The Kingdom Divided/Exile and Return

12th June 1999

Overview

• Seven books of history: 1 Kings (all but the first eleven chapters), 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther.
• The four major prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel.
• The twelve minor prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.
• One book of poetry: Lamentations.

Since these books cover about half a millennium of history - from 931 BC to 433 BC - our biggest difficulty is to grasp the shape of the whole. The goal of these sessions is to give some character to these books, particularly the prophets, so that the seventeen books of the prophets don't melt into one big lump of prophecy in our minds.

We're going to deal with all this history in two chunks.

In the first week, we'll cover The Kingdom Divided: the 344 years from the end of Solomon's reign to the fall of Jerusalem. The relevant books are 1 and 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Isaiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah (thirteen books)

In the second week, we'll cover the Exile and Return: the hundred and fifty years from the fall of Jerusalem up to the end of the Old Testament period. The relevant books are Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi (ten books)

(You could argue that Jeremiah and Lamentations belong to The Kingdom Divided, but that would make the imbalance between the chunk sizes too great. Or you could argue that Obadiah belongs to Exile and Return, but he fits better as a post-script to the fall of Jerusalem.)

Introductory Notes

There are several things to bear in mind as we consider all this material:

• History moves fast. Part of what makes OT history confusing is that one moment, Egypt is the enemy, then it's Assyria, then it's Babylon. But the books frequently skip over fifty-year reigns in a sentence or two. Consider how different Europe looks now from fifty years ago.
• Morality moves fast. When you consider how things have changed in England since the 50s, the seemingly sudden swings in Kings and Chronicles are less shocking.
• Dates for lengths of reign etc. don't always add up. There are at least two reasons for this. Firstly, the Jewish system of counting years includes both the start and end points (so 1970-1973 is four years); and secondly, some reigns overlap due to co-regencies (eg. at the end of Uzziah's reign.)
• Prophecy in the Old Testament sense is a very different ministry from what's exercised on Sunday mornings. It has a strong component of prediction (though it's by no means limited to that), carries greater authority, and was correspondingly rarer.

Tables

1. Timeline: Prophets in the Reigns of Kings of Judah and Israel
2. Major Events in the Reigns of the Kings
3. The Messages of the Prophets

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