The lying spirit

1 Kings 22:19-23

1 Kings 22:19-23, in every translation this tool compares.

First, in plain English

A prophet describes God asking a room for volunteers. One spirit steps forward with a plan to fool a king's prophets into promising him a victory he will not get. God approves the plan and sends it out. The whole scene is told as the reason the king is about to die.

What the text says

Micaiah sees Yahweh enthroned with the host around him. Yahweh asks for a volunteer, and a spirit steps forward with a plan to deceive Ahab's prophets, so a prophet reports a council scene, with a deliberation and an assignment, as the reason a king is about to die. McCarter treats the unnamed spirit of 1 Kings 22:21 as a rare personified, semi-independent council member, distinct from the unpersonified "evil spirit" that torments Saul (1 Samuel 16:14-23; 18:10-11; 19:9), which reads better as a psychological or narrative device than an individual being. He points to one near parallel: Eliphaz's night apparition in Job 4:12-21, a spirit with a discernible form that lectures him on the corruptibility of God's own angels without any stated divine commission.

Ancient Near Eastern background

McCarter cites the Mesopotamian contrast between the "good wind" (shar tabu) and the "evil wind" (shar lemnu), the latter epitomized by a standard set of seven evil spirits blamed for human misfortune, as the closest ancient Near Eastern parallel to Israel's "evil spirit from Yahweh." Micaiah's scene itself, a spirit volunteering inside a convened royal council, has no exact Mesopotamian counterpart in the sources DDD surveys.

Where it appears

1 Kings 22:19-23
2 Chronicles 18:18-22
2 Kings 19:7

Sources

Heiser, *Unseen Realm*, on the council at work
P. K. McCarter, DDD s.v. "Evil Spirit of God," 319 (DDD's "Spirit" headword is only a cross-reference to Holy Spirit)