2 Kings

The book that has to explain two endings. It opens mid-reign, with Elijah still alive and a king who has fallen through a lattice sending to a Philistine god for a prognosis, and it closes with Jerusalem burned, the temple broken up for its bronze, and an exiled king eating at a foreign table for the rest of his life. Between those points it runs one of the great prophetic cycles — Elisha, who asks for a double portion and spends it mostly on ordinary people: a widow about to lose her sons to a creditor, a borrowed axe head, a poisoned stew pot, a Syrian general who wanted something more impressive than washing in the Jordan. Then the political material takes over: a coup that ends Ahab's house, a queen who kills her own grandchildren and misses one, a boy king crowned at seven, and Assyria arriving. Chapter 17 is where the book stops narrating and argues, setting out exactly why Samaria fell; chapters 18-20 give Jerusalem a reprieve it does not repeat; and chapters 24-25 report the second fall almost without comment, because the case has already been made. Its last four verses are the one thing that is not an ending.

Themes

• A double portion of your spirit — Elisha asks for the firstborn's share rather than for twice as much, and the cycle that follows works mostly at kitchen level — debt, food, illness, a lost tool.
• Therefore Yahweh removed Israel — The book's argument stated once, at length, in chapter 17, and then assumed for the rest of the book.
• Only the high places were not taken away — The qualification attached to nearly every good king in Judah — and lifted for exactly two, Hezekiah and Josiah.
• In whom do you trust? — The Assyrian field commander's question, asked in Hebrew at the wall so the defenders can hear it, is the theological question the book has been asking all along.
• The book of the law was found — A reform that begins with a lost document turning up during building repairs, and a king who tears his clothes when he hears what it says.
• Yahweh sent prophets to warn them — Both kingdoms are given warning after warning; the book records the warnings so that the ending cannot be read as arbitrary.
• He ate bread before him continually — The last four verses: an exiled king let out of prison, given a seat and an allowance. Not a restoration, and not nothing.

Outline

• 1. Is it because there is no God in Israel? — A king injured in a fall sends to Ekron for a prognosis, and two companies of fifty are burned before a third captain asks instead of orders.
• 2. A chariot of fire and horses of fire — A master taken up in a whirlwind, a cloak that comes back down, and a successor who parts the same river with it.
• 3. Dig ditches in this valley — A joint campaign against Moab, water arriving without wind or rain, and a siege broken by a sacrifice on the city wall.
• 4. Go, borrow empty containers — Four domestic miracles — a widow's oil, a promised son, poison in a pot, and twenty loaves for a hundred men.
• 5. Wash in the Jordan seven times — A general who wants a ceremony and gets an instruction, and a servant who runs after the reward his master refused.
• 6. Open his eyes, that he may see — A floating axe head, an army of fire on the hills, blinded raiders fed and sent home, and a siege so bad the law itself breaks down.
• 7. Four leprous men at the gate — The men outside the walls who find the camp abandoned, eat, hide the loot, and then remember it is a day of good news.
• 8. Why do you weep, my lord? — A prophet weeping at what he can see a man will do, and the two kingdoms' thrones drawing closer by marriage.
• 9. He drives furiously — An anointing carried out at speed, a chariot ride, and the end of a dynasty announced from a window.
• 10. Come with me and see my zeal — Seventy heads in baskets, a Baal temple filled on a false pretext, and a verdict that gives Jehu credit and withholds it in the same breath.
• 11. The king's son, hidden six years — A queen destroying the royal family, an aunt saving one baby, and a coronation staged inside the temple by the guard.
• 12. A chest with a hole in its lid — A temple repair fund that only works once the priests stop handling it, and workmen trusted without an audit.
• 13. Strike the ground — A dying prophet's last sign, a king who stops too soon, and a corpse that revives on touching Elisha's bones.
• 14. The thistle sent to the cedar — A challenge answered by a fable, a wall broken down, and a northern reign the book grants real success while withholding approval.
• 15. Yahweh struck the king — Five northern kings in one chapter, four of them killed, and a leprous king in Judah living in a separate house.
• 16. Make me an altar like this — A king who sends Assyria the temple silver, orders a copy of a Damascus altar, and rearranges the courtyard to suit an overlord.
• 17. Therefore Yahweh was very angry with Israel — The fall of Samaria, and the one place where the book stops the story to say exactly why.
• 18. He broke in pieces the bronze serpent — A reform that reaches even Moses' relic, and an Assyrian officer at the wall making a speech in Hebrew.
• 19. He spread it before Yahweh — A letter taken into the temple and laid out, an oracle in verse, and an army that leaves in the night.
• 20. I have heard your prayer — Fifteen years added, a shadow that goes backwards, and a state visit from Babylon shown everything in the treasury.
• 21. He filled Jerusalem with innocent blood — Fifty-five years of the reverse of reform, and the reign the book will later name as the reason no reform could hold.
• 22. I have found the book of the law — A document turning up during repairs, a king tearing his clothes, and a prophetess consulted while three named men stand there.
• 23. He defiled Topheth — A public reading, a covenant renewed, a purge that reaches Bethel and fulfils a three-hundred-year-old word, and a Passover unlike any since the judges.
• 24. Nebuchadnezzar came up — Vassalage, rebellion, deportation, and a puppet king installed under a new name.
• 25. The city was broken up — Eighteen months of siege, a temple stripped and burned, a captured king blinded after watching his sons die — and four verses that leave a door open.

