KING OF ISRAEL · TWO KINGDOMS

Ahaziah. Two years; died of a fall in Samaria.

REIGNEDi

2 years c. 853–852 BC (dates vary)

CAPITAL

Samaria

HOUSE

House of Omri 8th of 19 in Israel

VERDICT

✕ Did evil “he did evil in the sight of the LORD”

PROPHETS

Elijah the Tishbite · Eliezer son of Dodavah

ISRAEL (THE NORTH): 19 RULERS JEROBOAM I → HOSHEA

ACCESSION

How Ahaziah came to power

  • “Ahab slept with his fathers; and Ahaziah his son reigned in his stead.” 1 Kings 22:40

SUCCESSION

The two kingdoms

THE VERDICT

How Scripture judges the reign

“he did evil in the sight of the LORD”

1 Kings 22:52 (KJV) →

“walked in the way of his father, and in the way of his mother, and in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat”

1 Kings 22:52 (KJV) →

BUT ALSO

  • “He served Baal, and worshipped him, and provoked to anger the LORD God of Israel, according to all that his father had done.” 1 Kings 22:53
  • Chronicles calls him the king “who did very wickedly”. 2 Chronicles 20:35

ISRAEL (THE NORTH): 19 RULERS

✓ Did right ✕ Did evil ◐ Mixed ● No verdict formula

THE KINGDOM

Samaria and the places of the reign

Israel (the north). Only places Scripture names are shown, each where the Atlas puts it.

EVENTS

Wars, works and turning points

Each mark sits at the year of the reign the Bible gives for it.

UNDATED IN SCRIPTURE

THE NATION

What the nation did

  • He served Baal and sent to Baal-zebub of Ekron. 1 Kings 22:53 2 Kings 1:2

PROPHETS

Prophets of the reign

  • El Elijah the Tishbite “thou shalt not come down off that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die”
  • El Eliezer son of Dodavah “Because thou hast joined thyself with Ahaziah, the LORD hath broken thy works”

ON THE WORLD STAGE

The powers of the day

MOAB

Mesha

PHILISTIA (EKRON)

TWO ACCOUNTS

Where Kings and Chronicles differ

Each ribbon joins the two accounts of one matter, passage to passage.

The ships at Ezion-geber

1 KINGS

2 CHRONICLES

DATES DIFFER

When was it?

THIELE, AS REVISED BY MCFALL AND YOUNG

c. 853–852 BC[1]

853 to 852 BC

ALBRIGHT (1945)

c. 850–849 BC[24]

Printed form: c. 850–849 (p. 21); 2 years.

TRADITIONAL (USSHER, 1658)

898–896 BC[2]

Shared rule with Ahab (viceroy), 898–897 BC

Joined to his father's rule in the year of the world 3106; dies 3108 (Annals, p. 47)

Yes, as his father's deputy

James Ussher, Annals of the World (1658), p. 47

Ussher writes that Ahab, in Jehoshaphat's seventeenth year, “joyned his son Achazia with him in the rule of the kingdom, or rather made him his Vice-Roy”.[2]

Yes, Ahab's last year was Ahaziah's first

Edward Mack, ISBE (1915), vol. 1, p. 640

Mack holds that “the last year of Ahab, in which came the defeat at Karkar, was the 1st of Ahaziah”.[21]

No real overlap; the count explains the two years

R. C. Young's tables (Thiele as revised)

Young dates Ahaziah 853 to 852 BC, after Ahab's death in 853, and counts his “two years” by Israel's non-accession reckoning (one year elapsed).[1]

IN SCRIPTURE

Every passage

CHAPTERS · 3

1 Kings 22 2 Kings 1 2 Chronicles 20

PASSAGES · 4

1 Kings 22:40 1 Kings 22:48–53 2 Kings 1:1–18 2 Chronicles 20:35–37

WHAT SCRIPTURE DOES NOT SAY

  • Scripture gives no age, mother's name or burial place for Ahaziah of Israel.
  • Kings does not say how Moab's rebellion went in his reign.

