Kings

This translation of the book of Kings is the last book in my project to translate the Torah and Former Prophets. The book follows a similar approach to my other translations-my emphasis is on what is called "functional equivalence" (that is, expressing the ideas in the text in the most natural way in English), and I organize the text according to the textual divisions found in the Masoretic text (the "open" and "closed" parashot) rather than the traditional Christian chapter divisions. Organizing the text in this way, I believe, gets us closer to the ancient writers, and yields numerous insights into their composition approach.

In my introduction, I examine the place of Kings within the books of the Former Prophets and I argue that the original version of the book was composed in the 630s BCE as part of the educational curriculum of the young king Josiah. I also discuss Judean royal ideology and how it serves as the most appropriate framework for understanding the earliest versions of Kings.

The commentary accompanying the translation focuses on issues of translation, language, and composition history. After the commentary I provide an essay that summarizes my (necessarily speculative) views on the composition history of Kings. In that essay, I assign each of the parashot to one of the six major compositional stages that I identify, which span nearly entire first millennium BCE, from the mid-tenth century to the mid-second century. The book includes an appendix, in which I present my reconstruction of the chronology of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.