To cite this parable as a proof of Jehovah’s commendation of lying is an absurdity.  Jehovah’s prophet Micaiah was there before the king, telling the simple truth to the king.  And, in order to meet effectively the claim of the false prophets that they were inspired, he related, as it were, a vision, or a parable, in which he declared that he had seen preparations making in heaven for their inspiring by a lying spirit.  This was, as every Oriental would understand it, a parliamentary way of calling the four hundred prophets a pack of liars; and the event proved that all of them were liars, and that Micaiah alone, as Jehovah’s prophet, was a truth-teller.  What folly could be greater than the attempt to count this public charge against the lying prophets as an item of evidence in proof of the Lord’s responsibility for their lying—­which the Lord’s prophet took this method of exposing and rebuking!

There are, indeed, various instances in the Bible story of lies told by men who were in favor with God, where there is no ground for claiming that those lies had approval with God.  The men of the Bible story are shown as men, with the sins and follies and weaknesses of men.  Their conduct is to be judged by the principles enunciated in the Bible, and their character is to be estimated by the relation which they sustained toward God in spite of their human infirmities.

Abraham is called the father of the faithful,[1] and he was known as the friend of God.[2] But he indulged in the vice of concubinage,[3] in accordance with the loose morals of his day and of his surroundings; and when he was down in Egypt he lied through his distrust of God, apparently thinking that there was such a thing as a “lie of necessity,” and he brought upon himself the rebuke of an Egyptian king because of his lying.[4] But it would be folly to claim that God approved of concubinage or of lying, because a man whom he was saving was guilty of either of these vices.  Isaac also lied,[5] and so did Jacob;[6] but it was not because of their lies that these men had favor with God.  David was a man after God’s own heart[7] in his fidelity of spirit to God as the only true God, in contrast with the gods of the nations round about Israel; but David lied,[8] as David committed adultery.[9] It would hardly be claimed, however, that either his adultery or his lying in itself made David a man after God’s own heart.  So all along the Bible narrative, down to the time when Ananias and Sapphira, prominent among the early Christians, lied unto God concerning their very gifts into his treasury, and were struck dead as a rebuke of their lying.[10]

[Footnote 1:  Josh. 24:3; Isa. 51:  2; Matt. 3:  9; Rom. 4:12; Gal. 3:9]

[Footnote 2:  2 Chron. 20:  7; Isa. 41:  8; Jas. 2:  23.]

[Footnote 3:  Gen. 16:  1-6.]

[Footnote 4:  Gen. 12:  10-19.]

[Footnote 5:  Gen. 26:  6-10.]

[Footnote 6:  Gen. 27:  6-29.]