Why does 1–2 Kings end with Israel in exile?
The answer lies in the Torah. And it unlocks the meaning of the Old Testament history in ways that will awaken you to the beauty of God’s mercy to his people.
Kings is not simply a national chronicle but a theological history shaped by Deuteronomy. Every king rises or falls by Moses’s covenant terms. The book therefore must end with exile, because Moses said exile would come when Israel rejected her God; and it must hint at return, because Moses said return would follow exile along with a circumcised heart.
Kings ends where Deuteronomy said Israel’s story would go. Its ending is not a failure of the promise but the setting of the stage for renewal.
In exile, God would circumcise Israel’s hearts
Moses taught that Israel would only return to God after exile, when God himself would circumcise her heart; only then would she love him and live (Deut 30:1–6). Kings ends where it does because it follows Moses’s expectation. Exile comes first; heart-renewal comes next; return follows.
This notion of return is central to the Old Testament.
Malachi writes, “Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’” (Mal 3:7b). How shall they? Unless God himself circumcises their hearts, they will never return to God: “From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them” (Mal 3:7a). Malachi’s question echoes Moses’s earlier problem: Israel cannot return until God acts within them. Exile alone does not cure the heart.
Yet the fact that Jehoiachin is alive in 2 Kings 25 means that return remains possible. The last three verses of 2 Kings read (vv. 27–30):
“And in the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, Evil-merodach king of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, graciously freed Jehoiachin king of Judah from prison. And he spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat above the seats of the kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin put off his prison garments. And every day of his life he dined regularly at the king’s table, and for his allowance, a regular allowance was given him by the king, according to his daily needs, as long as he lived.”
The book closes with a living Davidic heir treated with unexpected kindness in a foreign land. Kings does not end with despair. It ends with a sign, a quiet one, that return is still possible because the line of David still lives. This is the narrative equivalent of Moses’s promise in Deuteronomy 30: restoration after exile once God renews Israel’s heart.
This hope begins to be realized during the Persian period, in which Cyrus the Great commands the exilic people to return to Jerusalem. The last phrase in 2 Chronicles (36:23) is: “Let him go up,” which is one word in Hebrew וְיָֽעַל. That terse command closes the Old Testament story in the same key Moses used: exile is not the end; return follows the Lord’s work upon the heart.
Kings ends the way it does because it follows Moses’s expectation that Israel would go into exile, have their hearts circumcised, and return to God’s ways and thus the Promised Land.
Deuteronomy 30:1–6 reads:
“And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. And the LORD your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it. And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.”
Yet there’s a problem: How can Israel return?
How can they return when their hearts have yet to be circumcised (Deut 10:16)? Moses hints at an answer to this question in Deuteronomy 30:11–14:
“For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”
How is it in their mouth and heart? Here we once again enter the mystery of Scripture, since the prophets, following Moses, foresee that moment happening in the future with a new covenant (e.g., Jer 31). They associate it with a resurrection (Ezek 37). And Isaiah notes that vast apocalyptic signs will surround what happens.
The Apostle Paul interprets Moses as speaking about the justification that comes by faith in Christ (Rom 10:6), which cleanses the heart and brings that word of God to one’s mouth:
“But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Rom 10:8–10).
The circumcised heart, Paul tells us, means we can believe and be justified; and so the word in our mouth confesses Christ. This, Paul seems to say, is how God circumcises the hearts of his people.
Moses foresaw that exile would come before renewal. Kings presents the exile not as the end of Israel’s story but as the necessary stage before God’s promised heart-work. The living heir in Babylon, the open door in Persia, and the future envisioned by the prophets all point back to Moses’s promise. The Lord would circumcise their hearts; then they would return.
This is also why Kings matters for Christians. When we read its final scene, we stand at the hinge between Moses’s prophecy and the gospel’s fulfilment. Exile exposes the uncircumcised heart. Return requires God’s act. And Paul tells us that in Christ the promised heart-circumcision has begun. The story that ends in Babylon continues in the new covenant, where the Lord gathers his people from all nations, gives them new hearts, and leads them home
