Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free 2 Kings trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
2 Kings is the Bible's most violent history book. It opens with a prophet carried off in a whirlwind and closes with a blinded king in chains, and in between come floating iron, a stew that could kill, a general cured in a muddy river, a coup that leaves a queen's body for the dogs, a woman who rules Judah for six years, and an Assyrian army that melts away outside Jerusalem in a single night. These 50 questions follow the book chapter by chapter: Elisha's miracles and his dealings with kings, Naaman, the siege that drove a city to cannibalism, Jehu's purge, Athaliah and the boy king, Hezekiah and Sennacherib with Isaiah at his side, Manasseh's long reign, Josiah and the book found in the temple, the fall of Samaria and of Jerusalem, and the Babylonian exile. A few step outside the text to the Assyrian and Babylonian records that mention the same kings. It suits a church quiz night, a Bible study working through the historical books, or anyone who remembers the whirlwind and the leper and wants the other twenty-four chapters back. Play on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for a group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did Elisha tell a prophet's widow, whose creditor was coming for her two sons, to borrow from her neighbours?
Empty jars
Empty jars, 'not just a few', were filled from her one small jar of olive oil until the last was full, and the oil stopped flowing the moment there was nothing left to pour into. She sold it to clear the debt.
Q 02What did the Shunammite woman's dead son do seven times as Elisha lay stretched out over him in the rooftop room?
Sneezed
Sneezed seven times and opened his eyes: the boy had collapsed among the reapers crying 'My head! My head!', and his mother rode to Mount Carmel to fetch the prophet who had promised her a son she never asked for.
Q 03What did Elisha throw into the Jordan so that a borrowed iron axe head would float up from where it sank?
A stick
A stick, freshly cut, went into the water and 'made the iron float'; the workman's panic was that the axe was borrowed, and the company of prophets were felling trees to build themselves a bigger meeting place.
Q 04How did a watchman on the tower of Jezreel recognise Jehu's approaching chariot while it was still far off?
By his reckless driving
By his reckless driving — 'he drives like a maniac' in the NIV, 'he driveth furiously' in the King James — and that one verse made 'jehu' a dated English word for a fast coachman.
Q 05What did Queen Athaliah cry out on finding the seven-year-old Joash crowned in the temple as the trumpets sounded?
Treason, treason
Treason, treason was the cry of the usurper who had murdered the royal family six years earlier; Jehoiada the priest had her dragged out and killed where the horses enter the palace grounds, not in the temple.
Q 06What sign did Isaiah give the sick King Hezekiah that he would be healed and visit the temple in three days?
The shadow went back ten steps
The shadow went back ten steps on the stairway of Ahaz, at Hezekiah's own choosing — he said going forward would be 'a simple matter' — and he recovered to reign fifteen more years.
Q 07What was the last thing King Zedekiah saw before the Babylonians put out his eyes at Riblah?
His sons being executed
His sons being executed was Zedekiah's final sight; bound in bronze shackles he was marched to Babylon, having been caught in the plains of Jericho after his army scattered and the city wall was breached.
Q 08Where did Pharaoh Necho kill King Josiah, who marched out to stop an Egyptian army bound for the Euphrates?
Megiddo
Megiddo, the hill whose name survives as Armageddon in Revelation, is where Judah's great reformer died; Necho was heading north to help Assyria, not to fight Judah, and Josiah's servants drove his body home in a chariot.
Q 09What did the healed Naaman ask to carry home to Damascus so that he could worship Israel's God on it?
Two mule-loads of earth
Two mule-loads of earth travelled home to Damascus with the Aramean commander, who also asked forgiveness in advance for bowing in the temple of Rimmon whenever his king leaned on his arm.
Q 10Which Philistine city's god Baal-Zebub did King Ahaziah send messengers to consult after falling through a lattice?
Ekron
Ekron's god Baal-Zebub, 'lord of the flies', is the name that reached the New Testament as Beelzebub, a major demon; Elijah intercepted the messengers and told the king he would never leave his bed.
Q 11What did the king of Moab do on the city wall when the battle at Kir Hareseth turned against him?
Sacrificed his firstborn son
Sacrificed his firstborn son, 'who was to succeed him as king', and the besiegers withdrew; Mesha's own boast of throwing off Israel survives on the Mesha Stele, found at Dhiban in Jordan in 1868.
Q 12What did Elisha call for before prophesying to three kings whose armies had run dry in the Desert of Edom?
A harpist
A harpist: 'while the harpist was playing, the hand of the LORD came on Elisha', and he promised a valley full of pools of water by morning, with neither wind nor rain to explain it.
Q 13What did Elisha throw into a stew of wild gourds that the company of prophets cried was 'death in the pot'?
Q 21Where was Jehu, then an army commander, anointed king in a back room by a young prophet whom Elisha had sent?
Ramoth Gilead
Ramoth Gilead, the border fortress Israel was holding against Hazael's Aram, is where Jehu's fellow officers laid their cloaks under him on the bare stairs, blew a trumpet and shouted 'Jehu is king!'
