KING OF ISRAEL · TWO KINGDOMS

Hoshea. Nine years; the last king of Israel.

REIGNEDi

9 years c. 732–723 BC (dates vary)

CAPITAL

Samaria

HOUSE

Hoshea (no dynasty) 19th of 19 in Israel

VERDICT

✕ Did evil “he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him”

PROPHETS

Hosea · Isaiah

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

ACCESSION

How Hoshea came to power

  • “Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah ... and slew him, and reigned in his stead, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah.” 2 Kings 15:30

SUCCESSION

The two kingdoms

THE VERDICT

How Scripture judges the reign

“he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him”

2 Kings 17:2 (KJV) →

BUT ALSO

  • Kings' long explanation of the fall begins “For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God”. 2 Kings 17:7
  • “Yet the LORD testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers.” 2 Kings 17:13
  • “So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day.” 2 Kings 17:23

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

  • Kings lists the nation's sins: high places, images and groves, “two calves”, the host of heaven, Baal, children passed through the fire. 2 Kings 17:9–17

PROPHETS

Prophets of the reign

  • Ho Hosea “As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the water”
  • Is Isaiah Had said that “within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people”.

ON THE WORLD STAGE

The powers of the day

ASSYRIA

Shalmaneser V · Sargon II

EGYPT

So

OUTSIDE THE BIBLE

OUTSIDE THE BIBLE · THE 730S BC (HOSHEA'S ACCESSION: 732/731 IN YOUNG'S TABLES)

Tiglath-pileser III, annals

OUTSIDE THE BIBLE · YEARS 725–723 BC

Assyrian eponym list with notes

OUTSIDE THE BIBLE · REIGN OF SHALMANESER V, FIVE YEARS BY THE CHRONICLE'S COUNT

Babylonian Chronicle 1

OUTSIDE THE BIBLE · SARGON'S FIRST YEARS (722–720 BC IN ROGERS)

Sargon II's annals and display inscription

DATES DIFFER

When was it?

THIELE, AS REVISED BY MCFALL AND YOUNG

c. 732–723 BC[1]

732/731 BC to the fall of Samaria in 723

ALBRIGHT (1945)

c. 732–724 BC[24]

Printed form: c. 732–724 (p. 22); 9 years; fall of Samaria 722/1.

TRADITIONAL (USSHER, 1658)

730–721 BC[2]

Kills Pekah in the year of the world 3265 (739 BC); reigns quietly from 3274; Samaria taken in 3283 (Annals, pp. 64–68)

He killed Pekah, then reigned after years of disorder

James Ussher (1658), pp. 64–65

Ussher has Hoshea kill Pekah in 739 BC, “yet by reason of stirs and tumults” unable to enjoy the throne in “a kinde of Anarchy, for the space of 9 years”, and then begin “quietly to reign in the later end of the 12 year of Achaz”.[2]

Different starting points in Judah

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

Young dates Hoshea from 732/731 BC and explains the two verses by counting Jotham's twenty years from the start of his co-regency (751 BC) and Ahaz's twelve from his own co-regency (736 BC).[1]

IN SCRIPTURE

Every passage

CHAPTERS · 5

2 Kings 15 2 Kings 17 2 Kings 18 2 Chronicles 30 Hosea 10

PASSAGES · 6

2 Kings 15:30 2 Kings 17:1–41 2 Kings 18:1 2 Kings 18:9–12 2 Chronicles 30:1–11 Hosea 10:7

WHAT SCRIPTURE DOES NOT SAY

  • Kings does not say what became of Hoshea after he was imprisoned; there is no death, burial or “rest of the acts” for him.
  • Scripture gives no age or mother's name for Hoshea.
  • Kings does not name the Assyrian king who took the city in the ninth year; it says “the king of Assyria” (2 Kings 17:6).

IDENTIFICATIONS THIS PAGE RELIES ON

  • From the textHoshea son of Elah, the last king of Israel; not the prophet Hosea son of Beeri, and his father Elah is not King Elah son of Baasha.

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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