Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 8-9.

I am not sure what all I want to write about today, but I will start with something I have noticed before.  At the end of the description of King Jehoram’s reign, the passage says, “As for the other events of Jehoram’s reign, and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah? ”  There is a similar phrase at the end of the description of reign of most if not all of the kings mentioned in the Books of Kings.  This indicates that the compiler of these books was aware of other writings which gave details about the actions of the kings of Judah and of Israel.  So, why is that significant?  There are those who claim that the books of the Old Testament were written after the Babylonian Exile.  However, if that were the case, it would be unlikely that the book of the annals of the kings of Judah or the one of the kings of Israel would still have been available.  Which means that the bulk of these two books were composed before the Babylonian Exile.  The only way to believe that First and Second Kings were written after the end of the Babylonian Exile is to believe that the writers intentionally deceived their readers by implying that they had access to the book of the annals of the kings of Judah and the book of the annals of the kings of Israel.  However, these references to those annals also tells us something about the things which the Kingdom of Judah and the Kingdom of Israel had in common.  They both kept a record of the acts of their kings.  A record which was maintained even with the dynastic changes which happened in Israel.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.