1 & 2 Kings

Lynn Jost

• Publisher: Herald Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781513802633
• eBook ISBN: 9781513802640
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Violence on the streets. Military expansion. Consumerism. Policies exploiting people and natural resources. Harassment and abuse: 1 & 2 Kings could hardly be more relevant. In the thirty-fourth volume of the Believers Church Bible Commentary series, Old Testament scholar Lynn Jost claims 1 & 2 Kings were written to form a community that would embrace the Ten Commandments and the Great Shema and would champion righteousness and compassion. Jost traces the characteristics of royal justice, with its systems of excess and indulgence, as well as the court intrigue, succession politics, interfamily rivalries, and prophetic judgment that mark the books. Through it all, Israel remains in a covenant relationship with a delivering God. Through it all, God calls the leaders and the people to practice justice, protect shalom, and live righteously. In vivid and accessible prose, Jost invites pastors, scholars, and lay readers to read 1 & 2 Kings as books of promise—ones that gesture toward a faithful God who rescues, judges, commands, and provides.

About the Believers Church Bible Commentary series
This readable commentary series is for all who seek more fully to understand the original message of Scripture and its meaning for today—Sunday school teachers, members of Bible study groups, students, pastors, and other seekers.

–From the Series Foreword

Introduction to 1–2 Kings

The situation: Citizens, including political and intellectual leaders, exiled through war and conquest. Government buildings in ruins. An economic system where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The power of the state used to damage and silence political opposition. Government policies favoring the cronies of the political establishment and suppressing any opposition. Mushrooming expenditures by the military-industrial complex, creating huge budget deficits and endangering the economy. Growing xenophobia, with foreigners exploited or denied entry. Leaders following the advice of cronies rather than experts. Citizen being divided from citizen, fomenting hatred and distrust. Nations destroyed by their superpower neighbors. Are these contemporary headlines, captions from the books of 1–2 Kings, or both? The question of justice to protect the marginalized or policies to enrich the powerful runs through today’s news feeds and the biblical books of Kings. No biblical books address contemporary readers with more urgency than 1–2 Kings.

Kings is the final installment of a national narrative that not only analyzes the tragedy but also explores the deepest purpose of human existence. The exiles mentioned at the end of Kings face critical issues of identity: retribution (evil as punishment for sin), theodicy (why bad things happen to good people), leadership (kings, priests, or prophets), and worship (religious faith without a temple). These significant issues pale next to the question, What is the purpose of humans created in the image of God? Written in the crisis of the Babylonian exile, 1–2 Kings grapples with the question, What has God called humans to do in the world?

Just as Harry Potter aficionados make sense of the seventh novel after reading the first six in the series, so readers of Kings need orientation to enter Israel’s story generations after it begins. Moses’ last will and testament, Deuteronomy, establishes Yahweh’s covenant, which sets conditions for Israel’s success or failure in the land of Canaan (the geographical area often called Palestine). Joshua, Judges, and Samuel narrate the ups and downs of entry, land possession, and establishment of the monarchy. Then 1–2 Kings provides the last installment of the national narrative of life in Palestine, from the glorious reign of Solomon, through the divided kingdom, and ultimately exile for both Israel (722 bce) and Judah (586 bce).

Here 1–2 Kings also completes a story that begins with creation. God creates humans in the image of God, blessed to represent God and fulfill God’s purposes (Gen 1:27-28). God renews the blessing to Abraham and articulates the whole human vocation—to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice (Gen 12:3; 18:19). The Kings narrative explores the outcome of the creation mandate and explains how and why Abraham’s descendants ended in exile.

Though this narrative ends in exile, the Deuteronomic covenant foresees this outcome. Anticipation of the event demonstrates that exile is not the end of life—and proves that national institutions are penultimate to God’s universal human vocation (Deut 4:25-31; 30:1-5). All humanity is to demonstrate covenant love for God by imitating God’s love for marginalized people (10:12-21). What is required? Fear, love, and serve Yahweh your God with heart and soul, keep the Lord’s commandments, and walk in all God’s ways (cf. 10:12-13). This vocation to imitate Yahwistic justice offers meaning when institutions disintegrate.

