I’m enjoying reading Peter Leithart’s stimulating commentary (paid link) on 1 and 2 Kings.
He makes the point that, superficially, the book of Kings could reinforce Marcionite assumptions that the God of the Old Testament is harsh and vindictive, while we only meet his love and mercy in the New Testament.
In fact, he says, the book of Kings dismisses that idea very clearly. The temple will be destroyed if the people rebel; they become progressively more rebellious and yet the temple stands. The golden calf at Bethel will be destroyed by a man named Josiah; the people continue to pray to it, and kings come and go, until we’ve forgotten this promise by the time we meet Josiah. God prophecies the destruction of the house of Ahab through Elijah, but there are multiple stays of execution.
“The impression we get from 1-2 Kings is not that God is a stingy disciplinarian with an anger problem. If anything, the God of 1-2 Kings is irresponsibly indulgent toward his people, a God who does not seem to realize he cannot run the world without a dose of law and order. By the time Judah is sent into Babylonian exile in 2 Kings 25, we are not saying. ‘My, what a harsh God’; if we read attentively, we are saying, ‘It's about time! What took him so long?"’The offence of the theology proper of 1-2 Kings is not that God is angry with the innocent. The offence is the offence of Jonah – the offence of God's mercy, the offence of Yahweh’s unearthly patience with the irascible and unresponsive.” (Page 22)
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