The Bible/Books of Kings

Solomon brings the ark into the temple

The 11th and 12th books of the Bible.

1st Kings tells of Israel's Golden Age under Solomon, but he also sows the seeds of rebellion, with the consequence that the nation divides into two kingdoms: the Israel (the Northern) and Judah (the Southern).

2nd Kings continues the history of the divided nations. Both go into a downward spiral until they are destroyed by foreign nations and their peoples sent into exile.

In Christian Bibles it is followed by 1st & 2nd Chronicles, a Lighter and Softer rehashing of Kings focusing exclusively on the Southern kingdom of Judah to inspire the Jews exiled to Babylon. Most of the Prophets preached during this period, so they will be discussed here also. In the Jewish Tanakh it is followed by the book of Isaiah. (Chronicles is relegated to the Ketuvim.)

These books contain the following tropes:

• 0% Approval Rating: King Jehoram of Judah was recorded as having died "without being desired" in 2nd Chronicles 21:20, meaning that he was so unlikeable as king that nobody was sad to see him go.
• Back from the Dead:
  • In 1st Kings 17:8-24, after Elijah was directed to a house in Zarephath and he supplied foods to a widow and her son, the boy felt ill and became breathless. Elijah prays to God three times in a hope that God would let the boy's life return to him. God heard Elijah's cry and returned the boy's life to him, resurrecting the child.
  • Elisha did two — in 2 Kings 4:32-37, he prayed to God to resurrect the son of a Shunnamite woman while staying with the child, and the other one is done posthumously in 2 Kings 13:21, by having a corpse landed onto the bones of Elisha.
• Bears Are Bad News: Elisha summons two bears to maul 42 young bandits for mocking his bald head (and possibly implying that they would send him to heaven, i.e. kill him, although the phrase could also mean "Why didn't you go up to heaven [like Elijah did]?").
• Chronic Villainy: Judah often backslides after a Godly king dies.
• Crapsack World: Foreign invasions from without and political upheaval from within.
• Cryptic Background Reference: References are made about another book (presumably lost) detailing the rest of the deeds of Israel's kings.
• Curse: Joshua cursed whoever rebuilds Jericho's walls, saying whoever lays the foundations will lose his firstborn and whoever sets up his gates will lose his youngest child. This came true in the reign of Ahab.
• Defiled Forever: Israel is compared to a spoiled, pampered, virginal princess, who is then raped and taken into captivity.
• Downer Ending: The books of Kings, that is. The pair of Chronicles books, however, ends with King Cyrus of Persia calling for the return of the Jews to their own homeland, setting up for the events in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
• Drives Like Crazy: Jehu, the charioteer. So much so that lookouts who see his chariot approaching can tell him apart from anyone else before he's even close enough to identify by sight.

"...and the driving is like the driving of Jehu son of Nimshi; for he drives furiously."

