1 and 2 Kings - Lesson 1

Dr. John Oswalt
1 & 2 Kings
th630-01
Introduction to 1 & 2 Kings
Lesson Transcript

Hello, I'm John Oswalt. I teach at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. Have been doing that for a long time. My degree is in Old Testament, and that's the primary area of my teaching. So I'm looking forward to this time with you as we embark on our study of the Books of Kings. Now, maybe you've looked at the Books of Kings before and you say, "Boy, isn't that just history? Names and dates and stuff like that?" Well, yes, it is names and dates, but it's much more than just what we might call history. The books of Kings are a revelation from God in the context of human historical experience. Can I say that again? The Books of Kings are a revelation from God in the context of human historical experience, and we see that, in fact, in the way in which the Books of Kings fit into the order of Books in the Hebrew Old Testament. In the Hebrew Old Testament, there are three sections.

The Torah, that's the books that we're familiar with, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Torah, the teaching, the instructions. The next section in the Hebrew Bible is called Prophets, and this one we find a little surprising in view of our English order of books, because it has two parts. The first part is called the Former Prophets, and that's Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. What are they doing there? The next section is the Latter Prophets, which is Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12, which we call the minor prophets. So we've got four books that we would call History, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and four books that we'd say, "Yeah, those are prophets." The third section is the writings, and that's all the rest. But let's ask ourselves, "What in the world are Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings doing in prophets?" It's exactly what I said a moment ago. In these books, we see God revealing himself in the light of his speaking.

Our God is a God who speaks, and he speaks about individual human beings and their lives and how he relates to them. Prophets, of course, we know more clearly, oh yeah, that's God speaking to people. But what's going on in these eight books that are the prophets is, here's how what the prophets are saying works out in human life. So what we have then when we put the Torah and the prophets together is a story of God at work among humans from the beginning, Genesis until the exile. We'll talk a lot about the exile in this study, but until when it all seems to come apart. And the story then is from Genesis to Kings, and Kings is the closing episode in the story. But interestingly with our God, the end is never the end. And so in Kings we find this wrap up of God's speaking and how that works. It's also particularly in the context of the covenant. And we'll have a lot more to say about that even in this lecture as well as in the rest of the course.

But the covenant is God's way of addressing the sin problem. Once our first mother and father, Adam and Eve made the decision to disobey God and sin entered the world, God had a problem. How is he going to restore people to a life-giving relationship with himself? And the means is the covenant, as God commits himself to us and invites us to commit ourselves to him. So that theme of the covenant, if you'll keep your relationship with God, if you'll keep your promises to him, blessing will result. But if you won't, curse will result. And we see that over and over again through these books of Kings. Now you've heard me say the Book of Kings and the Books of kings. What are we talking about here? Well, really it's one story from First Kings one to Second Kings 25. But it was broken up because the scroll would be simply too massive to handle. So it's broken up into two scrolls, but it's a single story. So you'll find me saying, through our study, the Books of Kings or the Book of Kings, it's one story from beginning to end.

So what we have then, here in the books of Kings, is the story of Israel from the kingship of Solomon until the exile, until Jerusalem and the temple are destroyed by the Babylonians in that period of time. All of these books, as I've said, are reflecting a theology, a theology that is covered, in particular, in the book of Deuteronomy. Scholars have observed that Joshua Judges, Samuel and Kings all reflect the covenant as it is shaped in Deuteronomy. So what are we talking about here? What is the Deuteronomic theology of history? What's Deuteronomy's understanding of how God reveals himself in history? And it is in the context of covenant, covenant that is given its final form in Deuteronomy. There, as I have said, the theme is, keep your promises to God made at Mount Sinai and be blessed.

Break those promises that you made to Him and the result is curse. Now, let me say a word about curse here before we go farther. This is not the idea of a tyrannical God who says, "You made a promise to me and you broke it, and I'm going to get you for that." No, it's more like God says, "Child, do not unfold a paperclip and stick it into an electrical outlet. Keep that promise and electricity will bless you. Break that promise and stick that unfolded paperclip into the outlet and you're going to have an electrifying experience. You will be cursed." So curse is not the arbitrary expression of an offended tyrant, it is the result of living in ways that your creator did not design you to live. So that's the first point that Deuteronomy is making. Keep the covenant, keep your covenant promises and life will be good.

Break the covenant promises and life won't work. Beyond that, the covenant then expresses terms. I've spoken about your promises. In the simplest terms, what are the promises that God asks us to make to Him in the covenant? Number one, worship me alone. Worship God alone. You will not worship any other gods. God is asking for totality. It's what a young man asks of his bride. I want you to be my wife alone. I do not want you to be with any other man. That's what God is saying. And the covenant in many ways is a marriage covenant, in which God asks us to marry him and he promises to marry us. So that's number one. Worship God, Yahweh, the I Am, the source of all life, worship Him alone. Do not worship anything created. Do not worship anything that God has made. Worship him. Do not worship anything that you have made. And there's a wonderful word play there.

He is the maker and we are to worship Him. We are not to worship anything we have made. And over and over again in the Books of Kings, they worshiped the works of their hands. How tragic. So that's number one. When we think about the promises of the covenant, you will worship God alone. The second part of the covenant is you will treat other human beings as you would like to be treated. You may remember that Jesus said the whole law and prophets are summed up in this, do unto others as you would have done unto you. How interesting. God wants us to value other persons at the same level that we value ourselves. Now, it's interesting that the 10 Commandments, as we call them, or the 10 words as the Jewish people refer to them, the first four are about worship of God, and the remaining six are about how we treat other people. There's the covenant in a nutshell, and we'll see that in the Books of Kings over and over again. How did this king or this leader or this priest, these people, how did they treat other people?

Did they treat them as dirt? Did they treat them as something to be used, something to be walked on? Or did they value them at the same level they valued themselves? This is the standard by which the Hebrew people and, in particular, the kings are judged. Did they worship God with a whole heart? Were they all for God? And did they treat others, especially others who could not repay them? Yes, you're nice to somebody who can pay you back, but how about somebody who can't pay you back, a widow, an orphan, an immigrant? How do you treat them? That's the Deuterenomic theology of history. And Joshua through Kings shows how this works out in life. Now, again, if you are familiar with your Bible, you know that in English we've got, right after Kings, Chronicles, and a lot of Chronicles is similar to Kings. And so as we read through our English Bible, we often say, why did he do it twice?

Why is this stuff here again? But also why is Chronicles on the one hand repeating kings and then in the next paragraph doing something quite different? What's going on there anyway? What's going on is, number one, a separation of several hundred years. The Book of Kings or the Books of Kings is complete by about 555, something like that. 555 BC. Chronicles almost certainly was not written before about 400 BC. In other words, 150 years separates the two. That's one issue, a separation in time. But much more significantly than that, there is a separation in perspective. No historical book that was ever written can tell everything about a given people or a given era. It has to be selective, and it will be selective on the basis of the point that it's trying to make. The books of Kings are looking at Israel's story from the perspective, especially, of covenant obedience.

Chronicles is looking at the same data and selecting from that data for a different reason. That different reason is, "How can we be the people of God now when we no longer have a Davidic King, we no longer have an independent nation state, we no longer have an army to guarantee these? How can we be the kingdom of God without a king? And Chronicles is saying, "Oh, look, the kings did not create the kingdom, God created the kingdom." And when kings paid attention to the temple, to the priesthood, to the service of God, we indeed prospered. And those kings who did not do that, did not prosper and they failed. We were the kingdom of God before we had a king. We were the kingdom of God apart from the rulers of the nation. Worship made the kings, not the reverse. So yes, we can indeed be a royal priesthood, a holy nation. So why are kings and Chronicles different? They're different because they're looking at the same events from different perspectives, and they're selecting materials. They're not making it up. They're selecting real events and they're doing it from a different perspective.

So then what is the purpose of the Books of Kings? As I've said, they're asking in the end when it's all said and done, when all of these things have happened, they're asking why did the exile happen? God made all these promises to us. He gave us the land, he gave us the Davidic dynasty, and in the end, it all went away. The beautiful temple that Solomon built burned to the ground. The city largely destroyed. The Davidic dynasty apparently done away with, and we are thrown out of the land. How did that happen? So I say to you, the final purpose of the Book of Kings is to explain, "Well, I'll tell you why it happened." All those promises were conditional on your keeping the covenant. And I'll show you how in a thousand ways you broke the covenant. But clearly the Book of Kings is a progressive work. It started back there in the time of Solomon, about 950 BC, and it concludes, as I said, about 550 BC.

