Throughout Kings, various prophets counsel, instruct, warn, and foretell the future to remind the Israelite rulers (and the reader) that God’s Word was the supreme authority and power in Israel. Many named and unnamed prophets play significant roles in the narrative, but Elijah and Elisha take center stage. They were raised up by God during the reign of Ahab’s house (Israel’s deepest period of apostasy) to call the Northern Kingdom in particular to return to God and His word. 

1. The book of Kings was written during the exile to explain why Israel and Judah were in exile.

In the Hebrew Bible, the book of Kings—understood as 1 and 2 Kings together—is the last book in the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings). These books narrate Israel’s history from her arrival in the land God had promised to her removal from the land during the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles. The earliest that Kings could have been composed in its final form was after King Jehoiachin’s release from prison in 561 BC (2 Kings 25:27), and because it does not mention the return from exile, it likely was written at some point in the second half of the Babylonian exile.

Kings is theological history, explaining why God gave His people over to foreign nations. The answer is oft repeated: from the time of the division of the kingdom after Solomon’s reign, God’s people and their rulers “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins that they committed” (1 Kings 14:22). Even when a godly king occasionally arose, his descendants continued the spiritual decline of Israel/Judah. The extended theological commentary in 2 Kings 17:7–23 summarizes the message of the whole book: “And this [exile] occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced” (vv. 7–8).

There are no explicit promises or prophecies of any return from exile in Kings, yet Jehoiachin’s release at the end of the book foreshadows a happy ending. As we read in Deuteronomy 4:25–31 and throughout the writing prophets, that ending would indeed come, ultimately in the arrival of great David’s greater Son, Jesus Christ, who sits eternally on David’s throne.

2. Kings isn’t just about kings; it’s also about prophets.

The rise of Israel’s monarchy brought in its wake the flowering of the prophetic office, and for good reason: rebellious kings needed to hear God’s words of warning, and faithful kings needed to hear God’s words of encouragement.

Read More