1-2 Chornicles

The books of Chronicles are next in the traditional Christian order of the Old Testament.  If I had to summarize these books in one short phrase I might call it "Samuel-Kings Remixed".  The events of the books take place over roughly the same period of time and use a fair amount of material directly taken from Samuel and Kings, with only minor modifications and additions.  That said, it is many ways a very different set of books from Samuel-Kings.

The biggest difference you will notice when reading it is how much more tedious it is than Samuel-Kings.  While the earlier books are full of action and adventure, Chronicles is filled with non-stop genealogies, lists of names and numbers, sizes of armies and the like.  While Samuel-Kings makes for great Sunday School material, it is more difficult to find these kind of classic stories inside Chronicles (although they are there).  When you read it, it kind of feels like the purpose of Chronicles is to store all these genealogies and numbers and the like, and that the stories that are included are provided as much to give a backdrop to these genealogies as anything else.

Another interesting difference: while Saul is mentioned in the book, the only real description of his life is at the end of it, when he commits suicide, giving an even more dour outlook on his life than Samuel does.  David shows up as the next king, and most of his stories seem to involve warfare in this book.  Lots of details are also mentioned about preparing for the temple, and when Solomon becomes king (in 2 Chronicles) much of the details about him relate to the building of the temple.  After Solomon's reign, the rest of the book is dedicated to all the kings who followed him. However, unlike Kings, the focus in Chronicles is mostly the southern kingdom of Judah.  The evil northern king Ahab is mentioned, but much much more briefly than in Kings, where his family is the center of much drama.  Subsequently, Elijah gets only a brief mention, and Elisha doesn't seem to be mentioned at all.  Despite these differences, much of the content in these sections is similar (or even almost identical to) parts of Kings.

One last difference that stands out to me is the ending of Chronicles.  The time period here goes a bit farther than that covered in Kings.  At the end of Chronicles (like Kings) it mentions the fall of Israel into the hands of the Babylonians.  But unlike Kings, at the very end it mentions how Cyrus the Great came into power in Persia and then frees the Israelites from the Babylonian oppression, and calls for the re-building of the temple.  In a total of 8 verses the end of Chronicles covers the whole of the Babylonian captivity and the beginning of the period of Persian rule.  This sets up for the events to follow in Ezra, Nehemiah, and other books that take place during the Persian rule.