2 Kings

No. 13 2 Kings 3:1-7
After Solomon died, his kingdom split in two: Israel in the north, Judah in the south. The book of Kings follows the northern rulers, most of whom it judges harshly. Jehoram son of Ahab now reigns over Israel...
No. 82 2 Kings 25:13-17
This is the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC as the book of Kings records it, and it is the third time this series has stood in front of these same objects. The account in Jeremiah 52 came earlier, and before that...
No. 92 2 Kings 15:32-38
The book of Kings runs through the rulers of Israel and Judah at speed, giving each a short entry: when he took the throne, how long he reigned, whose son he was, and a verdict. This passage is the whole reign...
No. 96 2 Kings 1:11-18
King Ahaziah of Israel has fallen through a lattice and been badly hurt, and instead of asking Israel's God whether he will live, he sends to Ekron to consult Baal-zebub, a Philistine god. Elijah intercepts...
No. 118 2 Kings 25:25-30
This is the last page of the book of Kings. Jerusalem is destroyed, the temple is gone, and the governor Babylon appointed, Gedaliah, has just been assassinated by a member of the royal family. The survivors...
No. 122 2 Kings 22:1-7
Josiah came to the throne of Judah at eight years old, after his father was murdered by his own officials. This passage covers the first eighteen years of his reign in a few verses, and then the errand that...
No. 158 2 Kings 2:17-25
Elijah has been taken up, and Elisha has picked up his cloak. This passage is his first days as the prophet, and it contains two miracles that could not be more different.
No. 159 2 Kings 4:30-36
A wealthy woman of Shunem had built a room on her roof for Elisha to stay in whenever he passed through. He promised her a son, and she had one. The boy has now grown, collapsed in the field with a pain in his...
No. 300 2 Kings 17:24-28
After Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom and carried its people into exile, the empire refilled the emptied land with foreigners, peoples imported from Babylon and other conquered places, resettled in the...
No. 327 2 Kings 23:21-27
Josiah is the great reformer of Judah. After the lost book of the law is found in the temple, he throws himself into setting things right with a thoroughness no king before him had shown. In this passage he...
No. 358 2 Kings 21:10-15
This is a word of judgment against Judah, spoken through the prophets because of King Manasseh, who had done evil worse, the text says, than the pagan nations before him, and had dragged the whole nation into...
No. 382 2 Kings 14:7-14
Amaziah, king of Judah, has just won a real and impressive victory, defeating Edom and capturing a stronghold. And the victory does something to him, which the text names plainly: his heart was lifted up....
No. 408 2 Kings 13:15-19
This is one of the last scenes of Elisha's life. The prophet is dying, and Joash, the king of Israel, comes to him in tears, because Israel is being ground down by the armies of Syria. Elisha, even from his...
No. 492 2 Kings 19:20-28
The Assyrian king Sennacherib has surrounded Jerusalem and sent word mocking its God, and King Hezekiah has laid the threatening letter before the LORD in prayer. Now Isaiah sends Hezekiah God's answer, and...
No. 521 2 Kings 9:6-10
A young prophet, sent by Elisha, slips into a room where the army commander Jehu is sitting, pours oil on his head, and delivers a startling commission: the LORD has anointed you king over Israel, and you are...
No. 540 2 Kings 13:10-14
Jehoash was a bad king of Israel, one more in the long line who did evil and clung to the idolatry that had corrupted the northern kingdom from its founding. The summary of his reign is grim. But then the...
No. 555 2 Kings 10:21-28
Jehu, newly made king of Israel, sets out to wipe out the worship of Baal, and he does it by a ruse. He proclaims a great festival for Baal, gathers every last Baal worshiper into the temple until it is packed...
No. 559 2 Kings 18:1-8
Hezekiah is one of the great reforming kings of Judah, and the summary of his faithfulness is stunning: he trusted the LORD so that there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, before or after....
