The Language of the Books of Kings

Abstract A major topic of discussion in recent scholarship on the books of Kings is whether the language of Kings can be used in tracing the diachronic development of Hebrew. This chapter provides a historical overview of the diachronic study of Hebrew and discusses how the language of Kings fits into the Classical Biblical Hebrew–Late Biblical Hebrew model. Another important area of research is the possible inclusion of northern dialects of Hebrew (Israelian Hebrew) in the parts of Kings that relate to the northern kingdom. A recent development in Kings research is the application of the methodologies of sociolinguistics to the synchronic study of Kings. This chapter provides a case study of the speech of Jezebel as an example of how sociolinguistic methodology may be applied to Kings to shed greater light on the meaning of the text and the author’s intentions.