Summary: Bible - Book of 2 Kings

The GIST

2 Kings, from the Bible, is the second half of a single work, the Book of Kings, which appears as one book in the Hebrew Bible and as two in the Christian Old Testament. No author is named in it. Scholars tend to see a first edition from the late seventh century BC and a second, final edition from the middle of the sixth, and they place it at the end of what they call the Deuteronomistic history, the long account of ancient Israel that also takes in Joshua, Judges and Samuel.

Its twenty-five chapters carry the story from the last days of the prophet Elijah to the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon. Along the way the northern kingdom of Israel falls to Assyria, and the southern kingdom of Judah, after two remarkable reforming kings, follows it into exile. The book is a history with an argument. Again and again it measures a king by one test, whether he did right or evil in the sight of the LORD, and it presents the loss of the land as the result of generations of failing that test.

What It Says

Elijah's last acts and the chariot of fire (chapters 1 and 2)

The book opens with King Ahaziah of Israel falling through a lattice in his upper chamber in Samaria. Injured, he sends messengers to ask Baalzebub, the god of Ekron, whether he will recover. Elijah intercepts them with a stinging question about whether there is no God in Israel, and a verdict: the king will not leave his bed alive. Two captains, each with fifty men, are sent to seize the prophet and are consumed by fire. With the third, Elijah goes and delivers the message in person, and Ahaziah dies.

Then comes one of the Bible's most famous departures. Elijah travels with his follower Elisha, who refuses three times to be left behind. At the Jordan, Elijah strikes the water with his mantle and the two cross on dry ground. Asked what he wants, Elisha answers, "let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me." As they walk and talk, "there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire," and Elijah goes up by a whirlwind into heaven. Elisha picks up the fallen mantle, strikes the river and cries, "Where is the LORD God of Elijah?" The waters part, and the watching prophets recognise him as Elijah's successor.

The wonders of Elisha (chapters 2 to 8)

What follows is a long cycle of stories about Elisha, some tender and some terrifying. When children mock him on the road to Bethel, two she bears come out of the wood and maul forty-two of them.

Many of the stories concern ordinary people in trouble. A widow whose creditor is about to take her two sons has nothing in the house but a pot of oil, and Elisha has her borrow vessels and pour until every one is full. A woman of Shunem builds him a room, is promised a son, and later sees that son die. She rides to the prophet at mount Carmel, and Elisha stretches himself upon the child until the boy sneezes seven times and opens his eyes.

The best-known story is that of Naaman, commander of the army of Syria, a great man, "but he was a leper." A captive Israelite girl points him to the prophet. Elisha sends word: "Go and wash in Jordan seven times." Naaman is furious. "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?" His servants talk him round, he dips seven times, and his flesh becomes "like unto the flesh of a little child." Elisha refuses any payment. His servant Gehazi runs after Naaman with a lie to get a gift, and leaves the prophet's presence a leper himself.

Elisha also shapes the wars with Syria. He warns Israel's king of every ambush, until the Syrian king sends an army to surround him at Dothan. To his frightened servant Elisha says, "they that be with us are more than they that be with them," and prays that the young man's eyes be opened to the horses and chariots of fire on the mountain. Later, when Benhadad besieges Samaria and the famine grows horrific, Elisha promises plenty by the next day. Four leprous men at the gate discover the Syrian camp deserted and tell each other, "this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace." The city is fed.

Jehu's revolution (chapters 9 and 10)

Elisha sends one of the prophets to anoint the commander Jehu king of Israel. Jehu drives for Jezreel, and a watchman knows him from far off by the way he handles a chariot: "for he driveth furiously." He kills King Joram of Israel, and King Ahaziah of Judah is fatally wounded as well. Jezebel meets her end with defiance. She "painted her face, and tired her head," looked out of a window, and was thrown down at Jehu's command.

Jehu then destroys the whole house of Ahab, including seventy sons whose heads are sent to him from Samaria. With the invitation "Come with me, and see my zeal for the LORD," he takes Jehonadab along to watch him gather the worshippers of Baal into their temple under pretence of a great sacrifice and have them all killed. Yet the book's verdict is mixed. Jehu keeps the golden calves at Bethel and Dan, the sin of Jeroboam, and he is promised a dynasty of only four generations.

Judah's hidden king, and the death of Elisha (chapters 11 to 13)

In Judah, Ahaziah's mother Athaliah seizes the throne and sets about killing the royal family. The king's sister Jehosheba steals away the king's son Joash and hides him in the house of the LORD for six years. Then the priest Jehoiada brings out the boy, crowns him, and the people clap their hands and shout, "God save the king." Athaliah cries treason and is put to death. Joash is seven years old when he begins to reign.

Elisha's last scene is with King Joash of Israel. The dying prophet has him shoot an arrow eastward as a sign of victory over Syria, then tells him to strike the ground with the arrows. The king strikes three times and stops, and Elisha is angry: he will win only three victories. Later a dead man thrown into Elisha's sepulchre touches his bones and stands up alive.