What are the purposes of writing the books of Kings before the exile occurred? I suggest to you that it was written precisely to explore what are the effects of keeping the covenant or breaking the covenant, particularly in the light of Solomon's experience. In the next lectures, we're going to talk about the Solomonic Kingdom. Fully 11 chapters of the books of Kings are given over to that 40 year period of the Solomonic Kingdom, particularly in the light of the Solomonic Kingdom, in the light of his successes, in the light of the wonderful things that God did for him, and yet in the light of his ultimate failure. I suggest to you that's how the process that eventually results in the Books of Kings got started. What are the results of keeping the covenant or of breaking the covenant? And that then is continued out over the next 400 years until the final conclusion. "Why did we go into exile?

Did the promises fail? Did God break his promises?" Oh, no, no, no. God kept his promises over and over and over again when we broke them over and over again. And if his patience finally ran out, has it run out forever? No, it hasn't. No it hasn't. That, I would suggest to you, is the purpose of the Books of Kings. It is not intended to be a history in our sense. Now, again, people will sometimes say, "Well, it's a really very poor history. It sometimes gives a king who ruled maybe 40 years, just a few verses, and some other person who ruled a short time, it'll talk about it at length." No, it's not a history in our modern sense, but I want to be as clear here as I can. If I say no, it's not a history in our modern sense, I am not saying therefore it is historically unreliable. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that once again, it is selective.

It is selective, but it is not incorrect. When it reports historical events, it reports to them faithfully and accurately. And that has become clearer across the years. I'll say more about that in some detail later on, but just to mention it at this moment, if you simply add up the numbers of the reigns of the kings, the number of years they reigned, you'll get a very, very apparently inaccurate result. You'll find that the kings of Judah oftentimes add up the numbers, you'll get a hundred years off from the kings of Israel. And so it used to be said, "Oh, well, they're just making it up as they go." In fact, a study was done for a doctoral dissertation in the late 1950s in which the author was able to show when you in fact factor in how they did chronologies, it is incredibly accurate.

And so it is. So I want to say to you again, is it a history in our sense? No, it is too selective. Does that mean it is not historically reliable? It does not mean that. It is quite reliable historically, but its purpose is not simply to tell us what happened. Its purpose is to say why did these things happen and under what context did they happen? Another question that we may ask here at the outset is, were Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, all written by one person? You say, "Why would you ask that question?" Well, because that is the current theory of many Old Testament scholars. They argue, primarily because of the study of a German scholar named Martin Noth., N-O-T-H. They argue that a brilliant person, during the exile, collected these pieces and sayings and various things, added to them, wrote additional seams to put them together. This brilliant person wrote Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, during the exile in the light of this new book of Deuteronomy, which was written during the reign of Josiah, that is about 621, and planted in the temple, which was being repaired, and found.

This new book of Deuteronomy had all of these covenant ideas that I've talked about, new ideas, unusual ideas, and this genius during the exile says, "Oh my, in light of this new book of Deuteronomy, I need to look at our past again." Well, as you might suspect, I don't agree with that. I don't agree with it for a couple of reasons. First of all, the Bible is very clear. Deuteronomy was not written in 621 BC. It was written by Moses about 1400 BC. So that's the linchpin of this whole theory. No, Deuteronomy was not new. It was rediscovered in 621, and we'll talk about that in some detail when we get there in the later lecture, but it was not new. A second reason why I do not agree with this idea is all, although all four books do indeed reflect the Deuteronomic theology of history that we talked about a moment ago, there are too many differences between them.

