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David Couchman

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David Couchman is the lead author for the 'Facing the Challenge' series of courses.

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An overview of 2 Kings

This article is based on a talk first given by David Couchman at Wellsprings Chapel, Taunton, on Sunday 19th June 2005. It may be reproduced in print or on other web sites, subject to the copyright notice below.

Blessed are you, Mother God, for the fertility of this world. We thank you for the sight and scent of flowers, for the way their shape evokes in us the unfolding of our own sexuality, and for their power to remind us of the glory and the impermanence of physical beauty. May our days of blossoming and of fading be days spent in your presence.

These words do not come from some pagan ritual, but from a liturgy that was published on a web site of the Episcopal Church of the USA - the Anglican Church in America. This shows, if nothing else, how easy it is for something that starts out Christian to slide over into a kind of pagan worship - how easy it is for truth to get tangled up with falsehood.

In this article, we are taking an overview of the Old Testament book of 2 Kings. You will see the connection with these words just quoted as we go on.

In this overview, we are going to be asking what to look out for as you read through 2 Kings. We have a big problem with the Old Testament. We know that it is there for a reason. We know that we are supposed to read it - but deep down, if we are honest, we cannot always see what it has to do with us today.

But the things that happen in the Old Testament are pictures of what happens in the New Testament with Jesus Christ. (Calling them pictures does not mean they did not really happen. They were real events in history - but they pointed beyond themselves.)

One of the key ideas in the Bible is the Kingdom of God. A kingdom - any kingdom - needs some people, a land, and a king. The Kingdom of God has God's people, living in God's place, under God's rule and blessing. In the Old Testament, God's people is the nation of Israel. God's place is the the promised land. And God's rule and blessing are represented by two main things:

Remember, these things in the Old Testament are pictures of New Testament realities: In the New Testament, God's people is the Church, God's place is the new heaven and new earth, and Jesus is both the king and the temple.

The Bible is all about God rescuing people. In the Old Testament, the big event is when God rescues the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, through Moses. In the New Testament, the big event is when God rescues his people from sin and death and all the powers of darkness, through Jesus.

When God rescued the Israelites from Egypt, he made an agreement with them - a covenant. This agreement included promises that they would be his kingdom - they would be his people, living in his place, and that in this place, they would live under his rule and know his blessing. And the people promised to keep his agreement.

In Deuteronomy 28, Moses lists the blessings that will follow the Israelites if they keep their part of God's agreement, and the curses that will apply to them if they break it. And the last, and worst curse, in verses 64-68, is that they will be thrown out of the Promised Land.

So God brought his people into his land. He made David their king, and he promised that one of David's descendants would be king for ever. David's son Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem. It is God's kingdom at work - God's people, living in his place, under his rule and blessing.

But then, in 586 BC, it all goes hideously wrong: The Babylonians invade. The temple is destroyed; the king does not rule any longer, and the people are evicted from the land. They are not experiencing God's blessing any more. The big questions are 'What went wrong?' and 'Is God through with us?' Do you ever feel like asking this kind of question?

The Old Testament books of 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings form a four-part history of the Jewish kingdom, from when it began with Samuel to when it ended with the Babylonian invasion. We do not know who wrote these books. We are not even sure exactly when they were written, although it was probably during the exile in Babylon.   And they were written to explain to the Israelites why they had been exiled - and to answer the question 'Is God through with us?'

So we are going to use these questions as we look at 2 Kings.

What went wrong?

The book of 1 Kings describes how under Solomon's son Rehoboam, the nation split into two parts. This was in 930 BC. There was the northern breakaway kingdom of Israel (capital: Samaria), and the southern kingdom of Judah (capital: Jerusalem).

2 Kings covers the period from about 850 BC to 560 BC - nearly 300 years, and it follows both of these kingdoms. One of the key questions to ask as you read through is: Is this talking about Israel or Judah? The northern kingdom or the southern?

Here is a list of the kings of Israel in 2 Kings. There are eleven of them:

Do not get hung up on all the names. No one is ever going to test you on them!

There are a couple of very important things to notice about these kings:

During the time of these kings, the northern kingdom goes further and further away from keeping God's agreement - into worshipping other gods, false gods, and into social injustice.