No. 703 2 Kings 12:6-16
Joash became king of Judah as a boy, hidden from a murderous queen and set on the throne by the priest Jehoiada, and one of his projects as a grown king was to repair the temple. He arranged for the dedicated...
No. 776 2 Kings 6:6-11
The Elisha stories are full of great deliverances, but this one begins with something almost comically small. A company of prophets is out cutting wood by the Jordan, and as one of them swings, the iron head...
No. 801 2 Kings 23:1-14
Josiah's reform begins not with a bulldozer but with a book. The lost Book of the Law has been found in the temple, and the young king gathers everyone, from the least to the greatest, and reads the whole...
No. 819 2 Kings 17:7-18
When the northern kingdom finally falls to Assyria and its people are carried into exile, the narrator stops the story to explain why, and it is one of the few places in the histories where we get the theology...
No. 822 2 Kings 6:12-18
The king of Syria is furious that Elisha keeps giving away his battle plans, so he sends an army by night to surround the town of Dothan and seize the one prophet. When Elisha's servant gets up in the morning...
No. 834 2 Kings 2:6-10
Elijah's time is almost up, and he keeps trying to go the last stretch alone. Stay here, he tells Elisha, the LORD has sent me on ahead. And each time, at Bethel, at Jericho, at the Jordan, Elisha gives the...
No. 940 2 Kings 19:1-7
The Assyrian field commander Rabshakeh has stood outside Jerusalem's walls and hurled threats and blasphemies, mocking Judah's God as no better than the gods of the nations Assyria has already crushed. King...
No. 947 2 Kings 8:6-11
Elisha the prophet has come to Damascus, where the Syrian king Benhadad is sick. The king sends his officer Hazael with lavish gifts to ask the prophet whether he will recover. Elisha gives a strange,...
No. 975 2 Kings 6:24-28
Benhadad of Syria besieges Samaria, and the famine inside grows so severe that a donkey's head, unclean and nearly meatless, sells for a fortune, and worse. As the king of Israel walks the wall, a woman cries...
No. 1001 2 Kings 10:16-20
Jehu has been anointed to wipe out the house of Ahab and root out Baal worship, and here he is in full stride. Come and see my zeal for the LORD, he says to a companion, as he rides to Samaria to kill everyone...
No. 1051 2 Kings 19:29-37
God gives Hezekiah a sign about the future: this year and next you will eat what grows on its own, but in the third year you will sow and reap and plant vineyards again, for the surviving remnant of Judah will...
No. 1062 2 Kings 10:6-10
Jehu, on his campaign to wipe out the house of Ahab, writes to the guardians of Ahab's seventy sons in Samaria, daring them to prove their loyalty by killing the princes themselves. Terrified, they do it,...
No. 1104 2 Kings 3:8-12
Three kings, of Israel, Judah, and Edom, have marched out against Moab and gotten themselves into trouble: seven days into the wilderness, there is no water for the army or the animals. The king of Israel...
No. 1185 2 Kings 6:1-5
The company of prophets around Elisha has outgrown its quarters, and they propose to go down to the Jordan, each cutting a beam to build a bigger place. Elisha agrees and goes with them. As they are felling...
No. 1237 2 Kings 15:23-31
This passage records a dizzying stretch of Israel's late history: one king murdered by his officer, who takes the throne; then that king murdered by another conspirator, who seizes power; and in the midst of...
No. 1242 2 Kings 4:1-6
A widow of one of the prophets comes to Elisha in desperation: her husband is dead, and now the creditor is coming to take her two children as slaves to settle the debt. Elisha asks what she has in the house....
No. 1405 2 Kings 24:1-6
Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon comes against Judah, and King Jehoiakim submits for three years before rebelling. The LORD sends raiding bands, Chaldeans, Syrians, Moabites, Ammonites, against Judah to destroy it....
