Central to the subject at hand must be the understanding that the witches do not make Macbeth do anything. All they do is greet Macbeth as the Thane of Glamis, as the Thane of Cawdor, and as the future king.
These are merely greetings, and because Macbeth does not know that he is either the Thane of Cawdor or the king, Macbeth, Banquo, and the audience take the greetings as prophecies. But a prophecy is not an invitation to murder. Nor is it even a suggestion that one is aggressively to seek out the office predicted for one. But that is exactly how Macbeth takes the prophecies. He calls them "supernatural soliciting," an invitation to se ' ek the kingship. However, Macbeth has had murder on his mind as a method of gaining the kingship, and in effect he therefore takes the predictions as a beckoning by supernatural powers to murder Duncan for the kingship.
But both the audience and Macbeth have been warned that the witches are dangerous and that their remarks must be carefully not carelessly construed. Banquo, just after Macbeth has been told of his creation as Thane of Cawdor and just before Macbeth calls the prophecies "supernatural soliciting," warns Macbeth that often "The instruments of darkness tell us truth; / Win us with honest trifles, to. betray's / In deepest consequence." In effect Banquo is telling Macbeth not to be led astray by the fact that one of the predictions has come true. The witches may be instruments of the devil, and everyone knows that no one must do what the devil tells him to do. This is made obvious at the beginning of this very scene. We may remember that the first witch wishes to punish a sailor's wife because the latter did not give her some chestnuts, which she wanted. She will punish the wife, whose husband is the captain of the Tiger, by tossing his ship about in the wind and causing him sleeplessness. He "Shall dwindle, peak, and pine: /Though his bark cannot be lost, / Yet it shall be tempest tost.
