Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign.
B (0:05)
Hey, it's Shelby and Paul here. Today. We're in First Kings 13 through 15. And Paul, it is troubling times. There is unrest, there is division. We're now following two different kingdoms. We're kind of entering a new phase in the book or a new section in the book of first Kings, so. And it's really going to take us all the way through second Kings. So can you give us just some general guidelines for how we can read these sections that feel like rapidly going back and forth between kingdoms and talking through multiple kings in one chapter?
A (0:37)
Yeah, so we kind of get this format for the kings, and we alternate between descriptions of northern kings and southern kings, and with each one, they have usually a date, a length, and the location of the reign, and a theological appraisal, basically whether or not they were a good king or a bad king according to Deuteronomy and the law. And then for the southern kings, occasionally we'll get this comment about whether they followed in the footsteps of David or not, essentially to say whether they were good like David was or not. And spoiler alert, most of them are bad.
B (1:15)
Most of them, yeah.
A (1:16)
And actually in the Northern Kingdom, all of them are bad. None of them are said to have obeyed the Lord. We get a few good ones in the southern kingdom, some pretty notable good ones, actually, that we'll talk about much later. But today we're getting a number of kings from both kingdoms, and we focus mainly on Jeroboam, Rehoboam, and their next two descendants. And just for a reading comprehension standpoint, you know, I'd encourage readers to just pay attention to what nation is mentioned. Part of what makes it confusing sometimes is that they'll often give date markers according to who is actually ruling in the opposite kingdom. So it'll say something like, in the 10th year of the this king's reign in the southern kingdom, the northern king took office. Right. So sometimes that can be a little bit confusing. Some Bibles have headings that really help. So it'll say Israel's king and then their name, or Judah's king and then their name. But either way, in those moments, it's good to just slow down and say, okay, who are we talking about? Where are we? Again, it mentions the location of their reign frequently, which can be helpful. So, yeah, so there's some kind of tips for reading these portions.
B (2:25)
Those are great tips. Thank you. For those. They're going to give us just handles to hold as we read through several chapters here. I know in our reading today, Also in chapter 13 and 14, we're introduced to a few different prophets, and kind of the narratives around them can be a little bit difficult to understand. So can you help us make sense of that section?