Week 17 1-2 Kings
Last year I spent some time looking at the 15 kings of Judah. I wanted to try ranking them to get a comparative idea of how they each graded-out – Best-to-Worst. One thing that impressed me was the poor overall quality of Judah’s kings.
Anyway at the time I had zero interest in the kings of Israel. But this year I decided to balance things out and look at the northern kings.
I read through pretty quickly and found 19 kings: Jeroboam I Nadab Baasha Elah Zimri Omri Ahab Ahaziah Jehoram/Joram Jehu Jehoahaz Jehoash Jeroboam II Zechariah Shallum Menahem Pekahiah Pekah & Hoshea.
I noticed an expression that was used about quite a few of them: he did what was evil. That exact phrase described Nadab Baasha Zimri Omri Ahab Ahaziah Jehoram/Joram Jehoahaz Jehoash Jeroboam II Zechariah Menahem Pekahiah Pekah & Hoshea. 15 of 19 kings did what was evil.
That didn’t exactly make the other 4 kings model citizens:
Jeroboam 1 sinned and made all of Israel sin along with him
There’s a sentence about all the sin Elah led Israel to commit
Jehu did not obey the law of the Lord…with all his heart and he refused to turn from the sins of idolatry
And Shallum murdered Zechariah to take the throne.
So this meant all 19 of them were evil kings.
Which seems pretty clear-cut. Even so there’s a couple of things I figure I’ll circle back to and think about.
Note: quotes from 1 Kings 14:16 16:13 2 Kings 10:31 (NLT)