• Dying Curse: In 2nd Chronicles chapter 24, after King Joash's Face-Heel Turn, Zechariah son of Jehoiada tells the king, "Thus says God: 'Why do you transgress the commandments of the LORD, so that you cannot prosper? Because you have forsaken the LORD, He has forsaken you.' " When the king commanded that Zechariah be stoned, his last words were, "The LORD look on it, and repay!" Sometime after, the Lord brought judgement upon Joash by bringing the armies of Syria against Judah and Jerusalem, and he was killed.
• Evil Matriarch: Jezebel and Athaliah (the latter not above killing her own grandchildren to secure her own power).
• Face Death with Dignity: When the soldiers came to kill Jezebel, she faced them while wearing her full royal attire. The effect was sort of diminished after centuries of this being interpreted as her being a prostitute.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Joab's violence.
  • Solomon's dissatisfaction with his life.
  • Elah's drunkenness.
  • Ahab's liaison with a wife descended from Sidon; then Ahab's inability to stand up against her.
  • Josiah rushing off to battle when the Pharaoh Neco warned him not to.
• God Test: Elijah challenges the worshipers of Baal to a contest in which the god who answers by lighting a sacrifice on fire is determined to be God. Needless to say, the contest didn't end well for the Baal worshipers, even after Elijah makes it "nearly impossible" for God to light his sacrifice on fire.
• Holy Burns Evil: And isn't safe for common sinful man. In 2nd Chronicles, despite warnings from the priests, King Uzziah attempted to burn incense in the temple as a sacrifice to God. God got extremely angry at him for performing a task exclusively reserved for priests, and so the king was struck with leprousy.
• Hope Spot: Chronicles ends with the proclamation of Cyrus the Great allowing the Jews to return to their homeland.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Jehoshaphat's alliance with the North's Israel had terrible consequences: a) Pagan practices spread to Judah, b) he was almost killed in battle because of Ahab, c) his venture into maritime commerce ended in disaster, and d) his daughter-in-law Athaliah almost destroyed David's royal line.
• I Am a Humanitarian: There was a famine during the time of Elijah & Elisha, so there are instances of cannibalism and people Driven to Madness by hunger enough to see their own children as potential food.
• Last of Their Kind: Elijah and Elisha were the last miracle workers (we're told of) in the Old Testament.
• Lethal Chef: Somebody in 2nd Kings 4:38-41 finds a strange batch of gourds with which he nearly poisons others by making them into a stew. Fortunately Elisha the prophet, with the help of God, makes the stew harmless to eat.
• Love Ruins the Realm: Solomon allows his wives to worship their own gods, rather than forcing them to convert. They eventually persuaded him that their gods were better, leading him to idol worship (as well as many of his subjects). This leads to religiously-motivated civil war.
• Makeup and Vanity Set: Queen Jezebel notoriously put on makeup before confronting God's prophet. Unfortunately for her, it didn't stop her from becoming dog food.
• Name's the Same: In-universe, Jeroboam II is a descendant of Jehu, not Jeroboam I.
• Nasty Party: Jehu son of Jehoshaphat purposely had a group of Baal worshipers assemble together in the house of Baal for a solemn ceremony, claiming that he wants to worship Baal, but his real purpose was to have all the Baal worshipers slain, thus getting rid of Baal worship in the Northern kingdom of Israel.
• Polyamory: Pushed Up to Eleven in Solomon's case — 700 wives and 300 concubines!
• Serial Escalation: In 1st Kings 14, Jeroboam did more evil than those who preceded him. Later, in 1st Kings 16, Zimri was described as evil, and the two following kings Omri and Ahab did more evil than any before.
• She's Not My Girlfriend: David had a ward in his old age, with whom he's said explicitly not to have sex with, but whom everyone mistook as a concubine. One of his sons even asked permission to marry her, perhaps to lay a claim to the throne.
• Smash the Symbol:
  • After slaying the worshipers of Baal in the Northern kingdom of Israel, Jehu proceeds to destroy its temple and turn it into an outhouse.
  • After the reign of King Zedekiah, the Babylonians proceed to destroy the Temple in Jerusalem.
• Space Whale Aesop: Don't make fun of someone's baldness lest he call upon God to summon two bears to maul you and your friends.
• Sucksessor: Often were good kings followed by terrible ones (their own sons in Judah), but every once in a while terrible kings were followed by good ones (again, limited to Judah, as the book grades all rulers of the North's Israel as evil).
• Too Dumb to Live: The King of Israel sends some soldiers to bring Elijah to him. Their leader isn't very respectful, so Elijah makes a snarky comment and burns them with divine fire. The king sends a second group of soldiers, and their leader, apparently not noticing the charred corpses and burned rocks and whatnot, makes exactly the same disrespectful demand as the first. The results are predictable. Thankfully, the third batch learned from their mistakes, and the leader humbles himself before the prophet.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Jeroboam had a young son, Abijah, who died of illness (released from the family by Mercy Kill). He was the only one in the family to be buried and mourned, because he was the only one in whom God found any good.
• Tragic Mistake: Made one each by the two best kings:
  • Hezekiah showed off Judah's treasures to Babylonian envoys and ended up putting his country on Babylon's hit list.
  • Josiah goes off to fight against Egypt and gets killed.
• Trash the Set: The Babylonians destroy the Temple and leave it in ruins until the time of the Medo-Persian empire when the Jewish exiles returned home.
• Troll: Elijah does this to Baal's prophets, even with remarks on Baal sitting on his "throne."
• War Is Hell: Pretty much the entirety of 2nd Kings, and many of the prophetic books were written in the context of these events.
• Where Is Your X Now?:
  • When Elijah competes with the priests of Baal over whose god can light a sacrifice, he pokes fun at the other priests using lines similar to this trope.
  • King Sennacherib of Assyria does this to King Hezekiah when he threatens to destroy Judah, saying, "where are the gods" of the nations he had conquered, suggesting thus that Hezekiah's God will not save him. It doesn't work well for the Assyrian king when, after Hezekiah prays to God, the Assyrian finds that 185,000 of his troops are dead. Not to mention his own sons with their coup to assassinate him the moment he returns home.
• Written by the Winners: More like written by the survivors, but it holds true all the same. Around 720 BC the North's Israel was overrun by the Assyrians while Judah was saved by a timely civil war that shortly thereafter broke out in the Assyrian Empire and continued to exist for a good 200 additional years. Thus, all somewhat contemporary surviving records of that time come from the priesthood in Jerusalem, which guaranteed that the inhabitants and kings especially of the northern kingdom are described in such a negative light.
• You Can't Fight Fate: King Ahab is warned by Micaiah the prophet that he will die in the battle of Ramoth Gilead. Ahab tries to avert the disaster by dressing up in different clothes before going into battle while King Jehoshaphat wears his royal clothes, hoping that the Syrian army will go after Jehoshaphat instead of him. However, an arrow shot at random pierces King Ahab.