Composition

Occasion for Writing Kings

Readers of 1–2 Kings find themselves about twenty-five years after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 bce (the most important date for OT interpretation, says Brueggemann [1997: 614; 2014b: 4–5]). Thus 1–2 Kings probes the question posed by Yahweh to Solomon: Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this house? (1 Kings 9:8; cf. Deut 29:24). Within the question lie several issues of theological tension within 1–2 Kings. Foremost is the question of how to understand the exile. Does this exile result from divine judgment or from other national political and military power? The perspective of Kings is that the exile is the result of God’s judgment on faithless people—not the superior power of the empires and their gods. The precise nature of that unfaithfulness has been grounded in several issues. Improper worship, including the idolatrous sins of Jeroboam and worship on the high places (in Judah), transgresses the Deuteronomic stipulation of worship in a single place chosen by the Lord (Deut 12; 2 Kings 17:7-23). Alliances with foreign powers, including emptying the treasury or taxing the populace to pay tribute, transgress the Deuteronomic prohibition on alliances (Deut 7:1-5). The issue about whether God’s promises are unconditional (as they were for David: 1 Kings 11:36) or conditioned on obedient faithfulness (1 Kings 9:4-9) factors into the question of exile. The question of the most important institution involves the relative significance of the land, the Torah, the priesthood, the temple, the monarchy, the wisdom of the sages, and the prophets.

Objective of Kings

The thesis of this commentary is that the purpose of 1–2 Kings is to refocus the human vocation. The place of Kings as the climax of the grand creation-to-exile story narrated from Genesis to Kings substantiates this claim. The Creator blesses human creation with the mandate to represent God as the image of God by practicing justice and righteousness (Gen 1:27-28; 18:19). The Deuteronomic covenant rests in a relationship of love and obedience most clearly demonstrated by the practice of justice and righteousness for the marginalized (Deut 10:12-21). The Kings narrative evaluates human faithfulness to this vocation. Read in the context of Deuteronomic theology, 1–2 Kings offers hope that the human vocation is even greater than Israelite identity or prosperity. God renews the call to practice justice.

As the concluding chapter in both the creation narrative and the story of Israel in the Promised Land, Kings demonstrates that the future of God’s people does not depend on monarchy, priesthood, temple, life in the land, or even the Torah. Rather, God calls all humanity to live in covenant by practicing justice for the marginalized. The radical hospitality stipulated in Deuteronomy for all marginalized people, including strangers outside the bounds of Israel, is demonstrated in the Kings narrative, particularly the Elijah-Elisha narratives.

Authorship and Date

Clues to authorship and date of Kings come from its contents. Second Kings 25:27-30 reports contemporaneous events in 562 bce in Babylon. Debate about the provenance of Kings is inconclusive, but this commentary assumes a Babylonian exilic audience wrestling with the identity questions listed above. Kings is the final installment of Israel’s epic narrative known as the Former Prophets in the Hebrew canon (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings). Informed by the covenant of Deuteronomy, these books are known as the Deuteronomistic History (DtrH) [Kings in the Hebrew Canon: Kings in the Deuteronomistic History, p. 453].

Though the “author” of the final form of Kings (and DtrH) is likely an editorial school or tradition shaped by Deuteronomy, resolution of the question is tentative. Noth theorized that DtrH was composed by a single individual living in Palestine early in the exile (about 560 bce), using written and oral traditions. Cross postulated two editions of DtrH: Dtr1, written with optimism during Josiah’s reign; and Dtr2, a final form, rewritten in the pessimism of exile (Cross; Nelson 1981a: 127–28). The Scandinavian school theorizes three editorial layers: an original exilic author (DtrH), edited in a prophetic (DtrP) outlook, and later revised with a nomistic perspective (DtrN, concerned with law; Smend, Dietrich, and Veijola). Other scholars theorize that a synchronistic narrative history was written during the reign of Jehoshaphat, that the negative Jehuide perspective regarding the Omride dynasty was incorporated by the scribes of Hezekiah and Josiah as apologetic pieces supporting their reigns, and that an exilic edition of 1–2 Kings was a final form (Halpern and Lemaire: 151–53). Steven McKenzie, in reviewing these alternatives, describes “the tension between Dtr’s imagined role as author and editor” as “a point of ambivalence” in modern scholarship “from the start” (McKenzie 2006: 526).

