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Course 6 · Lesson 3.4

How Samuel and Kings tell the story: sources and purpose

10 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 6 outline

Module 1: Israel in the Ancient Near East

  1. Egypt, Mesopotamia and Canaan: the world of the Old Testament
  2. What archaeology and ancient texts can and cannot show
  3. Genesis 1 to 3 beside other ancient creation accounts
  4. Ancient cosmology and how Christians and Jews read Genesis

Module 2: Covenant: Abraham and Moses

  1. What a covenant is, and covenant forms in the ancient world
  2. The covenants with Noah and Abraham
  3. The exodus and the covenant at Sinai
  4. The Torah: law, worship and the tabernacle
  5. Covenant in Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox and Reformed thought

Module 3: Kingship in Israel

  1. From the judges to the first kings
  2. David, Jerusalem and the promise of a lasting house
  3. Solomon, the temple and the divided kingdom
  4. How Samuel and Kings tell the story: sources and purpose

Module 4: The Prophets, Exile and Restoration

  1. What a prophet was in Israel and in the ancient world
  2. Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micah: justice, loyalty and judgment
  3. Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the fall of Jerusalem
  4. The return, Ezra, Nehemiah and the rebuilt temple
  5. How the prophetic books were formed: the debate over Isaiah and others

Module 5: Wisdom and Apocalyptic Writing

  1. Proverbs and the way of the wise
  2. Job and Ecclesiastes: wisdom that questions
  3. What apocalyptic writing is: Daniel and its setting
  4. Reading apocalyptic images responsibly

Module 6: Second Temple Judaism and the Development of Jewish Thought

  1. Persian, Greek and Maccabean periods
  2. Temple, synagogue and the main groups in Jewish life
  3. Development in Jewish thought: angels, resurrection, wisdom and law
  4. Sources: the Dead Sea Scrolls, the deuterocanonical books and Josephus

Module 7: Messianic Expectation and the Shape of the Covenants

  1. Anointed ones in the Old Testament: king, priest, prophet
  2. Messianic texts in the prophets and psalms
  3. How Jews and Christians read the messianic texts
  4. The promise of a new covenant
  5. Mapping the development of covenant across the Old Testament

All courses

Program / Course 6: Old Testament Theology and History / Lesson 3.4

What you will learn

  • Explain what the Deuteronomistic History is and why scholars propose it.
  • Name the sources that Kings says it used.
  • Describe how Samuel and Kings differ from modern history writing and from Chronicles.
  • State how the theological pattern of the books shapes their account.

The big idea

Samuel and Kings are histories, but they are written with a purpose that is as much theological as historical. They name royal records they used, they judge every king by one standard, loyalty to the Lord alone, and they explain the fall of Israel and Judah as the result of broken covenant. Chronicles later retells much of the same story with a different emphasis. Reading the books well means asking both what happened and why the writer tells it this way.

Key terms

Deuteronomistic History
A scholarly name for Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings read together as one work shaped by the outlook of Deuteronomy.
Annals
Official year-by-year records kept by royal courts. Kings refers to the annals of the kings of Israel and of Judah.
Redaction
The editing and arranging of earlier material into a finished work.
Synchronism
A statement that dates a king of one kingdom by the year of a king of the other, as in the opening notes of each reign in Kings.
Retribution
The idea that obedience leads to blessing and disobedience to punishment, a theme of Deuteronomy 28.
Septuagint
The ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, which sometimes preserves a different text of Samuel and Kings.
The Chronicler
The name given to the author of 1 and 2 Chronicles, and often Ezra and Nehemiah, in some scholarly views.

Background

In Jewish tradition, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings are the Former Prophets. They are placed before the books of the writing prophets and are treated as a story told by prophets. Christian Bibles call them historical books and place them after the Torah. The difference in names points to a real feature: the books record events, and they interpret them with prophetic eyes.

In 1943 the German scholar Martin Noth proposed that Deuteronomy through Kings was composed by one author, working in the exile, who gathered older sources into a single history that explained why the kingdoms fell. The proposal has been widely discussed. Some scholars hold that it was edited twice, once in the time of King Josiah and again after the exile. Others doubt that a single work ever existed. The debate is active, and the lesson uses the idea cautiously.

The key question for a student is how to read ancient history writing. It was not written to modern standards of neutrality, and it did not aim to record every event. It selected, arranged and interpreted. This is true of other ancient historians too, and it does not mean that the account is false, only that it has a point of view.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The sources Kings names

The books of Kings refer to other books for readers who want more. They name the Book of the Acts of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41), the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel, and the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah. These probably refer to court records, not to the biblical books of Chronicles. Samuel and Joshua mention the Book of Jashar (Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18), a collection of poems now lost.

Kings also seems to draw on stories about the prophets Elijah and Elisha, on temple records and on family accounts of royal events. The writer’s use of sources suggests that he treated facts as important and that he selected from many sources, as ancient historians commonly did.

Step 2: A standard of judgment

Each king’s reign is introduced and closed with a formula: his age at accession, the length of his reign, his mother’s name, a judgment, and a note on his death. The judgment is made by a single test. A good king does right in the eyes of the Lord and removes the high places, though few remove them entirely. Of the northern kings, each is said to walk in the way of Jeroboam. Of the southern kings, David is the model.

The test comes from Deuteronomy’s demand for the worship of one God in one place. Under the test, some kings who were politically powerful, such as Omri, receive little space, while kings who led religious reform, such as Hezekiah and Josiah, receive much. Readers who look for a full political history will find it thin.

