He said unto him, I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the LORD, saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied unto him.
An angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord. This circuitous mode of speaking, instead of simply saying, 'the Lord spake to me,' was adopted to hide an equivocation, to conceal a double meaning-an inferior sense given to the word angel-to offer a seemingly superior authority to persuade the prophet, while really the authority was secretly, known to the speaker to be inferior. The "angel," i:e., the messenger, was his own sons, who were worshippers, perhaps priests at Beth-el; and as this man was governed by self-interest, and wished to curry favour with the king, whose purpose to adhere to his religious polity, he feared, might be shaken by the portents that had occurred, his hastening after the prophet of Judah, the deception he practiced, and the urgent invitation by which, on the ground of a falsehood, he prevailed on the too facile man of God to accompany him back to his house in Beth-el, were to create an impression in the king's mind that he was an impostor, who acted in opposition to his own statement.