab "moved him to go up with him to Ramoth Gilead". Ahab moved him into the battle; God moved the enemy away from him.

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