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by Charlie Wolcott

During my personal devotions a couple months ago, I was going through the earlier passages of Isaiah, and it hit me. When Isaiah was prophesying to King Ahaz regarding the siege of Syria and Israel, which would come up to Jerusalem but not take it, Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah, was old enough to be part of the king’s court and hearing the prophesies and then seeing them fulfilled. This may have played a role as to why Hezekiah was loyal to the Lord and followed the ways of God.

This got me thinking. What is the backstory of the kings? Before each of the kings of Israel and Judah rose to the throne, what was going on and what would have influenced some of their decisions? We often treat each king as if they exist in a vacuum, like they came out of the nowhere then began ruling. Yet that is not the case. Most of the kings were adults when they became king, and many knew their grandfather when they were king. In the Northern Kingdom, with so many dynasties, one king may have lived through 3-4 kings before taking the throne himself.

This is one of the reasons why the genealogies are so important. They give more than just a historical record. They give us clues to the backstory that we only on get to see through the king’s predecessor. Now, not all the reports give the king’s age when they became king, but a number do. When they don’t, it’s quite safe to say they were adults, which means they were attuned to what was going on both politically and religiously. We hear about the 3 ½ year drought during Ahab’s reign, but how many of us think of how that affected Jehoshaphat who did see rain? Athaliah, who ruled Judah for six years, was Ahab’s daughter. She knew of Elijah and the prophets of God but refused to believe.

I teach physics, so I am a science guy. My historical skills ultimately boil down to names and dates. Only recently have I really started being able to connect what these events truly were doing and how they impacted us down the road. The names and dates were frequently disjointed events that had no bearing on each other. In reality, they are all connected. The phrase, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it,” and a counter-but-similar phrase, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it surely does rhyme” do have merit. When we do our studies of the Old Testament history, we tend to use these accounts as literary stories and try to apply what the story says to our lives. But they are actual history, and that history had real, lasting effects on that which followed.

We in the United States understand the transition from administration to administration. I vaguely recall President Reagan as a child, but I knew Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama, Trump, and now Biden. Each presidency is either built upon the predecessor or seeks to undo what the predecessor did. The latter is especially seen under Trump and Biden. But as citizens, we have seen the transitions. However, people outside the United States may not recognize that. In fact, when we look at past presidents, many of us simply see one name following the other but we don’t know the political, social, or religious contexts in which each president served.

Our history books tell us brief snapshots of the Whigs, the populist parties, the international wars, the teachings of Evolution, and the Great Awakenings, but few seem connect the dots. We hear about the Enlightenment, but few connect that Enlightenment to Charles Lyell and Darwin. We hear about the Great Awakening, but few connect it the American Revolution. We hear about the Scopes Trial and Sputnik, but few realize those played critical roles in how and why God was kicked out of the public schools in the 1960s.

So here, I want to start connecting more dots between the Old Testament kings and seek to understand the underlying settings in which each king came into power. Much of this will be by exploring the previous ruler and what was going on with that ruler but seeking to give it a point of view of the upcoming king. Fellow blog writer Katie Erickson has already written a series about the kings (the first post of the series is here), emphasizing their reigns specifically. This is like a prequel to that series.

So to set the stage, upon Israel’s arrival in the Promised Land, Joshua conquered the bulk of the land, but there were still a few tribes left wandering loose. Israel never completed the conquest, so God let them stick around and linger to be trouble for Israel. This began the roughly 300-year period of the Judges. If you want to know much more about the judges, see Katie Erickson’s book on this time period.

The time of the judges came to a close as Samuel rose to prominence. God had grown silent as the judging of Samson was fading and Eli was a less-than-impressive priest and judge. Samuel heard his call as a child and grew into a position as both prophet and judge. But Samuel had no godly heirs, and the people were not wanting to wait for another judge. So they called for a king. God gave them Saul, who did not turn out so well. He was the precise type of person that God warned would be ruling over them, so God wanted to show them what man’s rulership looks like before putting him away and giving them a king who would seek after God – David. Then David’s son Solomon ruled, and after Solomon sinned into idolatry, the kingdom split into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

In this series, there are 39 kings I want to examine. You can see Katie Erickson’s blog series on the kings to learn about the reigns of the kings directly. What I want to look at is the backstory behind each king. Some kings won’t have a lot of information and I’ll combine them, but many will get their own post. There will be a lot of backstories for kings that would be reflected in the rule of the king before, but I want to try to showcase the things that each king would have seen growing up and which events, prophets, etc. would have influenced them, or which ones they rejected. This will be a fun series and I hope you learn something from it as well.

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