KING OF ISRAEL · TWO KINGDOMS

Pekah. Twenty years; Assyria takes Galilee and Gilead.

REIGNEDi

20 years c. 752–732 BC (dates vary)

CAPITAL

Samaria

HOUSE

Pekah (no dynasty) 17th of 19 in Israel

VERDICT

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

PROPHETS

Isaiah · Oded

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

ACCESSION

How Pekah came to power

  • As Pekahiah's captain he killed him in the palace, “and reigned in his room”. 2 Kings 15:25

SUCCESSION

The two kingdoms

THE VERDICT

How Scripture judges the reign

“he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD”

2 Kings 15:28 (KJV) →

“he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin”

2 Kings 15:28 (KJV) →

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 kept to Jeroboam's sins. 2 Kings 15:28

PROPHETS

Prophets of the reign

  • Is Isaiah “the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son”
  • Od Oded “deliver the captives again, which ye have taken captive of your brethren”

ON THE WORLD STAGE

The powers of the day

ARAM (SYRIA) OF DAMASCUS

Rezin

ASSYRIA

Tiglath-pileser III

OUTSIDE THE BIBLE

OUTSIDE THE BIBLE · 730S BC

Tiglath-pileser III, annals

TWO ACCOUNTS

Where Kings and Chronicles differ

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

The war on Ahaz

2 KINGS

2 CHRONICLES

DATES DIFFER

When was it?

THIELE, AS REVISED BY MCFALL AND YOUNG

c. 752–732 BC[1]

Shared rule with Menahem and Pekahiah (rival reign), 752–740 BC

Rival reign from 752 BC; sole king 740/739 to 732/731

ALBRIGHT (1945)

c. 737–732 BC[24]

Printed form: c. 737–732 (p. 22); 6 years or less against the Hebrew text's 20.

TRADITIONAL (USSHER, 1658)

759–739 BC[2]

Years of the world 3245–3265 (Annals, pp. 58–64)

He ruled in Gilead first

Edward Mack, ISBE (1915), vol. 1, pp. 639–640

Mack: “in the confusion which followed the death of Jeroboam, Pekah established his authority” over the land east of the Jordan, and the numbers of 2 Kings 15:27, 32 and 16:1 count from that year.[21]

A rival reign counted from 752 BC

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

Young's table shows Pekah's reign overlapping Menahem's and Pekahiah's from 752 BC and his sole reign from 740/739.[1]

Twenty years, then a gap

James Ussher (1658), pp. 58–64

Ussher gives Pekah twenty full years, 759–739 BC, and places a nine-year “Anarchy” after his death before Hoshea reigned quietly.[2]

IN SCRIPTURE

Every passage

CHAPTERS · 5

2 Kings 15 2 Kings 16 2 Chronicles 28 Isaiah 7 1 Chronicles 5

PASSAGES · 6

2 Kings 15:25–31 2 Kings 15:37 2 Kings 16:5–9 2 Chronicles 28:5–15 Isaiah 7:1–9 1 Chronicles 5:26

WHAT SCRIPTURE DOES NOT SAY

  • Scripture gives no age, mother or burial for Pekah.
  • Kings does not mention Assyria in Pekah's fall; Tiglath-pileser's annals say “they deposed” him and that Tiglath-pileser set Hoshea over them (see Outside the Bible). Neither record makes the other wrong.

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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