The Fall of Kingdoms

Come Follow Me 2026 — Week 28 — Jul 13–19 — 2 Kings 16–25

The Fall of Israel: 722 BC

In 722 BC, the Assyrian empire under Sargon II completed the conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel and deported its people. What had begun as a unified kingdom under Saul, reached its zenith under David and Solomon, fractured under Rehoboam, and spent two centuries under a succession of evil kings now ceased to exist as a political entity. The narrator of 2 Kings was not interested primarily in the geopolitics. He was interested in the theological explanation.

2 Kings 17:7–8, 12

“For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God… And had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel… For they served idols, whereof the LORD had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing.”

The explanation in 2 Kings 17 is one of the most theologically dense passages in the Old Testament. The narrator lists the failures in systematic detail: they feared other gods; they walked in the statutes of the heathen; they built high places; they set up pillars and Asherah poles; they burned their children in fire; they used divination and enchantments; they sold themselves to do evil. And underlying all of it: “Because they obeyed not the voice of the LORD their God, but transgressed his covenant, and all that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded.”

What makes this passage particularly striking is its emphasis that God had not failed to warn them: “Yet the LORD testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes.” The prophets had been sent. The warnings had been issued. “Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the LORD their God.”

The fall of Israel was not a failure of God’s faithfulness. It was the fulfillment of God’s faithfulness to the terms of the covenant He had made with them at Sinai. The covenant had specified blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience — including the curse of exile. Israel had accumulated two centuries of covenant violation. The covenant was not arbitrary; it was moral and relational. When a people consistently and systematically refuse the God who covenanted with them, the covenant’s consequences follow.

Hezekiah: A King Who Trusted

Against the backdrop of Israel’s fall, Hezekiah of Judah stands out as one of the most remarkable kings in the entire narrative of the divided monarchy. The narrator’s assessment is unequivocal: “He trusted in the LORD God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him.” Three qualities defined his reign: he removed the high places and broke down the idolatrous pillars that every previous king had left standing; he cleaved to the LORD; and “he departed not from following him, but kept his commandments.”

Hezekiah’s greatest test came when Sennacherib of Assyria invaded Judah and surrounded Jerusalem. His commander Rabshakeh delivered a masterpiece of psychological warfare before the walls — in Hebrew, so the people of Jerusalem could hear every word. The message was sophisticated and designed to produce despair: no god of any nation had been able to withstand Assyria; what made Israel think their God would be different? It was a direct theological challenge.

2 Kings 19:14–15

“And Hezekiah received the letter of the hand of the messengers, and read it: and Hezekiah went up into the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD. And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD, and said, O LORD God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth.”

Hezekiah’s response to the Assyrian letter is one of the most instructive models of prayer under pressure in scripture. He went to the temple. He spread the letter before God. He did not argue or strategize; he placed the actual written threat in God’s presence and prayed. His prayer was theologically precise: he acknowledged God as creator of heaven and earth, distinguished Israel’s God from the gods of the nations (which were “no gods” but “the work of men’s hands”), presented the specific crisis, and asked for deliverance specifically so that “all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD God, even thou only.”

Isaiah was sent with God’s answer: the Assyrians would not enter Jerusalem. That night an angel of the LORD went out and struck 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp. Sennacherib returned to Nineveh and was later killed by his own sons. God had answered the prayer of a king who trusted enough to spread the problem before Him and ask for help.

Prayer Under Pressure — Cross-References

• Philippians 4:6–7 — “In every thing by prayer and supplication… make your requests known unto God”
• D&C 112:10 — Be thou humble, and the Lord thy God shall lead thee by the hand and give thee answer to thy prayers
• Alma 26:22 — Whosoever will come may come and partake of the waters of life freely

The Shadow Goes Backward: God Extends Life

Shortly after the Assyrian crisis, Hezekiah fell gravely ill and was told by Isaiah that he would die. He turned to the wall and wept and prayed: “Remember now, O LORD, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart.” Isaiah had not yet left the middle court when God sent him back: the prayer had been heard; Hezekiah would have fifteen more years of life; and as a sign, the shadow on the sundial would go backward ten degrees.

The reversal of the shadow is the reversal of time itself — or at least its apparent movement. It is a sign calibrated to a specific scientific understanding and designed to be undeniable. God was not merely speaking through historical events or prophetic word; He was manipulating the observable natural order as a direct response to one man’s prayer. This is extraordinary. It also came with a warning: Hezekiah later showed his treasuries to Babylonian envoys (perhaps in pride at having survived and been restored), and Isaiah told him that the Babylonians would one day take everything he had shown them. The same man who trusted God completely under Assyrian siege showed a flash of pride in prosperity that would have far-reaching consequences for his successors.

