Theopedia

2 Kings

For the LORD removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants the prophets.

— 2 Kings 17:23

Overview

2 Kings continues the account begun in 1 Kings without a narrative break, carrying the story from Elijah’s ascension through the fall of both the northern and southern kingdoms to the Babylonian exile.1 1 and 2 Kings originally formed a single work, belonging in the Hebrew canon to the Former Prophets alongside Joshua, Judges, and Samuel, a grouping that carries the whole narrative from the conquest of Canaan to the exile.1 2 Kings narrates the ministry of Elisha, the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom in 722 BC, the reforms and failures of Judah’s later kings, and the Babylonian conquest of Judah in 586 BC.

Timeline

  • Elijah’s ascension; Elisha’s succession: Elijah is taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire, and Elisha receives a double portion of his spirit to carry on his prophetic office (2 Kings 2).
  • Elisha’s miracles among Israel’s kings and people: Elisha multiplies a widow’s oil, raises a Shunammite woman’s son, and purifies a deadly pot of stew, ministering to ordinary Israelites and kings alike (2 Kings 4).
  • Naaman healed of leprosy: The Syrian commander Naaman is healed of leprosy after washing seven times in the Jordan at Elisha’s instruction, and confesses the LORD as the only God (2 Kings 5).
  • Jehu’s purge of Ahab’s house: Anointed by one of Elisha’s prophets, Jehu executes Joram, Jezebel, and the rest of Ahab’s dynasty, ending Baal worship’s official sponsorship in Israel (2 Kings 9-10).
  • Joash repairs the temple: Rescued as an infant from Athaliah’s massacre of the royal line, Joash is crowned king under the priest Jehoiada and later repairs the temple (2 Kings 11-12).
  • Assyria conquers Samaria: After roughly two hundred fifty years of state-sponsored idolatry beginning with Jeroboam, Assyria conquers Samaria and deports the northern kingdom’s population (2 Kings 17).
  • Hezekiah’s reforms and deliverance: Hezekiah purges idolatry from Judah and, besieged by Sennacherib’s Assyrian army, sees the LORD strike down the besieging force overnight (2 Kings 18-19).
  • Manasseh’s apostasy: Hezekiah’s son Manasseh reverses his father’s reforms, filling Jerusalem with idolatry and innocent blood during Judah’s longest reign (2 Kings 21).
  • Josiah finds the law and reforms the nation: A forgotten book of the law is discovered during temple repairs; Josiah tears his clothes in grief and leads Judah’s last great covenant reform (2 Kings 22-23).
  • Judah falls under Egyptian, then Babylonian, pressure: After Josiah’s death in battle, a rapid succession of weak kings brings Judah first under Egyptian, then Babylonian, domination (2 Kings 23-24).
  • Nebuchadnezzar destroys Jerusalem: After a long siege, Babylon breaches Jerusalem’s walls, burns the temple and city, and deports most of Judah’s remaining population (2 Kings 25).
  • Jehoiachin released from prison: In the thirty-seventh year of his captivity, the exiled Davidic king Jehoiachin is released from a Babylonian prison and given a seat above the other captive kings (2 Kings 25:27-30).

Author and Date

Like 1 Kings, 2 Kings names no author, and Jewish tradition’s ascription to Jeremiah rests on the overlap between Jeremiah’s closing chapter and 2 Kings 24:18-25:30 rather than firm evidence of common authorship.2 The book’s own final datable notice, the release of the exiled king Jehoiachin in the thirty-seventh year of his captivity (2 Kings 25:27), places the writer during the Babylonian exile itself, since no word is given of the exile’s approaching end.2 The probable date of composition is accordingly placed in the first half of the Babylonian captivity.3

Historical and Literary Context

2 Kings covers the coexistence of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah and then the kingdom of Judah alone after Israel’s fall to Assyria.4 The northern kingdom’s history, established in idolatry as a matter of state policy by Jeroboam and continued by every dynasty that followed him, ended after roughly two hundred fifty years when Assyria conquered Samaria and deported its population (2 Kings 17:6).5

