Iain W. Provan on 1 and 2 Kings

Iain W. Provan, 1 & 2 Kings, New International Biblical Commentary – Old Testament Volume 7 (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1995).

The publishers make available the Table of Contents, the Introduction, and the comments on 1 Kings 1.

1 and 2 Kings is a self-contained book, though it presupposes the story of Israel thus far, invites reflection in the light of Old Testament prophetic writings, as well as (from a Christian perspective) in the total canonical context of Scripture as a whole.

‘The book of Kings tells us a story; it is narrative literature. It is a story that is certainly about the past…; it is literature with historiographical intent. It is, finally, didactic literature – it seeks to teach its readers a number of things about God and the ways of God’ (1).

The Book of Kings as Narrative Literature
As a story, it presents characters and events, with a plot concerned ‘with the attempt that Israel makes (or more often, does not make) under its monarchy to live as the people of God in the promised land and with how God deals with the Israelites in their success and failure’ (2).

Although the landscape has changed in the intervening 15 years or so, Provan (writing in the early 1990s) comments on the dearth of studies dealing with the final form of the text itself ‘as it stands as a complete story’ (3). He seeks to make sense of the text ‘as it is read cumulatively from beginning to end, each part being seen in the context of the whole’ (4-5).

He also notes what has since become more commonplace among those interested in theological readings of Scripture that it is a reading of the final form of the story of Scripture as a whole that defines the church, and that the recovery of such a reading is of ‘utmost importance’ (5).

The Book of Kings as Historiographical Literature
Here he notes the ongoing debate (still ongoing) on the distinction between ‘historical Israel’ and ‘biblical Israel’. In response he draws attention to the ‘historiographical intent’ of the book, which must be taken seriously (7); he also notes with others that all history writing has a ‘story-like quality’ and is ‘in some sense ideological literature’, necessarily so given the selection and interpretation of material (8).

Beyond this, he also argues that the reader ‘who views Kings as part of Christian Scripture’ will see this as ‘one of the authorized portraits of Israel’s past’, to be received and studied (9).

The Book of Kings as Didactic Literature
‘The book of Kings is not only a narrative about the past. It is also a narrative that seeks to teach its readers a number of things about God and his ways’ (10). Various themes are prominent in the book – that ‘God is indeed God’, that ‘as the only God there is, the LORD demands exclusive worship’, that ‘as the giver of the laws that defines true worship and right thinking and behavior generally, the LORD is also the one who executes judgment upon wrongdoers’, as well as the theme of promise (11-13).

Provan concludes this section by reflecting on the importance of placing Kings in the Bible as a whole, read ‘with an eye to to that total canonical context’ (14). Not that it has no meaning by itself or that its meaning is bestowed upon it by the New Testament. Provan here sides with those who argue that the Old Testament ‘must be read as speaking to the church on its own terms – as providing the theological (and not simply the historical) context in which the NT is to be understood’ (14).

Provan draws attention to the role of patterning in Kings, where events and characters in later chapters recall events and characters in earlier chapters, inviting comparison and contrast, as well as functioning typologically, inviting us contemporary readers to read our own lives into the lives of the characters, attaching ‘our story to its larger narrative whole’ (15).