The behaviour of this unnamed prophet is unusual, if not unique. His words are addressed not to any person but to the altar upon which Jeroboam’s sacrifices were being offered. The ESV says, The man cried against the altar.
The Hebrew verb has the sense of calling out, proclaiming, or crying as in a public announcement. The proclamation that is made is a predictive prophecy that a member of the house of David named Josiah will sacrifice the bones of the illegitimate priests of the line Jeroboam appointed upon this altar.
The most striking thing about this statement is that it predicts an event that was more than three hundred years in the future, and yet, it gives the name of the man who will do this. The only parallel to naming a future individual is Isaiah’s naming Cyrus, the king of Persia, as the one who would give permission for the Jewish exiles to return to their homeland.
The startling nature of the prophetic utterance may overshadow and obscure an equally important issue. This issue the swiftness with which the Lord's favour turned away from Jeroboam when he rebelled against God is the establishment of idolatrous worship.
It may have been in Rehoboam’s mind that he was merely being wise in securing his rule over Israel by providing an alternative to Jerusalem-centred worship. It was in reality both rebellion against God’s law and a faithless refusal to believe the promise that the Lord would establish his kingdom. Rehoboam had turned his back on Yahweh, and Yahweh turned his back upon Jeroboam.
Returning to the prophetic word itself, we must understand that the event predicted would take place three hundred years after the word was spoken. Many people have the mistaken idea that the phrase Old Testament times
refers to a relatively compact epoch. In reality it refers to a period that embraces all time from the creation to the ministry of the prophet Malachi. The point is this: no one who heard the man of God speak that day would be alive in the time of Josiah.
Nevertheless, God had other things to do that would give reason to pay attention to the prediction. The following verses inform us of these matters.
2 And the man cried against the altar by the word of the LORD and said, “O altar, altar, thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and he shall sacrifice on you the priests of the high places who make offerings on you, and human bones shall be burned on you.’”