You cannot read Joshua and Judges and think they were written by the same person. Samuel and Kings, again, there are too many differences in style. There's too many differences in structure. Much more likely, I believe, is the idea that the four books were written by different people, but all of whom had Deuteronomy in their way of thinking. All of them were looking at Israel's experience in the light of the preexisting book of Deuteronomy. So Joshua, I believe, was written shortly after the conquest, about 1300 BC, in the light of Deuteronomy. Judges was written a hundred or 150 years later. Again in the light of Deuteronomy. So I would argue, no, the Book of Kings, the Books of Kings were not written by a single person. Well, if that's true, Oswalt, how do you think they were put together? I would suggest to you that this book was written by court prophets.

Remember Nathan? He is the prophet of David. Now, we need to be very clear here. There were court prophets all over the ancient near East, but these prophets existed for the purpose of ensuring that the king would be successful. That was not the purpose of the court prophets in Israel. The purpose of the court prophets in Israel was that they would be obedient to God. You see that in Nathan, of course, as Nathan says to David, "You are the man. You are the man, the rich man who stole his neighbor's one lamb and killed him and fed him to a guest. You are that man." That's a different story, isn't it? Chronicles speaks of two or three of these court prophets who did indeed compile materials for historical records. These are people who would be making predictions about the future, and they're in a position then to see whether those came true and how they came true. So I believe that, in fact, this is how the process got started.

Maybe it was even Nathan who began it as he saw what was happening in the court of Solomon. Then it appears that after the division of the kingdom, the process moved to the northern kingdom, the kingdom that took the name Israel. When we look at the Books of Kings, we discover that the largest proportion of the materials is about the northern kingdom. That's a little surprising to us who think of Judah as the core where the message was maintained, where the truth was maintained. But the largest proportion is about the northern kingdom, and a majority of prophets were to the northern kingdom. God did not abandon the North after the division at the death of Solomon. God, for 200 years, was wooing them, was calling them. So it appears to me that the process of writing moved largely north, not entirely. It's continuing the south, but the southern sections tend to be considerably shorter than the northern sections. Eventually, the exile came to the north.

That's in chapter 17 of Second Kings. We're all the way through there, 722. The remaining 150 years for Judah are contained then in chapters 18 through 25 of Second Kings, 150 years. We'll see these proportions in just a moment. What's happening there? What's happening there is the seed that bore such terrible fruit in the north has been planted in the south, and it would bear the same fruit there. So there's a sense in which the prophets are saying, "We don't need to spend a lot of time on Judah because they're headed down the same road that we've already seen at some length occurring in the north." So I would argue that that's what produced the Book of Kings. It's a process over these 400 years, where the court prophets who are in a position to know a lot of this data from their own experience, and also they have access to the court chronicles that a recorder kept.

These are the ones who put these books together saying, as I said at the outset, "What do we learn about God in the light of our historical experience? What do we learn about his nature, his being, his character?" Finally, let me talk about good kings. There weren't very many. In fact, none in the north. In the 200 years of Israel, the northern kingdom's existence, there is not one king who walked in the ways of David. How tragic. So in a real sense, God is saying, "Why did the north fall?" Because from the top, there was no intention to keep the covenant. The path was set by their very first king, Jeroboam. And again and again, throughout the story, we will hear it said this king walked in the ways of Jeroboam. Oh, my. Oh, my. Are you establishing a legacy? Am I? A legacy that our children will follow? In the South, we have five good kings scattered throughout the 400 years that we're talking about there. I think what they did was to keep the faith alive.

They're not, in the end, able to divert the nation from its destruction. But at least these men who called a core of people back to the Lord are able to keep the faith alive so that there's something to survive through the exile. And I want to make that point here. I said, Genesis to Kings, that's Israel's history from the beginning to the Judean exile. Judean exile is the end. No. No. It's the end of that particular phase of Israel's history, but it's not the end of God's love for Israel. God is going to find a way, and he found a way actually through the exile. Again, we'll talk about this a lot, but the exile was intended to be the end. That's why the Assyrians first and then the Babylonians practiced it. It is to destroy the culture and the religion and the language of these conquered countries, put them into the mix master and produce a generic, imperial culture. The exile, and that's part of the reason the people said to the prophets, "No, we're not going to go into exile. If we did, we'd disappear all that God had done."

And the prophets said, "You are going to go into exile, but you're going to come home." And the people said, "No, no, nobody comes home from exile." Our God, our God, the Creator, is able to use anything for his good purposes. So in that sense, these five kings helped, I believe, prepare a core, a righteous remnant, who, when they were taken into exile, were not made into Assyrian imperialist or Babylonian imperialists, but preserved the faith and were able to return from it. Who were these good kings? In Judah, all of them. Asa, his son, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Hezekiah and Josiah. And again, we'll look at each of them in some detail, but here is a point that I do not want you to miss. Every one of them had flaws, tragic flaws. Asa, having repaired the temple, stripped it in order to pay the Syrian king to attack Israel and take the pressure off him. No. Jehoshaphat, perhaps I'm being unkind to Jehoshaphat, but it appears to me that he was a good man in whom the elevator didn't go all the way to the top floor.

Why was he foolish enough to make an alliance with Ahab of all people? Joash, Chronicles tells us in more detail, when his mentor, Jehoiada, the high priest died, Joash turned away from the Lord. Hezekiah, when he was delivered from his life-threatening illness, and the Babylonians came to find out what was his secret. Did he tell them about the Lord? Did he tell them about the one who saved him, the one who delivered? No, he showed off his wealth. And I'll say this again, I'm sure, but I often think this is like somebody from New York coming to Punkin Center, Iowa, and the Mayor of Punkin Center showing off all of his wealth to these New Yorkers. And Isaiah said, "Well, it's a good thing you showed it all to them because it's all going to belong to them one day." And Hezekiah said, "Oh, that's good. It's not going to happen to me."

And Josiah, the best of them all, no question, the best of them all is foolish enough to take on the Egyptians at the least without the Lord's consent or without the Lord's direction. Chronicles says that the Egyptian king spoke in the name of the Lord and said, "Don't try to stop me. I'm on the Lord's mission." We'll talk a little bit more about that. But at the least, at the least, this good man did not seek the Lord's guidance in this last act of his and was killed. What's the point? The point is our hope is in no human king. Our hope is in the King. That said, all that said, let's look at an outline of the book. I believe there are three main divisions. The first division is the Solomonic narrative. That's in First Kings Chapters one through 11. And you will see by the video how I have indicated both the number of years covered and the number of pages given.

Now, your Bible may differ from mine, but I just wanted to... I thought about chapters or verses, but I finally decided pages is the simplest way to give you some sense of the proportion of the materials. And then I've also given you the years. So you notice Solomon, 40 years, 17 pages. The second division is the big one. This is the divided Kingdom, and this is First Kings 12 through second Kings 17. That's 210 years and 36 pages. But it's interesting, 210 years, hardly double what is given to Solomon for 40 years. I think there's a sense of importance there. And as I've said already, and I'll say again, I think the writers of the Books of Kings are saying the Solomonic experience is the template for everything that's going to happen after this. So we're going to give this a lot of attention.

Second main division, the divided Kingdom, First Kings 12 to Second Kings 17, 210 years, 36 pages. We can subdivide that division into three subdivisions, part A, from the division to Ahab. That is First Kings 12 through 16, 55 years, seven pages. Not very much. Part B, subdivision B is the Elijah/Elisha narrative. Now here in the graphic, I say Elisha/Elijah, and Elisha, I think I would actually just put a slash between the two of them because it's really a single ministry. And we'll talk about that in some detail. This is 90 years altogether for the two men, 25 pages. This is a big deal. This 90 year period, and really Elisha lived a long time. So really about 50 or 55 years is the core of the thing. And this is the time when there's a serious danger that Yahweh is going to be replaced by Baal.

It doesn't happen. And the reason it didn't happen was the ministry of Elijah and Elisha. Then subdivision C, Israel's final years, Second Kings 14 to 17, 60 years, only four pages. The slide has begun and there's no real way of stopping it now. The third division then is Judah alone, Second Kings 18 through 25, a hundred and thirty-five years, 10 pages. As I said earlier, there's again this sense that the seed that destroyed the Northern Kingdom has been planted in Judah, and it is going to bear its fruit. So that's the book, as I see it, three parts, Solomon, the divided kingdom and Judah alone. Tomorrow then, or in the next lecture, we will begin to look at the Solomonic narrative.