Q 22On whose plot of ground did Jehu have King Joram's arrow-pierced body thrown, calling it payment for an old crime?
Naboth the Jezreelite
Naboth the Jezreelite's vineyard got Ahab's son: Jehu reminded his chariot officer Bidkar that they had both been riding behind Ahab when the LORD pronounced doom on him for Naboth's blood on that very field.
Q 23What did Jehu turn the temple of Baal in Samaria into after luring its worshippers inside and slaughtering them?
Flour
Flour thrown into the pot made the poisonous stew of wild gourds safe to eat during a famine at Gilgal, and the next verses have Elisha feed a hundred men on twenty loaves of barley bread.
Q 14Which two rivers did Naaman say were better than all the waters of Israel when told to wash in the Jordan?
Abana and Pharpar
Abana and Pharpar are the rivers of Damascus, and Naaman stormed off in a rage before his servants talked him round: if the prophet had asked 'some great thing', wouldn't he have done it?
Q 15Who was telling Israel's king how Elisha raised a dead boy when the boy's mother walked in to reclaim her land?
Gehazi
Gehazi, the servant whose greed over Naaman's silver had cost him his skin, was mid-story when the Shunammite woman appeared after seven years abroad, and the king restored her land and all its income on the spot.
Q 16What did Elisha's servant see filling the hills around Dothan after the prophet prayed for his eyes to be opened?
Horses and chariots of fire
Horses and chariots of fire ringed the hills — 'those who are with us are more than those who are with them' — and Elisha then had the Aramean raiders struck blind and led them straight into Samaria.
Q 17What sold for eighty shekels of silver during the famine in Samaria while Ben-Hadad's army sat outside its walls?
A donkey's head
A donkey's head, the least edible part of an unclean animal, fetched eighty shekels while a quarter of a cab of seed pods went for five; the king then learned that a mother had boiled and eaten her son.
Q 18Who discovered that the Aramean army besieging Samaria had fled, leaving tents, horses and food behind?
Four men with leprosy
Four men with leprosy, sitting at the city gate with nothing to lose, walked into a deserted camp: the LORD had made the Arameans hear the sound of a great army bearing down on them.
Q 19What became of the royal officer who scoffed that not even 'the floodgates of the heavens' could end Samaria's famine?
Trampled to death at the gate
Trampled to death at the gate by the crowd rushing out for cheap grain, exactly as Elisha had said: 'You will see it with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of it!'
Q 20How did Hazael kill the sick King Ben-Hadad of Aram the day after Elisha told him he would be the next king?
Smothered him with a wet cloth
Smothered him with a wet cloth: Hazael 'took a thick cloth, soaked it in water' and held it over the king's face, the day after Elisha had stared at him and begun to weep over what he would do to Israel.
A latrine
A latrine, 'to this day', the writer adds — yet Jehu kept the golden calves at Bethel and Dan, so the book marks him down for not turning from 'the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat'.
Q 24Whom did Jehu help up into his chariot, saying 'come with me and see my zeal for the LORD'?
Jehonadab son of Rekab
Jehonadab son of Rekab founded a clan that still refused wine, houses and vineyards more than two centuries later, when Jeremiah held the Rekabites up to Judah as a model of obedience.
Q 25What did Jehoiada the priest set beside the altar, with a hole bored in its lid, to fund King Joash's temple repairs?
A chest
A chest with a bored lid became the collection box after the priests had let the temple go unrepaired into the twenty-third year of Joash's reign; the king's secretary and the senior priest counted the silver together.
Q 26Where was King Joash of Judah murdered by his own officials after he had bought off Hazael with the temple's gold?
Beth Millo
Beth Millo, 'on the road down to Silla', is where the king crowned at seven fell to Jozabad and Jehozabad; his son Amaziah executed them but spared their children, as the Law of Moses required.
Q 27Why did the dying Elisha grow angry with King Jehoash of Israel after telling him to strike the ground with his arrows?
He struck only three times
He struck only three times, so Elisha said he would beat Aram three times instead of finishing it; the king had wept over the prophet with Elisha's own old cry, 'the chariots and horsemen of Israel!'
Q 28What happened to a corpse hastily thrown into Elisha's tomb when Moabite raiders interrupted a burial?
The man came back to life
The man came back to life 'and stood up on his feet' when his body touched Elisha's bones, a posthumous miracle that by one traditional count gave Elisha exactly twice as many miracles as Elijah.
Q 29With what fable did Jehoash of Israel warn Amaziah of Judah to stay home, before routing him at Beth Shemesh?
A thistle proposing to a cedar
A thistle proposing to a cedar, then crushed underfoot by a passing wild beast, was Jehoash's picture of Amaziah's pride after beating Edom; he then broke down 400 cubits of Jerusalem's wall and emptied the temple.
Q 30Which prophet from Gath Hepher does 2 Kings 14 credit with foretelling Jeroboam II's restored borders?
Jonah son of Amittai
Jonah son of Amittai, the reluctant prophet of the great fish, gets his only Old Testament mention outside his own book here, as a patriot foretelling Israel's expansion 'from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea'.