The two Books of Kings take us quickly to the summit of early Jewish history, the time when “the moon was full,” and then they chart a decline to the depths, as the people pass into exile, a deep darkness with a hint of light at the end. Their story is both exalting and sobering, with moments of triumph, of terror and hideous wrongdoing, of moral splendor, and of enduring hope.
As I Kings opens, King David is in his last years. With his father seemingly in decline, his son, Adonijah, described by the text as have been spoiled and never having had to account for himself, decides he will declare himself king. Many others went along with him, including even Joab, David’s loyal (but prone to bad judgment) general. Nathan the prophet catches wind of the coup, informs Bathsheba, and with her successfully intervenes with the king. Even as Adonijah is having himself crowned, King David has Bathsheba’s son Solomon crowned as well, and Adonijah’s coup falls apart. Soon after, David dies, after giving Solomon instructions on how to deal with some of the most important people, both good and bad, with whom David had unfinished business.
Solomon’s glory as king is portrayed at length, especially his crowning achievement: the construction of the Temple, the permanent home for G-d’s presence. The many royal palaces and the many public works that Solomon saw through construction are described, but the most attention is devoted to the Temple. The text describes the building thoroughly and then describes at length the dedicatory speech the king gave on its completion. In it, he sets out the fundamental idea that the Temple is to serve as the center in space of G-d’s immanence. Not only the people of Israel, but all the world can turn to this place in prayer and be engaged.
Solomon’s wisdom is related through tales that have become famous. But the text also speaks of G-d’s laying out before him the terms of a covenant with him and with his descendants that would measure the worth of his wisdom: if he and his seed follow G-d wholeheartedly as did David, all would be well; but if not, their end would be a fearsome proverb, a case study of where intelligence detached from G-d would lead.
The book goes on to record how the king strayed and how the consequences were deferred until after his death. In the next generation, his son and successor, Rehoboam, rejects the advice of his older advisors, and tries to impose his will by force on the people of Israel, who had become restive from the years of high taxes and physical service Solomon’s regal ways and public works had required of them. Ten of the twelve tribes revolted, and under the leadership of Jereboam of Ephraim, established a breakaway kingdom in the north, with its capital in Samaria.
A melancholy period followed. The kings of both the new Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south were mostly displeasing to G-d—though the kings of the north were, as a rule, considerably worse than their Judean counterparts. Their sins included setting up illicit altars outside the Temple and even idolatry. Some of the rulers descended to cruel and bloody behavior, and the promise of what Israel was meant to be in the world sank into murky obscurity.
One of the most infamous of the wayward kings was Ahab, who ruled in the north, “who did more to vex the Lord, G-d of Israel, than all the kings who preceded him” (I Kings 16:30). He took for a wife Jezebel, daughter of the Baal-worshipping Phoenicians, and had a sanctuary built for Baal in Samaria.
At this point, a pivotal figure emerges: Elijah the Prophet. His incendiary courage, standing up for the cause of G-d when all had seemed to have despaired of it, is a matter of legend. He is to become the Angel of the Covenant, the undying symbol of fearless devotion to G-d that defies all conventional wisdom and every moral compromise.
Elijah fought against the prophets of Baal and the king and queen who sponsored them. Heedless of their wrath, he appeared before the king and challenged him. Before all the people, he challenged the prophets of Baal at Mt. Carmel, and decisively bested them, inspiring the watching people to commit themselves to G-d. He then had Baal’s prophets rounded up and executed, provoking Jezebel to mark him for death. He fled, despairing, into the deep wilderness, coming back at last to the place of Revelation, to Mount Horeb.
There, he found G-d’s voice not in the great and mighty displays of the days of Moses, but in a still, murmuring voice. G-d charged him with several tasks, concluding with the appointment of a successor, Elisha.
As the narrative passes from the First to the Second Book of Kings, there are parallel stories of what the kings and powerful men and women of state affairs were doing, and of what the prophets were doing. Sometimes the tales intersect; sometimes they do not. Most of the kings foundered in mediocrity and loss of faith in Israel’s mission, their kingdoms declining in influence without, and in coherence within. Elijah and his new successor, on the contrary, found a way to impress Israel with G‑d’s message even when they had no influence in the halls of political power and certainly, at those times when they had the ear of power. Their message of the accountability of all, even kings, to the Higher Power, has impressed itself deeply, and formed a major part of the ethos of Western civilization. The idea that all are accountable, that no political power is free of a responsibility that is commensurate to its power, is crucial in the emergence of constitutional limits on political authorities, the hallmark of the era of democracy.
The Northern Kingdom of Israel had first departed from the covenant, deserting the line of David and setting up altars outside the Temple of Jerusalem. It was the first to fall as well, showing the consequence, the book tells us, of transgressing G-d’s covenant—“all that Moses the servant of G-d had commanded” (II Kings 18:12). King Shalmaneser of the Assyrian Empire led a successful campaign that culminated in the conquering of the Northern Kingdom. The Assyrian way of pacifying conquered peoples was to deport them and scatter them about their empire. This Shalmaneser did, exiling the ten tribes across what is now Syria, Iraq, and Iran. The tribes of the Northern Kingdom became the Ten Lost Tribes, disappearing as a coherent group from the stage of history, though not from the mind of the prophets and of our enduring national hope.
Ten years later, the new Assyrian king, Sennacherib, set his armies against the remaining two tribes, in the Kingdom of Judah. The story that follows was dramatic. The Assyrian army advanced, seemingly inexorable. The fortress cities of Judah fell before it, until nothing was left of the Jewish sovereignty, of the great Kingdom of David, but Jerusalem alone. The Assyrians surrounded the city, and their general called out for surrender, telling the inhabitants they could live in comfort and plenty in their new Assyrian homes.
But the King of Judah, Hezekiah, was a man of great character and was legendary for his faith in G-d. Strengthened by the words of the prophet Isaiah, he defied the Assyrians. His prayer to G-d, recorded at length, was answered. Overnight, a plague struck the Assyrian camp. Sennacherib left with what remained of his army and went home, never to return. Assyria’s star would soon fade, but for the time, the people of Israel survived, miraculously delivered.
Nonetheless, II Kings reports, emissaries had already come to King Hezekiah from the next great empire, Babylonia. Isaiah had prophesied that doom would come from there, though after Hezekiah’s death.
Hezekiah was succeeded by a king, Manasseh, who not only turned away from the Covenant, but put many innocent people to death. His son, Amon, was like him.
Amon’s successor, Josiah, returned to the way of G-d. He read the rediscovered scroll of Deuteronomy before all the people, and following its instructions, cleansed the Temple of all the objects made for the popular gods Baal and Ashtarot that had been put there in the days of his predecessors. He destroyed shrines of idolatry all throughout the land, and tried to reform the priesthood, which had been largely complicit with the idolatry. He restored the Temple celebration of Pesach. But Hulda the prophetess had told the king that doom was still coming, though for his good deeds, he would not see it.
King Josiah’s end came suddenly. He opposed the army of Egypt as it marched through the land of Israel in the north; he was defeated and he himself fell in the battle.
The end was near. The book of II Kings tells of the rise of Babylonia under its emperor, Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar first made Judah a tributary state, but when King Zedekiah revolted, he swiftly crushed Judah, breached Jerusalem’s walls, and burned down the Temple and all the palaces and pillaged the city. A further revolt, killing Gedaliah, the Jew left as governor, brought about a complete expulsion of the people into an exile that would last for seventy years. It is in the days of the Babylonian exile that the story of these books ends, with the next chapter to be chronicled in the books of Daniel, Esther, and Ezra/Nehemiah.
