The books of first and second kings

Althought there are two separate books in our bibles, they were originally one book telling one
unified story that countinues from king Samual that came before it. So David unified the tribes into a
kingdom, and God promised that from his line would come a messian king, who would fill the
promises made to Abraham. So the book tells the story of the kings that came after David, but none
of them lived up to that promise, in fact they ran the nation of Isreal right to the ground. The book is
designed to have 5 main movements.

First was Solomans reign and the construction of the temple, and the last section was Jeruselem's
destruction and Isreal's exhile to babylon, and the story that is leading up to this tragedy is what
makes up the center 3 sections, which explains how Isreal split into Two rival kingdoms, and how God
tried to prevent the corruption with prophets.

The story starts with the demise of David the king, David's words ring somewhat hollow to him,
because Solomon decides to bring though this play using political assasinations. This makes Solomon
ask for wisdom from the God. Solomon also kept his promise to build the temple exactly how God
wanted it. The temple was made to simbolise the Garden of Eden. It is the place where Heaven and
Earth meet, but no sooner does Solomon finish the temple, he makes not so good desisions by
marrying multiple nation's women, He starts building idols for his women, Solomon then
accumulates an incredible ammount of wealth, creates a massive army. If you go back to the toura
and look at god's guidelines @ Geut.17, you will see that Solomon is breaking every one. So by the
time that he dies, Solomon resembles further the king of Egypt, rather than his father. The next book
resembles Rehoboam, who went down the same path his father did, the path of greed. He starts
taxing the slave labour, and under the leadership of Jeroboam the Northern tribes rebel, split and
form their own rivil kingdom, so now in the southern kingdom, Judah, based in Jerusalem, with the
line of David. But this new nothern kingdom called Israel, whose capital will be Samaria eventually
Jeroboam goes on to build two new temples to compete with Soloman's temple in the south. He puts
a golden calf in each one to represent the god of Isreal. In connection to EXODUS32 and the golden
calf, it is all explicit! From this point on the story goes back and forth from north to south tracing the
fate of both kingdoms. Each one had ~20 successive kings, and as the authour introduces each king,
he evaluates the reign of each king in their time period. Do they worship the god of Isreal alone? Or
did they promote the worship of other gods? Did they deal with idolatry among the people? and did
they remain faithful to the covenant like David? Or do they become corrupt and unjustice? By looking
at the criteria the authour finds no good nothern kings (0/20), and in Southern Judah he only finds 8
good kings (8/20), they get a positive rating, which connects to another huge purpoise in this book,
and that is to introduce the role of the prophets, Key figures in Israel's history. So in the bible
prophets were NOT fortune tellers. They rather spoke on behalf of the God of Israel, and they played
the role of Covenant watchdogs, which means they called out idolatry and injustice among the kings
and the people. They were constantly reminding the God of Israel the calling to be a light to the
nation, and they should obey the commands of the Tora. So they challenged Israel to repent and
follow the God. For each of these sections God raises up prophets to hold them accountable. The
most promonent prophets are the northern ones, Elijah and his disipline: Elisha, right here in the
centre of the book.