Hens-Piazza, Gina. 1-2 Kings. Abingdon Old Testament
Commentaries.
Ralph W. Klein
In a very brief introduction, the author identifies historical and literary “considerations” in the Books of Kings and discusses these books as a theological work. She mentions the alternate positions of Noth and Cross on the Deuteronomistic History, without choosing between them, and the commentary itself does not really address this issue. She traces back the conditional and unconditional promises contained in the Deuteronomistic History to Moses and David respectively.
The commentary is non-technical—no new translation, textual criticism, use of Hebrew, or footnotes—and each section (usually a chapter) is divided into Literary Analysis, Exegetical Analysis, and Theological and Ethical Analysis.
In the segment called Literary Analysis, the author summarizes the section and identifies its component parts. One might have expected more detailed use of the tools of narrative criticism here. The exegetical sections will prove useful to lay readers, but will provide few new insights to scholars or even seminary students (the book jacket claims the series is aimed at theological students, pastors, and upper level college or university students).. It was astonishing to read the exegesis of 2 Kings 18-19 and find no reference to Sennacherib’s annals, which have created one of the most debated historical issues in the monarchical period. While the author contends that “story” rather than “history” is the operative genre in the Books of Kings (p. 2), I doubt if one can really understand that story if one brackets out what we no know today about the biblical world. She claims that Josiah’s Passover was the first time this feast had been observed since the time of the judges (388), while, of course, 2 Kgs 23:22 states only that “no such Passover,” that is, a Passover at the central sanctuary, had been observed since then. That leaves the Theological and Ethical Analysis where I will concentrate my remarks and which I found generally disappointing.
Often the
theological and ethical analysis merely points to moral lessons to be learned,
with little explicit Christian theology evident. While she notes the dual nature of David’s
farewell speech in 1 Kings 2—what I would call his appeal to covenant loyalty
and his brutal Realpolitik—her suggestion that
David’s instruction on covenant implied love of God and love of neighbor and
that Israel’s theocracy is meant to gradually yield a communitarian people
rather than the hierarchy of monarchy (p. 34) seems not at all based on this
text. Her laconic theological and
ethical note on 1 Kings 18—“The Lord’s fire falling from the heaven does not
conclude the episode; rather, Elijah’s slaughter of the Baal prophets caps it” (p.
183) misses a golden opportunity to comment on the dangers of religious
extremism and even on the potential problems inherent in monotheism that have
been much discussed in recent years and are perhaps the global issue today. Her
comments on 1 Kings 12 (the rise of Jeroboam) would have been helped by deeper
penetration into the actual strategy of Jeroboam and not to settle for the Deuteronomistic polemical distortion of his deeds. She writes that “Jeroboam’s heart needed to
fix on the Lord,” that “[His actions] are an expression of his faulty
confidence in exterior accoutrements as insurance of his popular reception as
king,” and “Religious formalism devoid of a heart set on the Lord leads on to
the catastrophic outcome of personal and national demise” (p. 130). But did not Jeroboam make a rather orthodox confession
of Yahweh and his deliverance of