Thrones on a Treadmill: A Tale of Two Kingdoms
Today I read 2 Kings 15 and 2 Chronicles 26, and what stood out most wasn’t a single character or event, but the sheer pace at which kings rose and fell in the northern kingdom of Israel. In just one chapter of 2 Kings, five different kings come and go, several of them assassinated by their successors. The contrast with Judah, where Uzziah (also called Azariah) reigns for 52 years, is hard to miss.
The text in 2 Kings reads almost like a list: this king ruled, then he died or was murdered, and someone else took over. Most of them "did what was evil," though that phrase seems formulaic by this point. There’s very little detail offered about their reigns—just names, years, and quick judgments. It’s as if the author wants to show how chaotic and unstable things had become. There’s no narrative arc, no real character development, just a churn of power.
Meanwhile in Judah: Uzziah's Long Haul
In contrast, 2 Chronicles 26 spends time on Uzziah’s accomplishments—his military innovations, building projects, and fame. Even his downfall is presented as a significant turning point. While Uzziah’s story ends in isolation due to leprosy, his reign itself is long and, for the most part, productive. He starts ruling at 16 and holds power for over half a century. It’s not a perfect reign, but it’s a stretch of continuity that feels almost foreign when read alongside the revolving door in Israel.
What Was It Like for the People?
It makes me wonder what life felt like for the average person in each kingdom. In Israel, how did people respond to the constant leadership changes? Was there fear, confusion, or just resignation? Did anyone feel loyalty to a king who might be gone in a year? In Judah, was Uzziah seen as a stabilizing force, or did his long rule make his later isolation more difficult for the people to process?
Remembering the Forgettable
There’s also a question of memory. When leaders come and go quickly, do they leave a legacy? Or do they just become names on a list, remembered only for how they took power or how they lost it? The brevity of the entries in 2 Kings suggests that not much is worth recording—or perhaps that memory itself is fractured by instability.
Judah had its own problems, certainly, but in this moment, it seems to have had something Israel lacked: continuity. Whether that brought peace or just a slower kind of turmoil isn’t entirely clear, but the contrast lingers. Stability might not guarantee success, but instability seems to erase almost everything else.