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What you get in the 1 Kings Maps
Atlas of 47 high resolution maps about the stories in 2 Kings, from the death of notorious, Baal-worshiping Queen Jezebel until invaders from what is now Iraq wiped the Jewish nations of Israel and Judah off the world map and deported the survivors as captives.
Sample original map in 2 Kings Bible Map collection
Pick a headline
Here’s a perfectly accurate headline from 2 Kings, according to the anonymous historian or historians who wrote it:
God wipes Israel and Judah off the map.
But the shocking subhead could fill in as a headline, too.
Jews skipped Passover for 400 years.
What?
“The people hadn’t bothered with Passover for centuries—since the time of the heroic judges of Israel. Even through all those centuries, with all the kings of Israel and Judah—still no Passover” (2 Kings 23:22).
Huh? King David didn’t eat the Passover seder meal every spring? Neither did Solomon? Not even good king Hezekiah?
Apparently not.
By comparison today, three of four Jewish souls on earth eat the Passover seder every spring. It’s a ritual meal to remind them that God freed their ancestors from slavery in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago. That was back when Moses led them to the Promised Land, which became Israel, and is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
So why didn’t the people of Israel and Judah celebrate Passover? The possible answer sounds like another shocking headline:
Jews lost the Bible.
Their Bible at the time was likely just the laws of Moses. Prophets were just getting warmed up, while poets and pundits waited on inspiration.
A priest found the forgotten book of the law in the Jerusalem Temple when Josiah was king, sometime between 641-609 BC, the years he reigned.
The priest may have found just the book of Deuteronomy; speeches Moses gave late in his life to sum up the laws of God and to remind the people to obey them or risk the extreme punishment.
When the priest read the law book to Josiah, he freaked, ripping his clothes in anger and grief and probably in fear of God. Then the king personally read the laws to a crowd of Judah’s leaders.
Too little, too late to save the Jewish nation
He and the people recommitted themselves to God and promised to obey the laws.
Not too late for them. They lived in peace during Josiah’s reign. But it was too late to save Judah. For one generation after another, the Jewish people of Israel and Judah broke the laws they apparently had lost and forgotten.
But God remembered.
“If you don’t follow the law and obey the words I’m writing here….The LORD is going to scatter the people of your nation all over this earth” (Deuteronomy 28:58, 64).
