What You Should Know About the Book of Kings

[four1298]

These are my favorite verses from this book. The bold ones are my favorite.

Solomon arranged a marriage contract with Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He married Pharaoh’s daughter and brought her to the City of David

I guess this is good because it's an arranged marriage.

These were the leaders in his government:...Adoniram son of Abda—manager of the slave labor.

Solomon had slaves.

Give what each deserves, for you know each life from the inside

I think Solomon said this.

Honor the prayers of the foreigner so that people all over the world will know who you are and what you’re like and will live in reverent obedience before you, just as your own people Israel do;

I'm pro-immigration so I like this. Solomon said this, I think.

The remnants from the original inhabitants of the land (Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—all non-Israelites), survivors of the holy wars, were rounded up by Solomon for his gangs of slave labor, a policy still in effect.

Solomon took up with Ashtoreth, the whore goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech, the horrible god of the Ammonites.
...
GOD was furious with Solomon

This is pro-life because children were sacrificed to Molech according to Leviticus 20, which says the punishment should be the death penalty:

https://www.gotquestions.org/child-sacrifice.html
What I like about Solomon though is that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines

One day a man arrived from Baal Shalishah. He brought the man of God twenty loaves of fresh-baked bread from the early harvest, along with a few apples from the orchard.
...
His servant said, “For a hundred men? There’s not nearly enough!”
Elisha said, “Just go ahead and do it. GOD says there’s plenty.”

This is like when Jesus fed thousands with little.

Then the Holy Man wept.

Hazael said, “Why does my master weep?”
“Because,” said Elisha, “I know what you’re going to do to the children of Israel:

burn down their forts,
murder their youth,
smash their babies,
rip open their pregnant women.”

Azariah son of Amaziah became king in Judah. He was sixteen years old when he began his rule and he was king for fifty-two years in Jerusalem.

He savagely ripped open all the pregnant women.
...


As far as GOD was concerned he lived an evil life.

This is king Menahem

Ahaz son of Jotham became king of Judah.
...
He even indulged in the outrageous practice of “passing his son through the fire”—a truly abominable act he picked up from the pagans GOD had earlier thrown out of the country.

[Manasseh] burned his own son in a sacrificial offering.


...


Much evil—in GOD’s judgment, a career in evil. And GOD was angry.

[Josiah] lived the way GOD wanted...

Then Josiah demolished the Topheth, the iron furnace griddle set up in the Valley of Ben Hinnom for sacrificing children in the fire. No longer could anyone burn son or daughter to the god Molech.


He killed all the priests who had conducted the sacrifices and cremated them on their own altars, thus desacralizing the altars.