Josiah: The Last Reform Before the End

Hezekiah’s son Manasseh was the most evil king Judah had yet produced, undoing all his father’s reforms and extending the idolatry to previously unimaginable depths — including burning his own son as an offering and filling Jerusalem with innocent blood. He reigned fifty-five years. His grandson Josiah, however, was everything Manasseh was not.

When the Book of the Law was discovered in the temple during Josiah’s repair work — the scrolls of the covenant, apparently lost or neglected for decades — Josiah tore his clothes when it was read to him. He immediately sent to inquire of the prophetess Huldah, who confirmed that the judgments of the covenant would indeed fall on Judah as written, because the nation had forsaken God. But because Josiah’s heart was tender and he humbled himself, he would be gathered to his fathers in peace before the disaster came.

Josiah’s response was the most comprehensive reform in the history of the monarchy. He gathered all the people and read the covenant publicly. He renewed it. He removed every trace of idolatrous practice from the entire land — the Asherah poles, the high places, the horses dedicated to the sun at the temple entrance. He reinstituted the Passover on a scale not seen since the days of the judges. The narrator says: “And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the LORD with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him.”

2 Kings 22:11

“And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes.”

The pattern of restoration — discover the scriptures, read them publicly, renew the covenant, reinstitute the ordinances — is the same pattern that appears in Nehemiah’s time and in the Restoration of the gospel. When the word of God is lost or neglected, the community drifts. When it is recovered and read publicly and taken seriously, reformation follows. Josiah’s response to the discovered law — tearing his clothes in repentance, immediately seeking prophetic counsel, reading it to all the people, renewing the covenant — is the model of what happens when a people genuinely encounter the word of God.

The Fall of Jerusalem: 587 BC

After Josiah’s death, four kings in rapid succession led Judah toward its end. The final king, Zedekiah, was placed on the throne by Nebuchadnezzar as a vassal but eventually rebelled. The Babylonian army besieged Jerusalem for eighteen months before breaching the walls in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign.

The capture of Zedekiah is described with stark symbolic detail: the Babylonians killed his sons before his eyes, then put out his eyes — so that the last thing he ever saw was the death of his children. This is the image of a king who had seen what God required — who had had Jeremiah before him repeatedly urging surrender and trust — and had refused to obey. His blindness at the end was the physical expression of the spiritual blindness that had brought the kingdom to ruin.

2 Kings 25:9–10

“And he burnt the house of the LORD, and the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, and every great man’s house burnt he with fire. And all the army of the Chaldees, that were with the captain of the guard, brake down the walls of Jerusalem round about.”

The temple was burned. The walls were broken down. The people were carried to Babylon. The holy city was a ruin. Everything that had seemed permanent and defining about Israel’s covenant identity — the temple, the Davidic king, the land — was gone. It is difficult to overstate the theological crisis this represented. Where was God? Had the covenant failed? Was Babylon’s god more powerful?

The prophets — particularly Jeremiah and Isaiah — had spent decades insisting that the disaster was not God’s defeat but God’s judgment, and that beyond the judgment lay restoration. “After seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place” (Jeremiah 29:10). Even in the burning of the temple, even in the destruction of Jerusalem, the covenant promise remained intact. The fire burned the building. It could not burn the promise.

The God Who Speaks Before the Disaster

One of the most important theological observations about 2 Kings 16–25 is the presence of the prophets throughout the decline. Isaiah ministered under Hezekiah and saw clearly what was coming. Jeremiah wept over Jerusalem before its walls fell. Huldah confirmed the covenant’s judgments to Josiah. God did not allow His people to fall without warning, without counsel, without invitation to repent and return.

This is the theological pattern of the entire Old Testament: God speaks before He acts in judgment. He warns before He withdraws. He sends prophets before He sends consequences. The disaster is never a surprise except to those who chose not to hear. The people who suffered under the Assyrian and Babylonian deportations had been told by multiple prophets across multiple generations what was coming and how to avoid it. Their suffering was the consequence of collective and accumulated refusal to hear.

And yet: the last verse of 2 Kings is about hope. Jehoiachin, the Davidic king taken captive to Babylon, was released from prison thirty-seven years into his captivity by the new Babylonian king and given a place of honor at the king’s table. The line of David survived in Babylon. The story was not over. God had not abandoned His covenant. The books of Kings end not with the burning temple but with a Davidic prince eating bread at the king’s table — a small, quiet sign that the promise made to David still lived.

The Remnant Promise

• Jeremiah 29:10–11 — “I know the thoughts that I think toward you… thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end”
• Isaiah 10:20–21 — A remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God
• 1 Nephi 15:12–13 — The scattering and gathering of Israel is the central story of the covenant