It all leads up to 2 Kings 17 when the big bad empire of Assyria swoops down and takes out the northern kingdom altogether. Coup after coup follows Jehu as each king worships other gods and allows gross injustice. Although he was first commissioned by God, his violence becomes excessive and creates a spiral of political assassinations and rebellions from which northern Israel never recovered. The next section begins in 2 Kings 9 as the northern kingdom is rocked from a bloody revolution by a king named Jehu who destroys Ahab’s family. While both prophets were clearly remarkable men and played the same role of confronting Israel’s kings for the idolatry and injustice they caused, ultimately they were unsuccessful in turning Israel back from apostasy. What’s fascinating is how the author recounts seven miraculous feats of Elijah and then offers stories of 14 acts of power from Elisha. Elijah again confronts Ahab’s injustice and announces the downfall of his house.Įlijah eventually passes the mantle of his prophetic leadership to a young disciple named Elisha, who asks God for twice the power and authority of Elijah. In another story, Ahab uses his royal power to murder an Israelite farmer and steal the family’s vineyard. They all built altars and prayed to their gods, but only the God of Israel answered with fire. In a famous story, Elijah challenged 450 prophets of Baal to a contest to see which God was real. Together they had instituted worship of the Canaanite god Baal all over Israel. His archnemeses were the northern king, Ahab, and his wife Jezebel. Elijah was a wild man of a prophet who lived in the desert. The most prominent are the northern prophets, Elijah and his disciple Elisha. They constantly reminded Israel of their calling to be a light to the nations by obeying the commands of the Torah, and so they challenged Israel to repent and follow their God.įor each king, God raised up prophets to hold them accountable. Rather, they spoke on behalf of the God of Israel and played the role of covenant watchdogs, calling out idolatry and injustice among the kings and the people. In the Bible, prophets were not fortune tellers. This connects to another strategic purpose of the books of Kings-to introduce the role of the prophets who are key figures in Israel’s history. Did they worship the God of Israel alone, or did they promote the worship of other gods? Did they deal with idolatry among the people? And finally, did they remain faithful to the covenant like David, or did they become corrupt and unjust? Using these criteria, the author finds that no good kings come out of northern Israel, and from southern Judah, only eight out of 20 get a positive rating.

Each had about 20 successive kings, and as the author introduces each one, he evaluates their reign by a few criteria. It’s a tragic replay of the story of Israel’s failure in Exodus 32.įrom chapter 12 onwards, the story goes back and forth, from north to south, tracing the fate of both kingdoms. Jeroboam also builds two new temples to compete with the one Solomon built, and he places a golden calf in each to represent the God of Israel. We are left with southern Judah, centered in Jerusalem with kings from the line of David, and this new northern kingdom, called Israel, whose eventual capital will be Samaria. He tries to increase taxes and slave labor, but, under the leadership of Jeroboam, the northern tribes of Israel rebel and secede to form their own rival kingdom. The next section of the book opens with Solomon’s son Rehoboam mimicking his father in a sad story of greed and lust for power.

8), and how exile became an unavoidable consequence of Israel’s sin (2 Kgs. 12-16), how God tried to prevent the corruption of Israel and its kings by sending the prophets (1 Kgs. They explain how Israel split into two rival kingdoms (1 Kgs. The story leading up to this tragedy makes up the three center sections.

1-11) and ending with Jerusalem’s destruction and Israel’s exile to Babylon (2 Kgs. They begin and end with a focus on Jerusalem, first with Solomon’s reign and the construction of the temple (1 Kgs. The books are structured into five main movements. In fact, they run the nation of Israel right into the ground. The books of Kings tell the story of the long line of kings that came after David, but none of them live up to the promise. God promised that from David’s line would come a messianic king who would establish God’s Kingdom over the nations and fulfill the promises made to Abraham. In the previous book of Samuel, David had unified the tribes of Israel into a single kingdom. Although the books of 1 and 2 Kings are two separate books in our Bibles, they were originally written as one book telling a unified story.

Bible study elijah and elisha