No. 1492 2 Kings 8:12-19
The prophet Elisha meets Hazael, a servant of the king of Syria, and weeps. When Hazael asks why, Elisha tells him: because I know the evil you will do to Israel, burning their strongholds, killing their young...
No. 1641 2 Kings 8:20-24
This brief passage covers the reign of Joram, king of Judah, a king the record judges to have done evil. In his days Edom revolted and threw off Judah's rule, setting up its own king; Joram's attempt to subdue...
No. 1708 2 Kings 14:15-20
This passage records the deaths of two kings. Jehoash of Israel dies and is buried in Samaria, his son reigning after him. And Amaziah of Judah, who had reigned in Jerusalem, meets a darker end: a conspiracy...
No. 1833 2 Kings 3:13-19
Three kings, marching against Moab, run out of water in the wilderness and turn to the prophet Elisha. Elisha, after calling for a musician so that the hand of the LORD comes upon him, delivers God's word: dig...
No. 1924 2 Kings 22:14-20
When the lost book of the law is found and read to King Josiah, he tears his clothes in grief, and sends to inquire of the LORD. The prophetess Huldah gives God's answer: judgment is indeed coming on Judah for...
No. 1951 2 Kings 5:6-10
Naaman, a great commander of Syria, comes to Israel to be healed of his leprosy, arriving with horses and chariots and a royal letter. The king of Israel panics, tearing his clothes; but Elisha sends word: let...
No. 1965 2 Kings 14:21-29
Jeroboam the Second reigns over Israel, and the record judges him an evil king who did not turn from the sins that led Israel astray. And yet, under him, Israel's borders are restored and its fortunes...
No. 1970 2 Kings 5:21-27
After Elisha refuses any payment from the healed Naaman, his servant Gehazi, consumed by greed, runs after Naaman with a lie: my master has changed his mind and asks for silver and clothing for some visitors....
No. 2012 2 Kings 22:8-13
During repairs to the temple in Josiah's reign, the high priest finds the book of the law, long neglected and lost. It is read before the young king; and when Josiah hears the words of the law, he tears his...
No. 2078 2 Kings 6:19-23
A band of Syrian raiders, sent to capture Elisha, is struck with blindness, and Elisha leads them straight into the Israelite capital of Samaria. When their eyes are opened, they find themselves helpless,...
No. 2107 2 Kings 23:15-20
In the sweep of Josiah's reforms, he comes to the altar at Bethel, the center of idolatry set up centuries before by Jeroboam, and destroys it. And as he does, the account notes that this fulfilled a word...
No. 2110 2 Kings 8:1-5
Elisha had told the Shunammite woman, whose son he once raised from death, to leave the land because a seven-year famine was coming; she obeyed and settled abroad. When she returns after seven years, she goes...
No. 2117 2 Kings 9:1-5
Elisha calls one of the sons of the prophets, a young man, and sends him on an urgent errand: take this flask of oil, go to Ramoth Gilead, find Jehu, anoint him king over Israel, and then flee without delay....
No. 2126 2 Kings 25:1-7
The end comes for Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar besieges the city until famine grips it; the wall is breached; King Zedekiah flees by night but is overtaken in the plains of Jericho, his army scattered. He is...
No. 2141 2 Kings 11:1-8
When Athaliah sees that her son the king is dead, she seizes the throne by murdering all the royal heirs, the whole line of David's descendants in Judah. It is an attempt to wipe out the royal line entirely....
No. 2158 2 Kings 7:1-9
During a terrible famine in besieged Samaria, four lepers sitting at the city gate decide they have nothing to lose by surrendering to the enemy Syrian army; they will die if they stay, and might live if they...
No. 2179 2 Kings 9:18-22
As Jehu drives furiously toward Jezreel to execute judgment on the house of Ahab, King Joram sends messengers to ask, is it peace? Twice the question comes, and twice Jehu turns the messengers aside. Finally...