Chapters

• 2 Kings 1 — A king falls through an upper-room lattice and sends to a Philistine shrine to ask whether he will recover. The question the prophet sends back is the one the book keeps asking: is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to Ekron?
• 2 Kings 2 — Elijah is taken up, and the transfer is arranged so that everyone can see it happened — a request for a double portion, a condition attached to seeing it, and the same river parted twice with the same cloak, once on the way out and once on the way back.
• 2 Kings 3 — A three-king coalition marches for seven days into a waterless desert, and the prophet who saves them says plainly he would not look at the northern king at all except for the presence of the southern one. The campaign then ends in the strangest way any campaign in Kings ends.
• 2 Kings 4 — Four miracles at kitchen level: a debt that would have cost a widow her sons, a childless woman given a son and then given him back, poison in a stew pot during a famine, and twenty loaves stretched to a hundred men. This is what a double portion is spent on.
• 2 Kings 5 — A foreign general is cured of a skin disease by an instruction so unimpressive that he nearly refuses it, and the man who cured him refuses payment. Then a servant runs after the money, and the story ends with the disease transferred rather than removed from the world.
• 2 Kings 6 — A borrowed axe head, an army the servant cannot see until his eyes are opened, and a siege so severe that two women make an agreement about their children — the chapter runs from the smallest problem in the cycle to the worst.
• 2 Kings 7 — The siege breaks because four men with a skin disease, sitting outside the gate because they are not allowed in, decide that starving where they are is no better than surrendering — and find the camp empty. Their line about it is the best sentence in the chapter.
• 2 Kings 8 — A prophet weeps in front of the man he is anointing, because he can see what that man will do. And in Judah, a marriage into Ahab's family starts producing Ahab's results in the southern kingdom.
• 2 Kings 9 — An anointing carried out at speed by a young prophet who is told to pour the oil and run, and a commander who drives so recognisably that a watchman identifies him from the wall. Two kings die in an afternoon, and a queen is thrown from a window.
• 2 Kings 10 — Jehu completes the purge by correspondence, gets the city elders to do the killing for him, and then clears out Baal worship with a trap — and the book gives him credit for it and withholds approval in the same breath, because the calves at Bethel and Dan are still standing.
• 2 Kings 11 — The one moment in the book when David's line comes down to a single infant hidden in a temple bedroom for six years while his grandmother rules. The counter-coup is staged inside the temple by the guard, with spears from the armoury handed out during a shift change.
• 2 Kings 12 — A temple repair programme that fails for twenty-three years under one system and works immediately under another: a chest with a hole bored in its lid, so that the money never passes through the hands of the people spending it.
• 2 Kings 13 — Elisha dies of an illness, which is worth saying plainly about the prophet whose master was taken up in a whirlwind. His last act is a sign involving arrows, and the king stops striking the ground too early — after which a dead man revives on touching his bones.
• 2 Kings 14 — A southern king wins a battle, gets overconfident, and is answered with a fable about a thistle proposing a marriage to a cedar. He loses, and Jerusalem's wall is broken open for six hundred feet — and in the north, the book grants a long and successful reign while withholding approval of it.
• 2 Kings 15 — Five northern kings in one chapter, four of them murdered, one lasting a month — and in the south a king struck with a skin disease who lives in a separate house while his son runs the palace. Assyria appears by name, and the first deportation happens in a single verse.
• 2 Kings 16 — Under military pressure a king buys Assyrian help with the temple silver, visits the imperial capital, sees an altar he likes, sends a scale drawing home ahead of him, and rearranges the temple courtyard around the copy — moving the bronze altar aside and stripping fittings because of the king of Assyria.
• 2 Kings 17 — Samaria falls after a three-year siege, and the book stops the narrative to explain why. It is the longest piece of direct argument in Kings, and everything the formula has been repeating for twenty chapters is set out here in order.
• 2 Kings 18 — Hezekiah removes the high places — the first king in the book to do it — and breaks up the bronze serpent Moses made, because people had been burning incense to it. Then Assyria arrives, and a field commander makes a speech in Hebrew at the wall so that the men on it can hear every word.
• 2 Kings 19 — The king takes the letter into the temple and spreads it out. The answer comes back as poetry — a taunt-song addressed to Assyria in the voice of a young girl shaking her head — and the army leaves in the night without a battle.
• 2 Kings 20 — Fifteen years added to a life after a prayer turned to the wall, a shadow that goes ten steps backwards as the confirming sign — and then a delegation from Babylon shown everything in the treasury, and a prophet who asks what they saw.
• 2 Kings 21 — Fifty-five years, the longest reign in Judah, spent undoing everything the previous one built: the high places rebuilt, altars to the host of heaven in both temple courts, a carved image inside the house itself, and innocent blood filling Jerusalem from end to end.
• 2 Kings 22 — A repair project turns up a document nobody knew was missing. The king hears it read, tears his clothes, and sends five officials to consult a prophetess who lives in the Second Quarter of the city — and her answer is that the disaster stands, and that he will not see it.
• 2 Kings 23 — The most thorough reform in the book, carried out in person: vessels burned in the fields, priests deposed, Topheth defiled so no one could burn a child there again, and the altar at Bethel pulled down — which fulfils a word spoken to that altar three hundred years earlier. And then Josiah dies at Megiddo and the whole thing unwinds in three months.
• 2 Kings 24 — Vassal, rebel, besieged, deported — the cycle runs twice in one chapter. Jehoiachin surrenders after three months and is taken to Babylon with the craftsmen and the smiths, and the temple's gold vessels are cut up. His uncle is installed under a new name and rebels too.
• 2 Kings 25 — Eighteen months of siege, a wall breached at night, a king caught in the plains of Jericho and blinded after being made to watch his sons die, and a temple broken up for its metal — with the bronze weighed because there was too much of it to count. And then four verses that are not an ending.

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