Finally, in 722 BC, God's judgment falls. The Assyrians invade Israel, and destroy the nation. We read the account of this in 2 Kings chapter 17. Verses 1-6 describe simply what happened. Verses 7-12 explain why it happened:

Samaria fell because the Israelites sinned against the Lord their God, who had rescued them from the king of Egypt and had led them out of Egypt. They worshipped other gods, followed the customs of the people whom the Lord had driven out as his people advanced, and adopted customs introduced by the kings of Israel. The Israelites did things that the Lord their God disapproved of. They built pagan places of worship in all their towns, from the smallest village to the largest city. On all the hills and under every shady tree they put up stone pillars and images of the goddess Asherah, and they burnt incense on all the pagan altars following the practice of the people whom the Lord had driven out of the land. They aroused the Lord's anger with all their wicked deeds and disobeyed the Lord's command not to worship idols.

The Israelites were worshipping pagan gods and goddesses like Asherah.

One of the things we learn from 2 Kings is simply that God keeps his promises - for bad, as well as for good.

Let's back up a bit. We have seen what happens to the northern kingdom of Israel. What about the southern kingdom, Judah?

In terms of God's blessing, the southern kingdom has almost everything - they still have the temple, and they still have kings who are descendants of David.

Not only that, but they saw what happened to Israel. It should have been a warning to them, but they did not take any notice. So we read:

But even the people of Judah did not obey the laws of the Lord their God; they imitated the customs adopted by the people of Israel… (2 Kings chapter 17 verse 19)

Here is a list of the kings of Judah during this same time - fifteen kings, not counting the queen mother Athaliah, who reigned for a while.

They were all descendants of David.

Although most of them were bad (nine bad kings), there were a few good kings (six). One of the key things to look out for as you read through this book is the good kings, because they are important. Three of them receive special attention because they draw people back to keeping the agreement with God:

But even their reforms do not go deep enough or last long enough, and in the end, Judah also falls in chapter 25 - to Babylon, in 586 BC.

One of the key questions the Israelites asked in captivity in Babylon was 'why has this happened to us?' And the answer, very clearly in 2 Kings is, 'it's happened because you didn't keep the agreement with God. You worshipped other gods, false gods. You didn't bother about justice in society. And God kept the promises that he made back in Deuteronomy.' He threw you out of the land.

There is a warning here for any Christian - do not take God's blessings for granted. You can lose them.

Worshipping false gods

What does worshipping other gods mean? Surely we are not likely to worship false gods today, are we?

Wrong ideas about God

One way we can worship other gods is when we have wrong ideas about the true God - ideas that do not come from what he has told us in the Bible. The material I quoted at the beginning shows just how easy it is for people who call themselves Christians to slip over into some very silly ideas.

Anything that becomes more important to me than the true God

But it need not be as overt as that. A false god could be anything that becomes more important to me than the one true God.

Sexual immorality

False worship in Israel was often linked with sexual immorality - and there are many people today for whom sex has become a god. When you have a popular TV programme where sad people are sent to a tropical island to see who will have sex with whom, and millions of other sad people watch them, you know that something has gone wrong.

Materialism

It was also linked with materialism: they were farmers, and they were worshipping gods and goddesses that they believed could give them a good harvest - in other words, they could make them materially well off and successful. How many of us today worship our careers, or our bank balances?

Child sacrifice

And it was linked with child sacrifice. They were willing to sacrifice their children to these false gods - in the hope of getting material prosperity in return. We would never fall into that, would we? In our country today, with 40,000 teenage abortions a year, how many people are sacrificing their children to the false god of prosperity, or of 'my right to choose'?

Occult practices

Worship of these false gods often involved occult practices - witchcraft, consulting the spirits, looking for omens, and so on. How many people today read their horoscopes, consult fortune tellers, Tarot cards, and so on?

Are we really so different from ancient Israel? There is a warning in these chapters that God does not want us as his people to go there.

There is also a warning here for anyone in spiritual leadership, as the kings of Israel and Judah were. You might be in leadership in a church or a family. It is a warning to take your responsibilities seriously. You can influence whether other people will turn towards God or turn away from him - and that is a huge responsibility.

The writer of Kings is not interested in whether they were important politically, or whether the nation did well economically under a particular king. What he is interested in is whether they led people towards, or away from, keeping their agreement with God. So Omri, who was one of the most powerful kings of Israel politically, only gets an 8 verse look-in in 1 Kings.