No. 2345 2 Kings 15:1-7
Second Kings keeps its running ledger of kings, and here it reaches Azariah of Judah, who reigned fifty-two years and did what was right in the LORD's eyes. Then comes the recurring qualifier: the high places...
No. 2410 2 Kings 7:15-20
Elisha had promised that within a day the siege-famine would break and food would be cheap in Samaria. The king's officer had scoffed: even if the LORD made windows in heaven, could this happen? Elisha...
No. 2439 2 Kings 9:23-29
Jehu has been anointed to end the house of Ahab, and here he cuts down King Joram, Ahab's son. But he does not simply kill him; he has the body thrown onto a particular field, the plot that once belonged to...
No. 2528 2 Kings 17:29-41
After Israel's exile, the nations resettled in Samaria brought their own gods, and the writer describes a strange arrangement: they feared the LORD, and also served their own gods. They set up local priests,...
No. 2564 2 Kings 25:18-24
Jerusalem has fallen. The leading priests and officials are taken to Babylon and executed, and Judah is carried into exile. Over the poor remnant left in the land, Nebuchadnezzar sets a governor, Gedaliah, and...
No. 2568 2 Kings 4:25-29
The Shunammite woman's only son, the child God had given her through Elisha's word, has just died in her arms. She saddles a donkey and rides straight to the prophet at Mount Carmel. When his servant asks if...
No. 2575 2 Kings 10:1-5
Jehu, bent on wiping out Ahab's dynasty, sends a taunting letter to the guardians of Ahab's seventy sons in Samaria. You have chariots, horses, a fortified city, and weapons, he writes; choose the best of your...
No. 2593 2 Kings 23:28-37
Josiah had been the great reforming king, tearing down idols and renewing the covenant. But he dies suddenly, killed in a needless battle at Megiddo, and what follows is a swift unraveling. His son Jehoahaz...
No. 2653 2 Kings 10:29-36
Jehu had zealously carried out God's judgment, wiping out the house of Ahab and the worship of Baal, and God commends him for it: because you have done well in doing what is right in my eyes, your sons will...
No. 2659 2 Kings 1:1-5
King Ahaziah, injured in a fall, wants to know whether he will recover. So he sends messengers, not to the God of Israel, but to Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, a foreign idol. God sends Elijah to intercept them...
No. 2670 2 Kings 12:17-21
King Joash of Judah had once been a restorer, repairing the temple that had fallen into disrepair. But now, with the Syrian king Hazael threatening Jerusalem, Joash makes a different choice. He takes the...
No. 2763 2 Kings 2:1-5
The day has come for God to take Elijah up in a whirlwind, and both master and servant know it. Three times Elijah tells Elisha to stay behind while he goes on, to Bethel, to Jericho, to the Jordan. Three...
No. 2808 2 Kings 10:11-15
Jehu carries out a bloody purge of Ahab's dynasty, cutting down everyone connected to the house, even forty-two of Ahaziah's relatives caught on the road. It is hard reading, and Scripture's own verdict on...
No. 2824 2 Kings 2:11-16
As Elijah and Elisha walk and talk, a chariot of fire and horses of fire come between them, and Elijah is carried up in a whirlwind. Elisha cries out, my father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its...
No. 2893 2 Kings 16:10-20
King Ahaz visits Damascus, sees a pagan altar there, and is so impressed that he sends the design home to Urijah the priest and has a copy built in the temple. When he returns he offers on it himself, then...
No. 2903 2 Kings 4:14-19
Elisha wants to repay the Shunammite woman who kept giving him hospitality, and Gehazi points out she has no son and her husband is old. So Elisha calls her and promises, at this season next year you will hold...
No. 2937 2 Kings 20:1-6
Hezekiah is sick and dying, and Isaiah brings him a hard word from the LORD: set your house in order, for you will die and not live. Hezekiah turns his face to the wall and prays, weeping, recalling how he has...
