The material in this sequence of four books – I Samuel, II Samuel, I Kings, II Kings – covers a span of more than five centuries, from the birth of Samuel in about 1100 BC to the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC. The consensus of scholars is that these books as we now have them were compiled by an editor who drew together material from various annals and sagas from across these centuries to tell us the story of how the kingdom of Israel came to be, and how it fell apart.

Up till now, we have seen an occasional glimpse of the theological perspective of this never-named historian: for example, he frequently offered a brief remark about how such-and-such a king continued in the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat (in yesterday’s reading, for example: II Kings 14:24, 15:9, 18, 24, 28).

But in today’s reading we find a more extensive theological analysis: the captivity of Israel happened “because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt” (17:7). They “despised his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their ancestors, and the warnings that he gave them” (17:15). As a result, they “did wicked things, provoking the Lord to anger” (17:11), even though “the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, ‘Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes’” (17:13). Yet “they would not listen but were stubborn, as their ancestors had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God” (17:14).

We do not commonly engage in this sort of theological analysis on a national historical basis. What was God’s response, for example, to the Holy Roman Empire in the time of Charlemagne, or to the Franco-Prussian War? How does God feel about the four centuries from colonial America to the present day? We don’t usually ask such questions, or expect to answer them. But the historian who gave us this series of Bible books looked back across the centuries, and said “You can see why God let all this happen.”

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Ah Lord! We are so hesitant to suppose you would allow terrible things to happen to us, because we failed to be faithful to you: yet we are no better than our ancestors. We too remain stubbornly caught in the same old sins, despite all the calls to repentance you give us. Save us, Lord: change our hearts: teach us to follow you, day by day.