Among related issues are whether the author(s)/editor(s) were from the Levites (country preachers), of a prophetic school, the people of the land, or leaders in Jerusalem influenced by northern materials and whether they lived in Palestine or Babylon (Fretheim 1983: 17; Geoghegan: 118). Nicholson theorizes that northern Levites came to Jerusalem, were proclaiming the Mosaic covenant, and supported the reforms of Hezekiah. Based on her reading of Jeremiah 39, 52, and 2 Kings 24–25, Dutcher-Walls suggests that factions within the royal-priestly administration debated policy based on opposing theological convictions. The Jeremiah faction, based on the conditional covenant anticipating divine judgment, lost the policy battle (favoring accommodation to Babylon) but prevailed in DtrH (Dutcher-Walls 1991: 92).

Because 1–2 Kings incorporates material contemporaneous with events that traverse nearly four centuries, a primary question about authorship has to do with use of sources. More radical scholars (e.g., P. Davies, Thompson) read 1–2 Kings as fiction created centuries later, with little concern for the historical events; yet the reading offered here presupposes a series of editions of the history of Kings, each incorporating and reworking inherited material, completed by an author or editor (or several) who bequeaths us a document much like canonical 1–2 Kings.

Structure and Purpose

Kings accounts for the failure of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in theological terms. Exile is primarily understood not as a result of political factors but as an act of God in response to human behavior. The structure of the book reinforces this.

First Kings opens with Solomon’s reign over a united Israel and Judah under the Davidic dynasty. A positive perspective of Solomon’s initial rule shows a faithful, wise heir of the exemplary David (2:1-4; 3:3-7, 14; 11:6, 33-39). This perspective views the narrative centrality of Solomon’s temple building and dedication as evidence of divine blessing (8:9-13). The perspective followed in this commentary deems Deuteronomic, Yahwistic justice as the primary measure of faithfulness and perceives a sometimes subtle critique of Solomon’s monarchic administration (justice, Heb. mišpaṭ, pronounced “mishpat”), one that often follows another Davidic mandate (2:5-9) [Mišpaṭ, p. 461]. The sometimes subtle (or perhaps ambivalent) characterization of Solomon explodes into unambiguous negative evaluation of kings that follow in the divided monarchy (1 Kings 12 to 2 Kings 17).

The stylized structure of the divided-kingdom narrative follows the framework of the opening and concluding royal formulas [Chronology: Synchronization, p. 440]. More significant is that all the northern kings (in Israel) are evaluated as having failed to serve the Lord, nearly all for the sins of Jeroboam, exchanging Torah obedience and temple worship for the idolatry of monarchic injustice. The ledger of the southern kings of Judah is mixed, with the more positive evaluation of having done what was right in the sight of the Lord as David had done (1 Kings 15:11), though with the caveat except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite (15:5) as a subtext. The Southern Kingdom, though politically and militarily subordinate to the Northern Kingdom, is spared for the sake of the Lord’s servant David (2 Kings 8:19) despite permitting hill shrines to prevail until the reforms of Hezekiah (ch. 18) and Josiah (chs. 22–23). Though frequent regime changes characterize the Northern Kingdom, David’s line continues almost unbroken (see 2 Kings 11).