No. 2971 2 Kings 18:9-16
The northern kingdom of Israel falls. After a three-year siege, Samaria is taken by Assyria and its people carried into exile, and the text states plainly why: because they would not obey the LORD their God or...
No. 3002 2 Kings 7:10-14
The city of Samaria is under siege and starving, and four lepers have just discovered that the entire Syrian army has fled in the night, leaving the camp full of food. They bring the news to the city gate, and...
No. 3042 2 Kings 11:15-21
The priest Jehoiada moves to end the reign of the usurping queen Athaliah, having her taken out of the temple and executed. Then he makes a covenant that the king and the people will be the LORD's, and the...
No. 3096 2 Kings 8:25-29
Ahaziah becomes king of Judah, and the verdict on him is quick and damning: he walked in the way of the house of Ahab and did evil in the LORD's sight, as Ahab's house had done. And the text gives the reason:...
No. 3100 2 Kings 15:8-12
Zechariah, son of Jeroboam, reigns over Israel just six months, doing evil like his fathers, and is assassinated by Shallum, who seizes the throne. The narrator pauses, amid the bloody and unstable succession,...
No. 3114 2 Kings 5:11-15
Naaman, a Syrian commander with leprosy, comes to Elisha and is told simply to wash seven times in the Jordan. He is furious. He expected the prophet to come out, wave his hand, and call dramatically on the...
No. 3179 2 Kings 9:11-17
Jehu comes out from the prophet who has just anointed him, and his fellow officers ask why the madman came. When he tells them, the LORD has anointed me king over Israel, they act at once: each spreads his...
No. 3181 2 Kings 9:30-37
When Jehu comes to Jezreel, Jezebel paints her eyes, adorns her head, and looks out the window, taunting him. Jehu calls out, who is on my side? A few eunuchs look out, and at his word they throw her down; she...
No. 3182 2 Kings 6:29-33
This is a harrowing scene, and it should be read with grief. In a besieged, starving Samaria, a woman brings the king a horror born of desperation, one so terrible it lays bare how far the famine had driven...
No. 3224 2 Kings 17:19-23
This is the theological summary of the northern kingdom's fall. Even Judah did not keep God's commandments, but walked in the ways of Israel. Israel had been torn from the house of David, had followed the sin...
No. 3239 2 Kings 19:8-13
The Assyrian king Sennacherib, still threatening Jerusalem, sends Hezekiah a letter designed to shatter his faith. Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, it says, promising that Jerusalem will not...
No. 3258 2 Kings 4:7-13
After Elisha helps a widow with a jar of oil, the story turns to a prominent woman of Shunem. Noticing that this holy man of God passes by regularly, she persuades her husband to build a small room on their...
No. 3267 2 Kings 25:8-12
The catastrophe the prophets long warned of arrives. Nebuzaradan, captain of the Babylonian guard, burns the LORD's house, the palace, and every great house of Jerusalem; the army breaks down the walls; and...
No. 3291 2 Kings 4:37-44
Two small miracles of provision follow one another. During a famine, a poisonous stew is served to the sons of the prophets, and they cry out, man of God, there is death in the pot. Elisha throws in meal, and...
No. 3301 2 Kings 20:12-21
Envoys arrive from Babylon after Hezekiah's recovery, and the king welcomes them and shows them everything, all his treasure house, his silver and gold and spices and armory, holding nothing back. Isaiah then...
No. 3337 2 Kings 3:20-27
God provides water that saves the allied armies and lures Moab into a fatal misjudgment, and the battle turns against Moab. Then comes a horrifying act: the king of Moab, cornered and desperate, takes his own...
No. 3339 2 Kings 18:26-37
The Assyrian field commander launches a calculated assault, not on the walls but on the people's faith. Deliberately speaking in their own language so all on the wall can hear, he tells them Hezekiah is...
