1 & 2 Kings

May 8, 2026

I am currently mid-way into 2 Kings, and I have struggled a little as the chapters tell briefly about king after king, from both the Northern Kingdom, Israel, and the Southern Kingdom, Judah. Some chapters would cover several kings, hardly mentioning anything they accomplished, while some kings got several chapters devoted to them. In each reading, I try to learn what God has in store for me to learn that day, but I have come to realize that some of the lessons are much bigger than that and are gleaned from higher overview than one chapter.

The other day I was thinking about what all the stories of all the kings had in common. This book reminds me much of the book of Judges, in that there seems to be a running theme throughout. In judges, it was "...everyone did what was right in his own eyes." I have always heard that if something is repeated in the bible, it is important and should be paid attention to. If it is repeated many times, then REALLY pay attention. It is God stressing something important. In 1&2 Kings, there are 2 themes repeated many, many time. For the kings of Israel, it is "And he did evil in the sight of the LORD. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin, but walked in them." For the kings of Judah, whether a good king or evil, it is "However the high places were not taken away, and the people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places." I just have to learn why these are important to God and how they apply to me, today.

I think these two themes represent two different wrong attitudes of Christians.

The Israeli attitude would basically be, "I am a christian, but I am going to do things my way. I will stay home and watch a church service on Facebook. It is all the same." He basically want to do things his own way rather than how God prescribed they must be. Ref. 1 Kings 12:25-33 Jeroboam's sin that caused Israel to sin.

The Judaen attitude would basically be one who wants to add to what God prescribes for worship. They start with good intents wanting to make thing prettier or more comfortable or more efficient, but tends to expand until what God has intended is pushed to the side and hardly recognizable anymore. Ref. 2 Kings 16 and what King Ahaz did with the temple.

I can also see 1&2 Kings being like a story of a Christian who lets these attitude infiltrate and set-up shop and the results of it. I know from prior teachings that eventually both kingdoms are overthrown and captured, but only Judah returns to the land, and when they return they are no longer interested in having a king or following idols. Perhaps that means that attitude can be corrected through humility and repentance, but there may be no coming back from the other attitude.

Another side lesson, or perhaps main point, is that God never abandoned them or beat them down until the corrected their foundational sin. He still blessed them (though limited) and comforted them and protected them, but far less than when David was king. The big difference I see is that when David face a famine of several years, he went to God to seek out the cause of the famine and how to correct things, and God told him what the issue was and David corrected it. So far, I see nothing in 1&2 Kings to indicate that any of these kings ever go to God to find out why the keep being harassed by their neighbors, so God never tells them to tear down the high places or to destroy the gold calves.

I think I can glean from this that I need to get with God and seek out if there are any deep seated sin or attitudes that need to be address so our relationship can be as close as it can be and to relieve the unnecessary troubles that follow me.