The prophetic word and its fulfillment are significant in Kings, beginning with the prophecy of Ahijah (1 Kings 11) [Prophets, p. 465], but the Elijah-Elisha prophetic centerpiece in 1 Kings 17–2 Kings 13 interrupts the royal prominence. In their extended critique of the monarchy, Elijah and Elisha call for just rule to protect the marginalized (ch. 21; 2 Kings 4). Jehu’s reform receives limited Deuteronomistic approval for cutting off the Baal-inspired injustice of Omri’s dynasty (2 Kings 10:30). After the Judah-Israel alliance engineered by Ahab, the royal dynasty in the Southern Kingdom has a mixed ancestry of the righteous David and the worst of all kings, Ahab (1 Kings 16:31-33). The first of two climactic narrative moments offers the report and explanation of the exile of Israel in 722 bce, attributing that exile to the people rejecting the prophetic calls to Yahwistic justice (2 Kings 17:7-23), with the lengthy following description of the mixed mišpaṭ of Yahweh and the nations (17:24-41). The Southern Kingdom survives for more than a century longer, but when the son of the reformer Hezekiah (chs. 18–20), who is also grandfather of the reformer Josiah (chs. 22–23), commits the sins of Ahab and the nations that preceded Israel in the land (21:2-3), Manasseh seals the fate of Judah, and they, like Israel, are taken into exile in 586 bce (ch. 25).

The author/editor arranges the material to demonstrate the Lord’s justice, which prevails despite human injustice. Even the often exemplary David falls short in the important “matter of Uriah.” Though offered life and prosperity (1 Kings 9:2-4; 11:38), neither kingdom practices Deuteronomic justice. The message of 1–2 Kings reiterates the call to live in the image of God by practicing justice in imitation of the Lord (Gen 1:27-28; 18:19; Deut 10:12-21). The structure of the report reinforces this call.

Theological Themes

To grasp the objective of Kings requires that the reader be alert to theological themes. These themes are essential building blocks for the message and purpose of the book.

Justice

Kings contrasts two opposed views of justice, the exercise of power, especially in the economic and political sphere (J. P. Walsh: 31) [Economics, p. 444]. The Lord’s justice provides for and incorporates the marginalized, often identified as orphans, widows, and strangers. This is the primary measure of doing justice in 1–2 Kings. Justice is more than fair law enforcement or even providing for the marginalized. Justice is the generous way of Yahweh, contrasted with the grasping ways of the nations and their gods (2 Kings 17:24-41). In contrast, royal justice, the way of the kings, has the king amassing wealth and power at the expense of the populace, despite the law of the king limiting accumulation (Deut 17:14-20; 1 Sam 8:10-18) [Law of the King, p. 456; Mišpaṭ, p. 461].

Idolatry

Illicit idol worship on high places and in Baal temples characterizes evil kings and results in exile (2 Kings 17:21-23). More than cultic unfaithfulness, idolatry describes the royal ideology of royal (in)justice. The cult of Baal and other gods replaces egalitarian generosity with hierarchical social organization (the king represents the gods). Humans are reduced to pawns. Idolatry is the ideological base for royal accumulation of power, wealth, and human resources, including forced labor, military service, and large harems [Idolatry, p. 449].

Covenant

Deuteronomy, composed in the covenant form, presents the covenant stipulations (laws), blessings, and curses that become the language of 1–2 Kings. The covenant presents justice as the primary mandate for covenant people. Human behavior is rewarded with blessings or curses, depending on covenant faithfulness. Reformer kings renew covenant (2 Kings 11:17; 23:1-3), promising to be faithful to the Lord. The covenant offers life, anticipates exile, and promises return from exile ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Abbreviations
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Introduction to 1–2 Kings
• Part 1: Solomon as King (1 Kings 1:1–11:43)
• Part 2: The Divided Kingdom (1 Kings 12–2 Kings 17)
• Part 3: The Southern Kingdom to Judah’s Exile (2 Kings 18–25)
• Acknowledgments
• Outline of 1–2 Kings
• Essays
• Bibliography
• Selected Resources
• Maps
• Index of Ancient Sources
• The Author