When I wrapped up 2 Kings this morning, I found this nifty chart with kings, approximate dates, and nifty facts in my husband's study Bible:
As a serious matter of reflection, I am shocked at how a simple but careful reading of these books has changed my perspective on Israel's history. I always tended to skip over the historical books in favor of the Old Testament prophets, and as a result I had a pretty skewed and piecemeal history. I knew that there were two kingdoms, blah blah blah, Israel was bad, they got sent into exile, but Isaiah and Jeremiah said amazing things about God in the midst of it. I knew some kings were worse than others, and it was generally a failed experiment in Godly leadership development. But there was so much I had been missing, and I think that beyond dorkiness, that knowledge actually does make a difference.
For example...
- I had failed to understand the dynamics of the divided kingdom. Because church steeped me in the rhetoric of "God chose Israel", I didn't realize that actually, God chose the tribe of Judah to remain loyal to Him and worship in Jerusalem. As a result, when I read prophets like Amos, I thought it was a super crazy thing for God to tell Israel they were in trouble for their behavior. Now that I've read through the stories of 19(+) kings of Israel who ALL committed overt sin by worshiping idols and instructing their people to do the same, it makes a lot more sense. Likewise, it deepens my understanding of Samaritans as represented in the New Testament, as Samaria was the capitol of Israel until the deportation to Assyria. After the Israelites were gone, the area was re-settled by foreigners. God sent lions in to eat them, because they weren't worshiping him. So the Assyrian king sent some of Israel's priests back to teach the foreigners how to worship and "they worshiped the LORD, but they also served their own gods." (2 Kings 17:33) That's how we get to Jesus' day, when Samaritans know something of God, but aren't regarded as 'true worshipers.'
- I was fascinated by periodic comments about the mothers of the kings. Not always, but sometimes, there would be a note about a guy's mother and where she was from. I'm not an authority on this stuff, but it seemed clear that a point was being made on a few of them, like Athaliah the daughter of Ahab (and Jezebel), who married Jehoram king of Judah. Not a nice woman. She killed all kinds of people, including princes in her own family. But the point remains that women bring both good and bad into a family. (There were others who seemed to bring a good influence.)
- That leads to my next observation about families: reading a fleshed-out genealogy made it clear that in God's view of the world, families are important. They carry trends, promises, and traditions good and bad. Yet, there is also individual action. Sometimes kings did great things, like their fathers, and sometimes they flipped a switch and decided that Baal needed some new altars. And then out of the blue would come another good one, devoted and seeking the LORD. Yet, the good ones did not make up for God's anger that was caused by the bad kings.
- Finally, it brought me to a greater appreciation of the meaning of this "temple period" in Israel's history. Having been a people who wandered, a people who were enslaved, and a people who fought their way into the promised land, there is a sense that this could have been great. "The temple is designated by God as the instrument of his forgiveness and the point at which the consequences of sin may be reversed." (from the ESV Study Bible) But Israel/ Judah botches it. They put up idols all over the countryside and even INSIDE the temple! Faithfulness seems beyond them. God sends them away, exiled to Assyria and Babylon, but with the promise of a future return.
Like most good reads, I have a feeling I could immediately start these books over and enjoy even more depth and detail. I find myself torn between wanting to keep moving forward in the story of God's people and curiously thumbing backward to the events leading up to the kings. Either way, these unlikely books have whet my Bible-appetite... but (to channel some Reading Rainbow) you don't have to take my word for it!