The two books of Kings complete the story of Israel begun in the biblical books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and Samuel. The entire sequence was worked out after the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E., during Babylonian Exile in ca. 550 B.C.E. The main theme is that Israel has suffered calamity by reason of not keeping the law of the Torah. 1 Kings begins with the end of the story of David (chaps. 1–2).
The reign of Solomon is covered in 1 Kings 3–11, then the reigns of the kings of Judah and Israel from the beginning of the divided kingdom, in ca. 930 B.C.E., to the fall of Northern Israel in 721 B.C.E., in 1 Kings 12–17; and then the story of the kings of the southern kingdom of Judah, to 586 B.C.E. (2 Kings 18–25). The various kings are judged by whether or not they accepted the sole legitimacy of Jerusalem’s Temple and of the worship of the Lord; Hezekiah and Josiah are approved in the south, none of their northern counterparts is accepted. The fall of Israel, then Judah, is explained by apostasy. But the people will return to the glory of David’s rule over a united Israelite people.
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