No. 3361 2 Kings 13:1-9
Jehoahaz is an unfaithful king who does evil and leads Israel in the sins of Jeroboam, and God lets Syria oppress them harshly. But then something tender happens: Jehoahaz begs the LORD, and the LORD listens...
No. 3457 2 Kings 5:1-5
The story of Naaman's healing begins with an unlikely witness: a little Israelite girl, captured in a raid and made a slave in the household of the very commander whose army had taken her. This lowly child,...
No. 3511 2 Kings 1:6-10
King Ahaziah, injured and sick, sends to consult a pagan god rather than the LORD, and Elijah confronts the messengers: is it because there is no God in Israel that you go to inquire of Baal-zebub? The king's...
No. 3594 2 Kings 11:9-14
The rightful heir Joash, hidden for years from the murderous queen Athaliah, is at last brought out, crowned, and anointed king, to the joy of the people. The faithful priest Jehoiada had preserved the royal...
No. 3652 2 Kings 12:1-5
Joash becomes king as a boy and does what is right in the LORD's eyes all the days that Jehoiada the priest instructed him. That last phrase is telling: his faithfulness was bound up with the guidance of a...
No. 3788 2 Kings 5:16-20
Healed of his leprosy, Naaman the Syrian is transformed; he resolves to worship the LORD alone from now on, and he presses Elisha to accept a rich reward. But Elisha firmly refuses: as the LORD lives, before...
No. 3790 2 Kings 18:17-25
The Assyrian commander Rabshakeh presses Jerusalem with a mocking question that goes to the heart of the matter: on what do you rest this trust of yours? He is right about one thing, that trust is the real...
No. 3825 2 Kings 16:1-9
King Ahaz is a study in misplaced trust. He does evil, following the abominations of the nations, even sacrificing his own son in the fire, a horror we note soberly. Then, when threatened by two enemy kings,...
No. 3914 2 Kings 20:7-11
Hezekiah, recovering from a deadly illness by God's promise, asks for a sign to confirm that God will indeed heal him. And God graciously gives one, an extraordinary one: at Hezekiah's request, the shadow on...
No. 3996 2 Kings 19:14-19
Threatened by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, Hezekiah receives a letter full of intimidation and blasphemy against God, and his response is a model of faith. He takes the letter up to the house of the LORD and...
No. 4008 2 Kings 21:16-26
After the long, wicked reign of Manasseh, his son Amon comes to the throne, and the record is bleak: he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, as Manasseh his father had done; he walked in all the ways...
No. 4022 2 Kings 14:1-6
When Amaziah becomes king and secures his throne, he executes the officials who had murdered his father the previous king, an act of justice against the assassins. But then the passage notes something...
No. 4133 2 Kings 21:1-9
King Manasseh is one of the deeply wicked kings in Judah's history. He undid his father Hezekiah's reforms, rebuilt the high places, set up idols even in the temple, practiced sorcery, and did great evil in...
No. 4203 2 Kings 4:20-24
The Shunammite woman, who had longed for a child and been given a son, now holds that son as he dies on her lap at midday. It is the worst thing that could happen to her. And yet, in her grief, she does...
No. 4247 2 Kings 24:7-20
This passage records the deepening ruin of Judah. Jehoiachin becomes king and does evil in God's sight, just as his father had done. Babylon besieges Jerusalem, carries off its treasures and its people into...
No. 4279 2 Kings 15:13-22
This passage records a grim stretch of Israel's history: one king murdered by the next, conspiracy after conspiracy, brutal violence, and kings who did evil in God's sight. Shallum kills to take the throne and...
No. 4285 2 Kings 17:1-6
This passage records the end of the northern kingdom of Israel: after a long history of turning from God, Samaria falls to Assyria, and the people are carried away into exile. A small note stands out about the...
No. 4307 2 Kings 13:20-25
In a time when Israel was oppressed and undeserving, this passage records a striking statement of God's mercy: the LORD was gracious to them and had compassion on them and turned toward them, because of his...