In the south, Judah experienced an alternation of faithful and idolatrous kings even as Assyrian pressure mounted.5 It was during the reign of the reforming king Hezekiah that the northern kingdom fell, opening the book’s final period, the history of Judah alone.5 Hezekiah’s own reforms were vigorous, but the nation relapsed into idolatry after his death, and the later reforms of Josiah, the last faithful king, could not reverse the kingdom’s decline.5 Judah was in turn overthrown by Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon, and its people carried into exile, an event generally placed near 586 BC.5 The Latter Prophets, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah among them, largely deliver their oracles during the period this book narrates, supplying the theological commentary that Kings itself states more simply in its own historical report.1

Structure

2 Kings falls into three movements, continuing directly from 1 Kings:4

  1. The ministry of Elisha and the divided kingdom (chs. 1-17): Elijah’s ascension and Elisha’s succession to his prophetic office, Elisha’s miracles among Israel’s kings and ordinary people, and the worsening apostasy of the northern kingdom under successive dynasties, ending in the Assyrian conquest of Samaria and deportation of Israel.
  2. Judah’s kings under Assyrian and then Babylonian pressure (chs. 18-23): the reforms of Hezekiah and his deliverance from Sennacherib, the apostasy of Manasseh, the reforms of Josiah, and the succession of weak kings under whom Judah fell first under Egyptian, then Babylonian, domination.
  3. The fall of Jerusalem and its aftermath (chs. 24-25): Nebuchadnezzar’s successive deportations, the destruction of the temple and the city, and the closing notice of Jehoiachin’s release from a Babylonian prison.

Major Themes

The prophetic word is fulfilled in the history it narrates

The book repeatedly presents Israel’s kings acting under prophetic warning and Israel’s history unfolding as that warning is realized: the northern kingdom falls “for the LORD removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants the prophets” (2 Kings 17:23).3

Covenant curses are realized in exile

Israel’s persistent disobedience “brings to a conclusion the covenantal curses” set out in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28:15-68.1 2 Kings narrates that conclusion in historical form: first the Assyrian deportation of the northern kingdom, then the Babylonian exile of Judah, both read by the book’s own theology as covenantal judgment rather than mere political misfortune (2 Kings 17:7-23).

A remnant of hope closes the book

2 Kings does not end with the destruction of Jerusalem itself but with a notice, dated to the thirty-seventh year of the exile, that the Babylonian king Evil-merodach released the captive Davidic king Jehoiachin from prison, spoke kindly to him, and gave him a seat above the other captive kings in Babylon (2 Kings 25:27-30).6 Read in the context of God’s covenant with David, this closing notice has been taken to signal that the Davidic line, though humbled, had not been extinguished, and that a future remained open for it beyond the judgment the book has just narrated at length.6

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Oren Rhea Martin, “The Land Promise in God’s Redemptive Plan: Part 1, The Old Testament,” in “Bound for the Kingdom: The Land Promise in God’s Redemptive Plan” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2013), 179: “Theologically the prophets proclaim the word of Yahweh in the context of the covenant, primarily as defined by Deuteronomy, and Israel’s disobedience ‘brings to a conclusion the covenantal curses’ (e.g., Lev 26; Deut 28:15-68).” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 255: “The author of the books of Kings is unknown. Jewish tradition ascribes them to Jeremiah, perhaps on the ground that the last chapter of Jeremiah is mostly a repetition of 2 Kings from chap. 24:18 to the end of the book. But Jeremiah and the author of these books may both have made use of common documents. We only know that the writer lived after the accession of Evil-merodach to the throne of Babylon (2 Kings 25:27), and during the full pressure of the Babylonish captivity, since he nowhere gives any intimation of its approaching close.” ↩ ↩2

  3. Barrows, 249-250. ↩ ↩2

  4. Barrows, 253-254. ↩ ↩2

  5. Barrows, 252-253. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  6. Martin, “The Beginning and the End: Situating the Land Promise in Redemptive History,” in “Bound for the Kingdom,” 95: “the book of 2 Kings ends with Judah in exile and gives an account of the last member of the Davidic dynasty, Jehoiachin. The narrative of Kings opens with the hopeful beginning of Solomon’s reign and ends with a glimpse of hope for the future.” ↩ ↩2