KING OF ISRAEL · TWO KINGDOMS

Baasha. Twenty-four years in Tirzah, after killing Nadab.

REIGNEDi

24 years c. 909–886 BC (dates vary)

CAPITAL

Tirzah

HOUSE

House of Baasha 3rd of 19 in Israel

VERDICT

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

PROPHETS

Jehu son of Hanani

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

ACCESSION

How Baasha came to power

  • He “conspired against” Nadab, killed him at Gibbethon in Asa's third year, and reigned in his stead; then he struck down the whole house of Jeroboam. 1 Kings 15:27–29

SUCCESSION

The two kingdoms

THE VERDICT

How Scripture judges the reign

“he did evil in the sight of the LORD”

1 Kings 15:34 (KJV) →

“walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin”

1 Kings 15:34 (KJV) →

BUT ALSO

  • Jehu son of Hanani: “I exalted thee out of the dust ... and thou hast walked in the way of Jeroboam”. 1 Kings 16:1–2
  • The word against him came “for all the evil that he did ... in being like the house of Jeroboam; and because he killed him”. 1 Kings 16:7

ISRAEL (THE NORTH): 19 RULERS

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

THE KINGDOM

Tirzah and the places of the reign

Israel (the north) · tribe of Issachar. 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 walked in Jeroboam's way and “made my people Israel to sin”. 1 Kings 16:2

PROPHETS

Prophets of the reign

  • Je Jehu son of Hanani “will make thy house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat”

ON THE WORLD STAGE

The powers of the day

ARAM (SYRIA) OF DAMASCUS

Ben-hadad son of Tabrimon

TWO ACCOUNTS

Where Kings and Chronicles differ

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

When did Baasha build Ramah?

1 KINGS

2 CHRONICLES

DATES DIFFER

When was it?

THIELE, AS REVISED BY MCFALL AND YOUNG

c. 909–886 BC[1]

909/908 to 886/885 BC

ALBRIGHT (1945)

c. 900–877 BC[24]

Printed form: c. 900–877 (p. 20); 24 years (last digit partly lost in the scan's gutter, read from the next reign's start).

TRADITIONAL (USSHER, 1658)

953–930 BC[2]

Years of the world 3051–3074 (Annals, pp. 43–44)

Counted from the division

James Ussher, Annals of the World (1658), pp. 43–44

Ussher reads the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth years of 2 Chronicles 15:19 and 16:1 as years of the kingdom of Judah counted from the division, not of Asa's own reign; he dates the building of Ramah to Asa's sixteenth year.[2]

Young's reckoning

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

Young's table dates Baasha 909/908–886/885 BC, so his attack must fall well before Asa's thirty-sixth year of reign; the table does not itself explain 2 Chronicles 16:1.[1]

IN SCRIPTURE

Every passage

CHAPTERS · 3

1 Kings 15 1 Kings 16 2 Chronicles 16

PASSAGES · 2

1 Kings 15:16–16:7 2 Chronicles 16:1–6

WHAT SCRIPTURE DOES NOT SAY

  • Scripture gives no age or mother's name for Baasha.
  • Scripture does not say how Baasha died; he “slept with his fathers”.

IDENTIFICATIONS THIS PAGE RELIES ON

  • “Baasha the son of Ahijah, of the house of Issachar” — his father Ahijah is not Ahijah the prophet. 1 Kings 15:27

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.

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