It may not be that the Weird Sisters actually want Macbeth to be king, but that they want to see what he will be willing to do to make himself the king: they want to see to what lengths he will go to make the "prophecy" come true. They say, before their meeting with Macbeth, that "Fair is foul and foul is fair"; in other words, good things will seem bad and bad things will...
It may not be that the Weird Sisters actually want Macbeth to be king, but that they want to see what he will be willing to do to make himself the king: they want to see to what lengths he will go to make the "prophecy" come true. They say, before their meeting with Macbeth, that "Fair is foul and foul is fair"; in other words, good things will seem bad and bad things will seem good. Therefore, when they tell Macbeth that he will be king, it seems really good; however, we know that they were planning to manipulate him and that the appearance of goodness likely means that their "prophecy" is actually foul in nature.
Even Banquo is suspicious of the Sisters' motives; he warns Macbeth that "oftentimes, to win us to our harm, / The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray 's / In deepest consequence" (1.3.125-129). In other words, it's possible that the Sisters told him one smaller truth (that he would be Thane of Cawdor) in order to get him to believe whatever else they said (that he would be king). Therefore, it isn't so much that the Weird Sisters want Macbeth to ascend to the throne, but that they think it will be entertaining to see if they can corrupt him by telling him that he will.
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