Straight to the Heart of 1 and 2 Kings

60 bite-sized insights

Phil Moore

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780857219411
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

We know better than to take all we see and hear at face value. We are taught to look for the story behind the story. That's what the writer of 1 and 2 Kings gave to the Jewish exiles in Babylon.

His message breathed hope into their down-and-out nation and it still breathes hope into its readers' hearts today.

Get ready for a revelation of the real meaning of history and of the power that is at work behind the headlines on the evening news. Get ready for God to catch you up into the story behind the story.

1 Kings 1–11:

Father and Son

Yesterday’s Man (1 Kings 1:1–2:12)

“Have you not heard that Adonijah, the son of Haggith, has become king, and our lord David knows nothing about it?”

(1 Kings 1:11)

The book of 1 Kings begins a bit like one of the original Star Wars movie. It catapults us straight into the thick of the action, and it assumes that we will quickly pick up the plot along the way. It doesn’t introduce King David or tell us which prophet is writing the story. It assumes that we have read 1 and 2 Samuel, and that we therefore know all about the shepherd-boy who became king of Israel and who received a command from God to bypass his older sons and hand over his throne to his young son Solomon when he died. It expects us to know that David’s eldest son Absalom attempted to defy this and was killed in his failed rebellion, making Adonijah David’s oldest surviving son.1

If you have read 1 and 2 Samuel, then you will see a lot of continuity as the plot resumes: Bathsheba is still David’s favourite wife; Joab is still commander of his army; Benaiah is still the captain of his bodyguard; Nathan is still his prophet; and Zadok and Abiathar are still serving as his two priests. But what really strikes us here is the discontinunity. Whereas 1 and 2 Samuel celebrate the strength of King David, the giant-killer who conquered Israel’s hostile neighbours, the writer of 1 Kings goes out of his way to emphasize King David’s weakness in these opening verses.

In his first sentence he describes David as “very old” – a little harsh, we might think, for a man aged sixty-nine, but the rest of the chapter reveals how much it’s true. The ancient world saw political power and sexual potency as intertwined (that’s why rulers had large harems as a sign of their virility), so the writer begins by informing us that David is now more interested in hot-water bottles than hot women. Even when he is given a beautiful young woman to keep him warm at night, the days are long gone when he used to turn out the light and want to do anything more than sleep.2 This detail is not incidental to the story. There was a time when the nation of Israel looked to David as its messiah, but now the writer wants us to grasp that he is yesterday’s man.

One of the most famous lines in the original Star Wars movie comes when Obi-Wan Kenobi assures a storm trooper that the droids in question are not the ones he is looking for. The author is saying the same thing to his readers through each of these details. He tells a Jewish nation that is looking back to the reign of David as its heyday that David was never the true messiah that Israel was looking for.

Adonijah is all that David isn’t. He is so handsome and virile that he rides around Jerusalem in a chariot, the path cleared before him by a muscly team of runners. David never had the courage to confront his son’s sin (1:6), and even now he is oblivious to Adonijah’s attempt to usurp his throne (1:18). Adonijah quickly wins over Israel’s top general and its priest. His plot is only thwarted by the quick thinking of the prophet Nathan and of Solomon’s mother Bathsheba. Meanwhile, the writer emphasizes David’s own inactivity by using the Hebrew word heder in 1:15, which means bedroom. David is yesterday’s man, outmanoeuvred in his pyjamas. Israel needs a new messiah.

Solomon is aged only eighteen, but he looks the part. Perhaps he is the messiah that Israel is looking for. First, God has singled him out to succeed David.3 Second, he rides on the royal mule, reserved only for the kings of Israel. Third, while Adonijah holds his furtive coronation at the spring of En Rogel, some distance from Jerusalem, Solomon is crowned king in full public view at the spring of Gihon, just to the east of its city walls, because he has the full support of the dying king.4 Fourth, he is anointed by Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet using the sacred anointing oil from God’s Tabernacle.5 Fifth, he is so popular that the ground shakes with such shouting that even Adonijah trembles at the news. It is laughable when Bathsheba prays in 1:31, “May my lord King David live for ever!”, but nobody is laughing when Benaiah prays in 1:37 that the Lord will “be with Solomon to make his throne even greater than the throne of my lord King David!”

In 2:1–12, the contrast between Solomon and yesterday’s man grows even stronger. David confesses that he has felt like a powerless pawn amid his scheming courtiers. He has never felt strong enough to deal with men like Joab and Shimei, but Solomon is strong enough now.6 David’s dying charge to Solomon deliberately echoes the dying charge of Moses to Joshua.7 It proclaims that Solomon is the new messiah who will finish the work that Joshua started by obeying God’s commands, rewarding God’s friends, dealing with God’s enemies, and providing true rest for God’s people.8 It also echoes the covenant that the Lord made with David in 2 Samuel 7:12–16. It declares that Solomon is the promised Son of David, who will build a magnificent Temple for the Lord and whose throne will endure forever.

Except he isn’t. At least not fully. Did you notice the great clue that the author gives us in these opening verses that, in time, the new King Solomon will himself become yesterday’s man? Read the verses again, slowly, and you’ll spot that Bathsheba mentions God, that David mentions God, that Benaiah mentions God, and that even the royal courtiers mention God when they congratulate King David on his son’s coronation – but the author himself never once refers to God. He wants us to see something man-made even in this moment. Solomon isn’t going to be the Messiah that we are looking for.

The story behind the story in these opening verses is that Israel needs a better Son of David. It needs more than a change of ruler. It needs a change of regime. It needs one who will ride into Jerusalem on a better donkey to die a better death than David. It needs one who will rise from the dead and anoint his followers with a better oil than the one stored in the Tabernacle. It needs one who will deal out a better reward to God’s friends and better judgment on God’s enemies. It needs one who will never become yesterday’s man. It needs the one who is hidden behind these verses and revealed to us in Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever.”

Notes

1 Adonijah was originally David’s fourth son (2 Samuel 3:2–4). Absalom murdered Amnon, and Kileab evidently died in childhood. At the start of 1 Kings, Adonijah is aged about thirty-five and Solomon about eighteen.

2 David died aged seventy (2 Samuel 5:4). He had many wives, so his sexual inactivity here conveys impotence rather than purity. Even Abishag’s name declares his weakness, meaning My Father Has Gone Astray. She came from the northern town of Shunem, in the territory of Issachar, where Elisha later stayed (2 Kings 4:8).

3 The writer assumes that we know all about this in 1:13, 17 and 30, so he jumps straight into the action of the story. God’s choice of Solomon to succeed David is recorded in 1 Chronicles 28:5–7 and 29:1.

4 Zadok and Abiathar’s sons had spied for David on Jerusalem from En Rogel during Absalom’s rebellion (2 Samuel 15:27–28 and 17:17). It was far enough away from Jerusalem for furtive actions to go unheeded.

5 Exodus 30:25; 31:11 and 39:38. It is significant that Nathan anointed Solomon alongside Zadok (1:45), since prophets were to proclaim the Lord’s choice of kings (1 Samuel 9:16 and 16:12, and 2 Kings 9:6).

6 We find the record ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the "Straight to the Heart" Series
• Introduction: The Story Behind The Story
• 1 Kings 1–11: Father and Son
• 1 Kings 12–16: North and South
• 1 Kings 17–2 Kings 8: Rebels and Revival
• 2 Kings 9–17: Northern Lights
• 2 Kings 18–25: Southern Comfort