No, not "Two Princes" by The Spin Doctors—that hypnotic, catchy earworm from 1993. 2 Kings is a book of the Bible. There—we're glad we could clear that up.

In case you haven't just finished 1 Kings, and aren't already breaking out in a hot sweat, what with your fevered eagerness to start in on 2 Kings, we'll re-cap a few things about the two Books of Kings, as a whole. They're part of the Deuteronomistic history. "Gee whiz," you say, sitting down your Capri Sun juice box in consternation—"What does that mean?"

Well, it means that the Book of Deuteronomy, and its religious legal code, helped inspire the viewpoint of the Books of Kings' editor (or editors). In fact, 2 Kings describes what appears to be the discovery of a version of the Book of Deuteronomy, which inspires King Josiah to hack down sacred poles and slaughter priests on the altars they've made to foreign gods. So, there you go—drop the word "Deuteronomistic" at parties and win the respect and fear of your besties.

Sticks and Carrots

In line with the above, The Second Book of Kings takes a pretty black and white view of the rulers it discusses. You might be a king who prevents starvation and improves sanitation, but if you bow down to one sacred pole dedicated to a female goddess, you get discarded into 2 Kings' "totally wicked" pile. However, those are the rules of the game according to the Deuteronomy-inspired outlook of the book. It's all about intense religious law and hard monotheism. The kings and prophets who adhere to those standards end up being the heroes of the work.

A big part of the work's purpose is to explain why the Assyrians were able to destroy Israel and why most of the inhabitants of Judah were sent into exile in Babylon. The book hammers home this point with insistency: it's because they turned away from God, worshipping deities like Moloch with child sacrifice or Asherah with sacred poles. Even the good guys, who start to get the right idea, often aren't perfect. Their efforts to turn things around don't last long and can't prevent destruction and exile.

Essentially, the book is a way of interpreting the past through a specific religious perspective. It names names, hands out sticks and the occasional carrot, picking at the various faults it sees as leading to destruction. At the same time, it gives a picture of the ideal, right way of doing things—which could work, if only people managed to really get it together for once. The history it tells both threatens and promises. 

Normally, we would simply say, "This is a book where ferocious bears fatally maul a crowd of forty-two children"—assuming that that's more than enough to get anyone interested. And that really does happen—but as it is, we'll try to show you that there's more to 2 Kings than bears attacking kids, dogs eating a wicked queen's corpse, the angel of destruction slaughtering 180,000 Assyrian soldiers, and blasts of fire from heaven killing scores of warriors (although, again, all of those things totally happen here).

We're all about the timeless, human truths here at Shmoop. And those timeless, human truths in the Second Book of Kings are, as the title perhaps implies, often about power.

Some of the kings in here are seriously ruthless—they make Frank Underwood from Netflix's House of Cards look like an amateur (although, actually, that would probably be an exaggeration; Frank's on their level). The book takes a long, hard look at "What It Takes" to gain and retain power, and what it finds isn't pretty: conspiracies, assassinations, intrigue, and ruthless manipulation. These kings kick it Machiavelli-style.

Righteous Rebels and Rogues

At the same time, there are plenty of good guys in 2 Kings, and the book has a lot to say about courage, perseverance, sticking to your convictions under pressure, and more. Like Elijah in 1 Kings (who also appears in the first two chapters of the sequel), the prophet Elisha is one of the major heroes of 2 Kings, and we suppose you could say he lives by the same motto as Kanye West in his present day lyrics: "I'm a man of God / My whole life in the hand of God… / So you better quit playing with God!" (The more things change, the more they stay the same, we guess.)

But people do keep playing with God, and Elisha is determined to stop them. A few righteous kings, like Hezekiah and Josiah, get in on the act, along with more prophets. When the chips are down, the righteous people step it up—although (spoiler alert) in the end, Israel and Judah are destroyed and almost everyone is sent into exile in Babylon. Nevertheless, the book gives some inspiring examples of people who stuck up for a cause greater than themselves, in addition to cataloguing the rogues' gallery of ruthless power seekers.