The fall of the northern kingdom (chapters 14 to 17)

The pace quickens. In Israel, Jeroboam son of Joash restores lost territory, as the prophet Jonah son of Amittai had foretold, but after him the throne changes hands through one conspiracy after another. Assyria presses in. Under King Pekah, Tiglathpileser carries the people of Galilee and Naphtali away captive. In Judah, King Ahaz makes his son pass through the fire and calls himself the servant and son of the Assyrian king.

The end of Israel comes under Hoshea. Shalmaneser of Assyria besieges Samaria, and in Hoshea's ninth year the city is taken and its people are deported to Assyria. Chapter 17 then stops the story to explain it. Israel had served other gods, set up images and ignored every prophet sent to warn it, and so "there was none left but the tribe of Judah only." The foreigners settled in Samaria learn something of Israel's God after lions attack them, but the result is a blend: "They feared the LORD, and served their own gods."

Hezekiah and the Assyrian siege (chapters 18 to 20)

Hezekiah of Judah receives the highest praise yet. He removes the high places and even breaks up the bronze serpent Moses had made, because the people had been burning incense to it. "He trusted in the LORD God of Israel." When Assyria invades, he first pays a heavy tribute. Then the Assyrian officer Rabshakeh stands outside Jerusalem and mocks both Egypt, a "bruised reed," and the idea that Judah's God can save the city.

Hezekiah turns to the prophet Isaiah and to prayer, and Isaiah promises that the Assyrian king will not enter the city. That night the angel of the LORD strikes the Assyrian camp, leaving a hundred and eighty-five thousand dead. Sennacherib goes home and is killed by his own sons.

Later Hezekiah falls mortally ill and hears, "Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live." He prays and weeps, and is granted fifteen more years, with the shadow going back ten degrees as a sign. But when envoys come from Babylon, he shows them all his treasures, and Isaiah warns that one day everything will be carried off to Babylon.

Manasseh, Josiah and the end (chapters 21 to 25)

Hezekiah's son Manasseh reigns fifty-five years and undoes everything. He rebuilds the high places, raises altars to Baal and to the host of heaven inside the Temple courts, and sheds innocent blood throughout Jerusalem. The prophets announce a sentence in a homely, chilling image: "I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish."

Then comes Josiah, king at eight years old. During Temple repairs the high priest Hilkiah reports, "I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD." When it is read to him, Josiah tears his clothes. The prophetess Huldah confirms that disaster is coming, but tells the king, "Because thine heart was tender," he will not live to see it. Josiah reads the book to all the people, renews the covenant, and sweeps away idolatrous altars, priests and shrines from Jerusalem to Bethel. The book says no king before or after turned to the LORD as he did. He dies at Megiddo at the hand of the king of Egypt.

The last four kings pass quickly, each judged evil. Egypt deposes one and installs Jehoiakim, who then becomes the servant of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and rebels. His son Jehoiachin surrenders after three months and is taken to Babylon with the Temple treasures, the craftsmen and ten thousand captives. Zedekiah, the final king, rebels too. Jerusalem is besieged until famine breaks it. Zedekiah is caught near Jericho, sees his sons killed, and is blinded and led away in chains. The captain Nebuzaradan burns the Temple, the palace and the houses, and the walls are pulled down. "So Judah was carried away out of their land." The governor Gedaliah is murdered, and the people flee to Egypt.

The final verses add a small, quiet coda. In the thirty-seventh year of his captivity, Jehoiachin is released from prison by the king of Babylon, given a seat of honour and a daily allowance, and "he did eat bread continually before him all the days of his life."

Why It Matters

Together, the two books of Kings cover about four hundred years, from the death of David to Jehoiachin's release. In the Jerusalem Bible's division, 2 Kings holds the end of the Elijah cycle, the Elisha cycle, the two kingdoms down to the fall of Samaria, and the last years of Judah.

Biblical commentators, as scholars describe the work, believe it weaves legends, folktales and miracle stories in with royal annals, and that it does so for a purpose: to give a theological explanation for the destruction of the kingdom of Judah by Babylon around 586 BC, and to lay a foundation for a return from exile. At the same time, they regard the books as largely reliable for establishing historical events. 2 Kings reads as chronicle and as sermon at once. The stories of Elisha show mercy reaching widows, foreigners and besieged cities, and the last image, a captive king at a foreign table, leaves the future open.

Who Should Read It

Read 2 Kings if you want the Bible's own account of how Israel and Judah came to exile, told through some of its most vivid scenes: the chariot of fire, Naaman in the Jordan, Jehu's furious ride, the angel over the Assyrian camp, the lost book found in the Temple. It suits readers who enjoy history with a moral spine, anyone studying the prophets and wanting their setting, and anyone drawn to stories of how nations rise, harden and fall.