Twenty times in 2 Kings, you get the phrase 'he sinned against the Lord.' If you read in the New International Version it is translated, 'he did evil in the eyes of the Lord.' Keep your eyes peeled for this phrase as you read through.

What a catalogue of disastrous leadership! 2 Kings says to us that our spiritual leadership matters.

But if the first big question was 'why has this happened to us?' the other big question was:

Is God through with us?

It certainly looks as if he is. They are away from the land. The temple has been destroyed. The king does not rule any more. Things could hardly be darker. Are they still his people?

But there are three very important developments to look out for in 2 Kings that say 'yes, we are still his people,' and 'no, God isn't through with us.'

(1) The king survives

The way the book ends is very important:

In the year that Evilmerodach became king of Babylonia, he showed kindness to King Jehoiachin of Judah by releasing him from prison. This happened on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month of the thirty-seventh year after king Jehoiachin had been taken away as prisoner. Evilmerodach treated him kindly and gave him a position of greater honour than he gave the other kings who were exiles with him in Babylonia. So Jehoiachin was permitted to change from his prison clothes and to dine at the king's table for the rest of his life. Each day, for as long as he lived, he was given a regular allowance for his needs. (2 Kings chapter 25 verses 27-30)

The king, the descendant of David, still lives, and he has been released from prison. It is not much, but it is a glimmer of light.

(2) The word of the prophets.

As the people fail to keep God's agreement, and as the kings fail to give them spiritual leadership, God has another way to get their attention.

A group of men who do not have any official status or standing at all - they are not part of the royal family, they are not priests. They are people who bring God's message to the nation - the prophets.

The Lord had sent his messengers and prophets to warn Israel and Judah… (chapter 17 verse 13)

And in verses 22-23:

After the Lord had separated Israel from Judah, the Israelites made Jeroboam son of Nebat their king. Jeroboam made them abandon the Lord and led them into terrible sins. They followed Jeroboam and continued to practice all the sins he had committed until at last the Lord banished them from his sight, as he had warned through his servants the prophets that he would do.

The first and greatest of the prophets is Elijah - that is why in the New Testament it is Moses and Elijah who appear with Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration. Elijah is a key player in the second half of 1 Kings. He brings God's warnings to the kings and the people of what will happen if they carry on breaking God's agreement.

In 1 Kings 19, Elisha is called to be Elijah's apprentice and eventual successor. At the beginning of 2 Kings, Elijah is taken up to heaven, and Elisha takes over. 2 Kings 4-6 records a series of miracles that he does.

So another thing to look out for as you read through 2 Kings is the ministry of the prophets - especially Elisha.

Elijah and Elisha spoke God's messages, but there were other prophets during this time whose messages were written down and became books in the Bible - Obadiah, Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah.

They brought God's warnings, but they also foretold that there would be a new deliverance beyond the exile. God has not let go of his purposes for his people. In their exile in Babylon, they still have God's word.

(3) A remnant of the people survive

They are away from the land. The temple has been destroyed. The king does not rule any more - but a remnant of the people have survived the disaster.

The prophet Isaiah prophesied around 740-681 BC, between the reigns of Azariah and Hezekiah. A large part of his life was spent warning the people of God's coming judgment. But through Isaiah, God also foretold that a remnant of the people would survive and would one day come back to the land.

So they still have the king, and they still have God's word, and there is still a remnant of the people. God has judged them, but he has not given up on them. He has taken away his blessing, but he has not forgotten his promise

There is a reassurance here for any follower of Christ. However much you may have messed up, if you are one of his children, God will not let go of you. God has started, so he will finish. As Paul says in the New Testament:

He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians chapter 1 verse 6)

Recap - four things to look out for as you read 2 Kings:

How does it apply to us?

The message of 2 Kings is that you cannot stop being one of God's people, but you can stop knowing his blessing. The important thing is to hold on to God, and not to turn away from him.

Copyright notice

You may use this article in print or on a web site, subject to the following limitations:

  1. The article is reproduced in its entirety, without variation.
  2. There is a link back to this site.
  3. There is a copyright notice crediting Focus Radio for this article, and including these conditions.

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