1 Kings

What makes 1 Kings special?

1 Kings is the first half of a single book that was divided into two parts, 1 and 2 Kings, because they were too long to fit on one scroll. Together the books continue the history of Israel that began in the books of Samuel, but 1 and 2 Kings tell the history in a special way. The story moves back and forth between reports of the kings of Judah and reports of the kings of Israel so that we can always compare what was going on in the north (Israel) with what was going on in the south (Judah).

In addition, the kings of the separate kingdoms are introduced in different ways. The reports of kings of Judah begin with the following standard outline:

The kings of Israel, however, are introduced with the following standard outline:

Why was 1 Kings written?

1 and 2 Kings were written to complete the history of Israel begun in 1 and 2 Samuel, but they also serve another purpose. The history of the nation is told through the lives of the kings and several prophets to explain the tragic history of Israel as a failure of the nation to keep the agreement its people made with God as it is presented in Deuteronomy. The northern kingdom (Israel) had been destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 b.c. In 586 b.c., the southern kingdom (Judah) had fallen to Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. The temple was burned to the ground, Jerusalem was destroyed, and Judah's high-ranking citizens, including its king, were deported to Babylon. To those Israelites living in exile in Babylon it must have seemed as if God had abandoned them.

But 1 and 2 Kings present a different view: God has not been unfaithful to his chosen people; rather, the kings have been unfaithful through their failure to obey God's law. 1 and 2 Kings, therefore, retell the history of Israel by looking at each king and judging him according to his faithfulness. If a king of Judah was faithful and obeyed God's law, especially by worshiping in the place the Lord chose, that is, in Jerusalem (Deut 12.5-19), he was praised as being good. If he disobeyed by tolerating the worship of other gods or by allowing the people to worship from places other than Jerusalem, he was condemned as being evil. Some of the kings of Judah were judged to be good, especially Hezekiah and Josiah, because they enforced worship at the temple in Jerusalem. All the kings of Israel were judged to be evil, because they worshiped at the rival shrines of Bethel and Dan.

For more about this important period of Israelite history, see the article called “From Joshua to the Exile: The People of Israel in the Promised Land,” XXB 7.0.

What's the story behind the scene?

The books of 1 and 2 Kings were perhaps finally put together in Babylon from a number of sources sometime during the exile (586-539 b.c.). The original compilation of the material may have been written during the reign of Josiah who died in 609 b.c. This version saw Josiah as the fulfillment of God's promises to David. By showing the evil of the preceding kings the authors hoped to support the reforms begun by Josiah (2 Kgs 22.3—23.24). During the disillusionment of the exile, however, a revision most likely was undertaken to expand the earlier version to show that God's judgment on Israel was fair. This “second edition” makes clear that Israel needed to accept God's punishment for the people's disobedience and to turn back to God if they are ever to be allowed to return to the land God promised to their ancestors.

How is 1 Kings constructed?

The following outline divides the book into three major sections. The first (1–2) tells about the last years of David's life and how Solomon, his son, became king of Israel. The second (3–11) reports what Solomon did as king, especially the building and dedication of the temple in Jerusalem. The last section (12–22) begins with the story of the northern tribes' rejection of Rehoboam as king after Solomon's death and the splitting of the nation into two separate kingdoms—Israel in the north and Judah in the south. This section then reports the activities of the various kings of both kingdoms through the middle of the ninth century b.c. These sections can be further subdivided as follows: