Unlocking the Bible. David Pawson
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irrelevant dates and battles, but is a record of God’s people told from God’s point of view. It is not for mere academic interest either: it is absolutely vital for the whole of mankind.
Context
The book of Kings focuses on the third of the four phases in the national development of Israel’s leadership. As the Overview of the Old Testament explained (Geography), the first national leaders were patriarchs, from Abraham to Joseph, then came the prophets, from Moses to Samuel. Third came the kings, from Saul to Zedekiah, and finally the priests, from Joshua to Caiaphas.
The period of the kings is covered by four books in our English Bible:
1 Samuel: Samuel to Saul
2 Samuel: David
1 Kings: Solomon to Ahab
2 Kings: Ahab to Zedekiah
In the Hebrew Scriptures this leadership phase is covered by just two books, Samuel and Kings, with the break between Samuel and Kings cutting King Ahab’s reign in two and separating the prophet Elijah’s life and death. When the Old Testament was translated into Greek in 200 BC, the books became too long for one scroll. Hebrew words have only consonants, so the addition of vowels in the Greek made the books twice the length. Thus the breaks into 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings were determined more by translation than by design.
Kingdoms
In Hebrew the book is called the ‘Kingdoms’ of Israel, not ‘Kings’. The word ‘kingdom’ has a different meaning in Hebrew. In English it refers to a land over which a sovereign rules. Thus England is part of the United Kingdom under the reign of the Queen. In Hebrew, however, the word ‘kingdom’ refers to the reign of a monarch, so is defined in terms of authority not area, rule rather than realm.
Furthermore, the concept of a ‘reign’ in the Bible is very different from in the United Kingdom, where, under a constitutional monarchy, the Queen reigns but does not rule, the power residing in the elected government. The big advantage is that the armed forces and courts of law are not under the government directly, but are responsible to the Queen. The monarchy is valued not so much for the power it wields as for the power it keeps from others.
The kings of Israel, by contrast, had absolute power. They made the rules and commanded the armed forces. There was no parliament, no voting and no opposition parties. The king ruled by decree and not by debate. His influence over his subjects was total, and therefore his character and conduct shaped society during his rule. He stood as a representative of the nation before God, but also as a representative of God before the nation.
This meant a major change in the way the nation was evaluated. During the time described in Joshua, Judges and Ruth, there was a loose federation and the people were judged according to their actions. In Samuel and Kings, however, the king’s character and conduct decided the fate of the nation.
Selected history
Although the book is about the kings of Israel, it is not evenhanded in its allocation of space to each king. For example, Omri was a king in the north whom we know from other historical sources to have had an outstanding reign, creating an extraordinary economic turnaround for the nation. Yet the book of Kings dismisses him in eight verses, because he was deficient in the one area that mattered: he did evil in the sight of the Lord. Similarly, Jereboam II had a mini golden age in the north, yet he is given just seven verses for the same reason. On the other hand, Hezekiah, who was largely a good king, is given three chapters, a single prayer of Solomon covers 38 verses, and the stories of Elijah and Elisha, who were not kings at all, take up a third of the two books of Kings.
This apparently uneven treatment occurs because the writer is not driven by a conventional historical approach. We noted in our study of Joshua that any historian has to select what is important, make connections between the events or people he has selected, and then give an explanation as to why the events led on from each other. The writer of Kings is not interested in focusing on political, economic or military history, though he may mention all these in passing. Rather, he is concerned with two aspects of each king’s rule or kingdom:
1 Its spiritual qualities – worship, either of the God of Israel or idols
2 Its moral qualities – justice and morality, or their opposites
Prophetic history
Kings is the last of a collection of books known as the ‘former prophets’ in the Hebrew Bible and follows Joshua, Judges and Samuel. This is history from God’s viewpoint. Individuals and events are mentioned because God regards them as important and necessary for future generations. A man may be a brilliant politician or economist, but God is primarily interested in his belief and behaviour.
We could rightly term these books ‘holy history’, for they are a record with an abiding message and a story with an eternal moral. They offer us not just a lesson from history, but the lesson of history. Those who do not learn it are condemned to repeat it.
Universal truth
There are patterns in the history of Israel which can be universally applied. Take, for example, the length of the reign of each king mentioned in the book. A good king reigned on average for 33 years and a bad king on average for 11 years. From this we can derive the general principle that good rulers last longer than bad ones, since God is in ultimate control of history and can keep good kings on the throne.
There are exceptions – not every good king had a long reign and not every bad king had a short one – but the principle is generally true and can, indeed, still be seen in the length of time modern leaders rule.
The rise and fall of the nation
Kings covers some pivotal events in the history of God’s people which we need to note if we are to grasp the message of the book and understand the books which follow. The book of 2 Samuel and the early part of 1 Kings describe the powerful position of Israel on the world stage, but most of the book of Kings is concerned with the nation’s downfall. Under David and Solomon the nation was eventually united, and the empire stretched from Egypt to the Euphrates. At last the Israelites inhabited most of the land promised to Abraham 1,000 years before, and controlled more besides. But from Solomon’s time onwards they headed downhill, through civil war and a divided kingdom to exile in a foreign land.
The national split meant that the name Israel no longer referred to the whole nation, but only to the 10 tribes of the north. The southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin were known by the name of the larger one, Judah. This distinction continues through the rest of the Old Testament.
The southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin became known as ‘Jews’, derived from the tribal name Judah. Before this point the people were known collectively as ‘Hebrews’ or ‘Israelites’. This is an important distinction to bear in mind. In the New Testament John’s Gospel distinguishes between the Jews in the south and the Galileans in the north. It was the Jews in the south who were largely responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, not all the people of Israel per se.
A TALE OF TWO NATIONS
Kings covers the histories of these two ‘nations’. The spiritual and moral standards of the 10 tribes in the north steadily deteriorated, until Assyria sent them into exile. In the south the progression downwards is less marked. There were good kings such as Hezekiah and Josiah, but eventually they went the same way as the north and were taken away to Babylon. Their forefather Abraham had been called out of Ur – now they finished up where Abraham had begun, though this time as displaced persons.
It is a salutary lesson about how easy it is to lose what has been gained. Often the duration of the demise is much less than the time it took to reach the pinnacle.
The kingdom of Israel
The kingdom of Israel went through three stages, summarized in the table below.
1. United kingdom
2. Divided kingdom
10 tribes in the north –