IDENTIFICATIONS THIS PAGE RELIES ON

  • From the textAhaziah son of Ahab, king of Israel; not Ahaziah son of Jehoram, king of Judah (2 Kings 8:24), who died at Jehu's hands.

SOURCES

Where this page comes from

  • Rodger C. Young, Chronological tables: Table 1, Chronology of the Kings of Israel; Table 3, Synchronisms, Israel to Judah (Thiele's system as revised by McFall and Young; dates cited as facts only) (undated web tables, read 2026-10-07), Tables 1 and 3.
  • James Ussher, The Annals of the World (English translation of the Annales) (1658), The fifth Age of the World, pp. 40–69 (read from the page scans).
  • D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, vol. 1 (Shalmaneser III to Tiglath-pileser III) (1926), §594 (the Monolith Inscription from Kurkh) and §611, p. 223.
  • D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, vol. 1 (Shalmaneser III to Tiglath-pileser III) (1926), §553 (the Black Obelisk) and §590, p. 211.
  • D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, vol. 1 (Shalmaneser III to Tiglath-pileser III) (1926), §672, p. 243 (annals, 18th year).
  • D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, vol. 1 (Shalmaneser III to Tiglath-pileser III) (1926), §§732, 739–740, pp. 260–263 (Adad-nirari III: reign dates; the slab from Calah).
  • D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, vol. 1 (Shalmaneser III to Tiglath-pileser III) (1926), §772, p. 276 (Tiglath-pileser III, annals).
  • D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, vol. 1 (Shalmaneser III to Tiglath-pileser III) (1926), §779, pp. 279–280 (Tiglath-pileser III).
  • D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, vol. 1 (Shalmaneser III to Tiglath-pileser III) (1926), §§815–816, p. 293 (Tiglath-pileser III, fragmentary annals text).
  • D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, vol. 2 (Sargon onward) (1927), §4, p. 2 (Sargon's annals, year 1).
  • D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, vol. 2 (Sargon onward) (1927), §55, p. 26 (Sargon's display inscription).
  • D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, vol. 2 (Sargon onward) (1927), §1198, p. 437 (eponym list with notes, years 727–723).
  • R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (1912), p. 296 (Monolith, Qarqar).
  • R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (1912), p. 304 (Black Obelisk, with Rogers's note 2 on “mar Humri”).
  • R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (1912), p. 308 (Tiglath-pileser and “Pulu”).
  • R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (1912), p. 316 (Tiglath-pileser's annals, line 150).
  • R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (1912), pp. 319–321 (Tiglath-pileser on Pekah and Hoshea).
  • R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (1912), pp. 323, 326 and 331 (Sargon and the fall of Samaria).
  • S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel (Appendix: the Inscription of Mesha) (1890), pp. lxxxvii–lxxxviii (translation), lxxxix and xciv.
  • A. H. Sayce, “Moabite Stone”, International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, vol. 3 (1915), p. 2072 (checked against the 1915 scan).
  • Edward Mack, “Chronology of the Old Testament”, International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, vol. 1 (1915), pp. 639–640 (checked against the 1915 scan).
  • A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, Chronicle 1 (facts only; copyrighted, read in Livius's reproduction) (1975), Chronicle 1, column i, lines 27–28.
  • A. Biran and J. Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan” (1993) and “The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment” (1995), Israel Exploration Journal 43 and 45 (facts only; copyrighted) (1993, 1995), IEJ 43 (1993) 81–98; IEJ 45 (1995) 1–18.
  • W. F. Albright, "The Chronology of the Divided Monarchy of Israel", Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 100 (facts only) (1945), Chronological table, pp. 20–22.

Rooted in Scripture. Open for discovery.

A place to read slowly, ask deeply, and follow the connections. Scripture, study and the voices of Christian history, brought together for a lifetime of learning.

SPEND TIME IN THE WORD

  • Open the reader
  • Books & reading progress
  • Compare Scripture editions
  • Find a passage

FOLLOW YOUR QUESTIONS

  • Study collections
  • People & places
  • Faith & apologetics
  • Stories of faith

A library with a paper trail.

Meet the authors. Explore the collection. Trace each work to its source.

Download the code.

Open source on GitHub.