2 Kings

Purpose & theme

Second Kings is the long, sobering account of how both Israelite kingdoms fell. It carries the story from the prophet Elisha through the collapse of the northern kingdom of Israel, exiled by Assyria in 722 BC, to the collapse of the southern kingdom of Judah, exiled by Babylon in 586 BC, when Jerusalem and the temple were burned. Its great purpose is to explain the exile: not as the failure of God’s power or the triumph of foreign gods, but as the just judgment of the LORD on generations of covenant unfaithfulness, exactly as Moses had warned (Deuteronomy 28).

Yet the book is not without hope. Elisha’s ministry displays the compassion and power of God, reaching even to a Syrian leper. The word of the LORD through the prophets is fulfilled to the letter, proving that history is in God’s hands. Bright reforms under Hezekiah and Josiah show that repentance is possible and that God relents toward the humble. And the very last scene — the exiled Davidic king Jehoiachin released from prison and seated at the Babylonian table — is a quiet ember of hope that the promise to David has not been extinguished, and that the line to the Messiah survives the fire.