Step 3: Explanation of the fall

The writer explains the fall of the north in 2 Kings 17 by a long speech: they walked in the statutes of the nations and did not heed the prophets. Judah’s fall is also explained as caused by sin, especially the sins of Manasseh (2 Kings 21 and 24). Some modern readers find the claim of simple retribution troubling, since the text elsewhere admits that good kings, such as Josiah, die young and that the righteous suffer.

The books end with a small note of hope. In 2 Kings 25:27 to 30, Jehoiachin, the exiled king of Judah, is released from prison in Babylon and given a seat at the king’s table. Babylonian ration tablets mention Jehoiachin among those supported at court, which confirms the detail. The ending leaves the Davidic line alive, if barely.

Step 4: Chronicles and the Greek text

Chronicles covers the same period from a later vantage point. It begins with genealogies from Adam, concentrates on Judah and the temple, omits David’s sin with Bathsheba, and adds material on temple music and the Levites. It was written after the exile, to encourage the returned community. Where it differs from Kings, some differences reflect its purpose, and some may reflect different sources.

The text of Samuel also varies. The Dead Sea Scrolls include manuscripts of Samuel that sometimes agree with the Greek translation against the standard Hebrew text, showing that more than one form of the text circulated. This matters for the doctrine of Scripture differently in each tradition, and is described more in other courses.

  1. What sources does Kings say it relied on, and what does that suggest about the writer’s method?
  2. What is the single test the writer uses to judge kings?
  3. What is missing from Kings that a modern historian would like to find?
  4. How does Chronicles differ in aim from Kings?
  5. Does the writer’s theological purpose make the account unreliable? Why or why not?
  6. What is the point of the closing note about Jehoiachin?

Examples

King Omri

Omri receives six verses in 1 Kings 16, even though Assyrian records long called Israel the house of Omri. He built Samaria and held a strong kingdom. The writer cares chiefly about the verdict: he did worse than all who were before him. The proportion shows the purpose.

Manasseh in two books

Kings tells of Manasseh’s long reign as the worst of Judah’s kings and a reason for the fall. Chronicles adds that he was taken to Babylon, repented and was restored (2 Chronicles 33). Whether this reflects an extra source or a theological point is discussed by scholars.

The census of David

2 Samuel 24 says that the Lord moved David to number Israel. 1 Chronicles 21 says that Satan stood up against Israel and moved David. Readers across traditions have compared the two for what they teach about divine and spiritual agency.

Different perspectives

Jewish readers

Jewish tradition receives these books as prophetic and attributes Kings to Jeremiah, as stated in the Talmud. Rabbinic readers emphasize that history teaches moral lessons, and have long compared Kings and Chronicles.

Catholic and Orthodox readers

These churches count Samuel and Kings as inspired history and use the Greek text tradition, in which they are called First to Fourth Kingdoms. They accept that the sacred writers used sources and shaped them to teach.

Protestant readers

Protestants range from those who accept the books as precise history in every detail to those who read them as theological history with freedom of presentation. Evangelicals commonly stress the care of the writer with sources, and mainline scholars the editorial work.

Scholarly views

Many scholars support some form of Noth’s idea of a Deuteronomistic History, often in revised form. Others argue for separate books with their own histories. Most agree that the books combine older material with exilic editing.

Why it matters

To read Kings as a modern textbook is to misread it, and to read it as invention is also to misread it. The books combine records with interpretation. Knowing this lets a student use the books for what they are: an account of events, shaped to answer the question the exile raised, namely why God’s people lost their land and whether hope remained.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Ancient historians were just storytellers.

Correction: Ancient writers used records, selected material and shaped it for a purpose, as modern historians do. The biblical writers cite their sources by name.

Misunderstanding: Kings and Chronicles contradict each other, so neither can be trusted.

Correction: They have different purposes and audiences. Many differences are of emphasis. Some are real puzzles, which scholars and believers discuss in various ways.

Misunderstanding: The Deuteronomistic History is an established fact.

Correction: It is a widely used theory, in several forms, and some scholars reject or revise it.

Knowledge check

What is the Deuteronomistic History?

It is a scholarly name for the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, taken as one work shaped by the outlook of Deuteronomy. Martin Noth proposed in 1943 that it was composed in the exile to explain the fall of the kingdoms. Scholars debate whether there was one author or several stages of editing, and some reject the idea.

Which sources does Kings name?

It names the Book of the Acts of Solomon and the annals of the kings of Israel and of Judah, which are royal records and not the biblical Chronicles. Elsewhere Joshua and Samuel mention the Book of Jashar. The naming shows that the writer used earlier records and expected readers to know of them.

How does Chronicles differ from Samuel and Kings?

Chronicles retells the history after the exile with a focus on Judah, the temple, the Levites and David’s preparations for building. It omits much of David’s and Solomon’s failings and the story of the northern kingdom. It aims to encourage a restored community by showing continuity and the importance of worship.

What is the significance of the ending of 2 Kings?

The books end with the exiled king Jehoiachin released from prison and honored at the table of the Babylonian king. After the account of destruction, the ending shows that David’s line survived. Babylonian ration tablets name Jehoiachin, confirming the detail. Readers see it as a note of restrained hope.

Think it through

  1. What do you gain from reading a history with an openly stated purpose, and what do you lose?
  2. Does it trouble you that the writer judges kings by religion more than by politics?
  3. Why might exiles have needed a history that explained their loss?
  4. How would you respond to someone who says that a theological history cannot be trusted?

Independent assignment

Compare two accounts

In your own notebook, read 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21, or 2 Kings 21 and 2 Chronicles 33. Make two columns and list the details of each account. Then write 250 to 350 words saying which differences you think come from different purposes, which come from different sources, and which remain puzzling. Keep it for yourself.

Further study