Dillard, Raymond B. & Longman, Tremper III. "Kings."
An Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. 1994. 135-147.
Kings is located in a different place in the Hebrew canon than in the Septuagint and Christian tradition. The Hebrew canon classifies Kings among the "former prophets" along with Joshua, Judges and Samuel. Though the historical narrative doesn't seem to fit with what we may think of as the prophets, we realize that Kings details the life and work of many different prophets, though many are not what we would consider "writing prophets." The writing prophets also seem to make a good deal of use of the history Kings gives us. Jewish tradition identifies Jeremiah as the author of Kings, though Jeremiah is unlikely as the author. Jeremiah went into exile in Egypt, while the author of Kings appears to be in exile in Babylon.
(p. 152) "The book of Kings is marked by the same theological themes and vocabulary that characterized Joshua-Samuel, and these books together with Kings should be thought of as a single literary work."
Since the book covers a great deal of time we expect to find much of the material gathered from contemporary sources or from some sort of tradition. Some redactionist scholars try to draw threads of content which would have been gathered and edited by a number of different people. For instance, there seems to be a thread of information which may begin and end with the mentions of Josiah in 1 Kings 13.2 and 2 Kings 23.15-20. There's another stream of redaction which seems to follow Jehoiachin's release and bring us into the Exile. Other scholars assume a single historian gathering source material from various archives, thus accounting for some of the apparent clusters of information. Still others think there may have been a group of individuals who would have produced a historical document, then a later generation who added prophet stories, and a third group who added material about keeping the law. None of the ideas are thoroughly conclusive.
Manuscript variants indicate there may have been some textual fluidity prior to the Masoretic Text emerging as the received text. Once the Masoretic Text emerged, the ordering of items in the text seems to have been solidified.
Chronology causes some difficulty in Kings. A partial explanation for the chronological difficulties may be that years of reigns were sometimes numbered differently in different regions and even at different times within a region. For instance, one realm may have counted any part of a calendar year as a year, while another might only have counted a complete year as a year, and that only once it had ended.
As a literary work, Kings tends to provide notices of the times and reigns for different kings in both Israel and Judah. There is a theological evaluation of each different king and generally some information given about the theological climate in the kingdom as a whole. The writer demonstrates the continuity of the Davidic line as symbolic of God's faithfulness to his promises.
The theological message of the book is centered around God's choice of Jerusalem and his promises to David. The writer explains the Exile in such a way as to encourage readers to faithfulness and to demonstrate that the Exile is likely part of God's providence for his people. Rather than destroying them for their disobedience, he exiles them and even promises a return. The text also shows examples of God keeping his promises, particularly those in Deuteronomy, pertaining to the kingly line, the curses for breaking the covenant, and the efficacious nature of genuine prophecy.
As we approach the New Testament we see that God is faithful in keeping his promises. Elijah the prophet has been succeeded by Elisha, who performs greater miracles than Elijah did. At the end of the Old Testament we have a promise that Elijah will come and usher in yet another prophet. We see this fulfilled in John the baptizer who is the second Elijah, ushering in the Christ who does many more miracles, performs signs, and fulfills God's promises to his people.
