Bern Leckie and Owen Lynch share thoughts and feelings about the first part of the book of Kings.

It can be hard to know what to make of these stories of life after King David. Characters like Solomon are awesome and sometimes live in ways we would love to have part of, but they are also complex and flawed. Drawing moral conclusions from what they say and do, and what happens to them, is usually tempting but often baffling and always needing to be done in the context of the larger stories being told.

One story with a recognisable pattern is Solomon’s fall, linked with the fall of Israel as a united kingdom, and eventually the fall of divided kingdoms into exile. Can we identify what caused the falls, and so grasp the message intended by the author?

Turning away from God is labelled as the main mistake, and while that might not sound surprising, the ways in which this was shown to happen, and the consequences for people who did this in different ways, might be shocking. This makes the book of Kings a dizzying listen, often hard to process, but also highly engaging and revealing of a need to seek God and not just people or things that look blessed.

In next part of our boxset, we’ll continue the story of Kings and see what prophets have to say and do as part of God’s intervention, not just with corrupt leadership, but with suffering people directly. Listen along at your own pace at severnvineyard.org/bible.