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 on elijah and elisah