“In the thirty-eighth year of Azariah king of Judah, Zechariah the son of Jeroboam became king over Israel in Samaria for six months. He did evil in the sight of the LORD, as his fathers had done; he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin. Then Shallum the son of Jabesh conspired against him and struck him before the people and killed him, and reigned in his place. Now the rest of the acts of Zechariah, behold they are written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. This is the word of the LORD which He spoke to Jehu, saying, ‘Your sons to the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.’ And so it was” (2 Kings 15:8-12).
In his telling of Israel’s history, the author of Kings never misses an opportunity to highlight a prophecy and its fulfillment. In this case, the assassination of Zechariah the son of Jeroboam fulfilled a very specific prophecy to Jehu four generations earlier (see 2 Kings 10:30). Why is the author of Kings so keen on authenticating the fulfillment of the prophecies spoken earlier by Israel’s prophets? I can think of at least a few reasons.
First, he wants us to know that prophecies spoken by Israel’s prophets are the inspired word of God and must, therefore, be taken seriously. Second—and closely related—he wants his exilic readers (see 2 Kings 25:27-30) to interpret their current circumstances not as divine abandonment, but as the fulfillment of the prophetic word. Third and finally, he wants his readers to shape their behavior in the present and their expectations for the future not by reading the local newspaper (The Babylonian Times), but by meditating day and night upon the prophetic word.
And the message to his readers in exile back then is still the same message to us today. If we desire to live a fruitful life now with a hopeful eye toward the future—in a society constantly inundated with really depressing news—we must spend far more time listening to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve than we do listening to our favorite news anchors and social media gurus. In this sense, we must follow the example of Daniel!
“In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of Median descent, who was made king over the kingdom of the Chaldeans — in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was revealed as the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years” (Dan 9:1-2).
