Pekah
Pekah | |
---|---|
Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum | |
King of Northern Israel | |
Reign | c. 740 – c. 732 BC |
Predecessor | Pekahiah |
Successor | Hoshea |
Died | c. 732 BC |
Father | Remaliah |
Pekah (
Pekah became king in the fifty-second and last year of
When Pekah allied with
Summary of reign
With the aid of a band of Gileadites, from whose home territory he probably originally came, he slew Pekahiah and assumed the throne.[7]
In c. 732 BC, Pekah allied with
Soon after this Pekah was assassinated by
Chronology
Controversy
The data given for Pekah's reign in the biblical sources have generated considerable discussion. His ending date can be established fairly firmly as 732/731 BC.
But two conflicting systems of reckoning seem to be used for his reign. One system gives him a long reign of twenty years (2 Kings 15:27), which puts his starting date in 752 BC. This date is consistent with the statement that Jotham began to reign in Pekah's second year, 750 BC (2 Kings 15:32), and that Jotham's successor Ahaz began to reign in his 17th year, 735 BC (2 Kings 16:1).
However, a shorter reign is indicated by 2 Kings 15:27, which says that Pekah began to reign in the 52nd year of
C. Lederer and H. J. Cook: a rival reign in Gilead
In 1887, Carl Lederer proposed that the existence of two apparently contradictory sets of text for Pekah could be explained if there really were two systems in use for reckoning the reign of Pekah, and these were the consequence of a rivalry between Pekah and Menahem. The rivalry began when Menahem slew Shallum, putting an end to Shallum's one-month reign (2 Kings 15:13–14).
Assyrian references
Looking at this from the Assyrian side, Stanley Rosenbaum maintains that the records of Tiglath-Pileser III demonstrate that the Assyrian king distinguished between two kingdoms in the north of Israel.[22] Tiglath-Pileser says he united the northern part (restored as Naphthali in the text) with Assyria, whereas for the southern part, he wrote, "Israel (bit-Humria) overthrew their king Pekah and I placed Hoshea as king over them."[23] Cook thinks that Menahem's tribute to Assyria in 2 Kings 15:19 also suggests the existence of a rival to Menahem's kingdom:
When Tiglath-Pileser III appeared in the west, Menahem took the opportunity to enlist his support by sending tribute of a thousand talents of silver, with the idea—as 2 Kings xv 19 puts it—'that he might help him to confirm his hold of the royal power'. This expression may simply indicate Menahem's sense of insecurity in the presence of Assyrian power; but it may equally well indicate the presence of a rival.[24]
Isaiah 7:1,2 speaks of a league between Pekah and King Rezin of Aram that was a threat to Ahaz of Judah. Ahaz and Menahem of Israel (Ephraim) followed a pro-Assyrian policy and were therefore aligned against the coalition of Pekah and the Arameans that sought to withstand Assyria, thus explaining why Menahem felt insecure and sought to buy the support of Assyria.
Pekah as commander under Pekahiah
A major objection to the idea that Pekah headed a kingdom that was rival to Menahem's reign in Samaria is that he is listed as a commander (shalish) of Pekahaiah, Menahem's son, whom he slew (2 Kings 15:25). Young remarks,
The objections to Pekah being a rival to Menahem usually center on Pekah’s position as an officer in the army of Pekahiah, Menahem’s son and successor (2 Kgs 15:25). But there is nothing inherently unreasonable about two rivals reaching a détente under which one contender accepts a subordinate position, and he then bides his time until the opportunity comes to slay his rival (or his rival’s son) in a coup. Once the rivalry had begun, the external threat (Assyria) provided compelling reasons for a détente.[25]
Any rivalry between Menahem and Pekah could only appear more and more foolish in light of the growing menace of Assyria. In 733, Tiglath-Pileser campaigned against Damascus, the capital of the Arameans, Pekah's erstwhile ally, and he returned to destroy the city in 732. Pekah must have seen the handwriting on the wall in 733 or earlier, and any feeling for Realpolitik would dictate that it was time for the two rivals to put aside their differences under some sort of accommodation. But Realpolitik would also suggest that this accommodation should not include giving your potential rival a position of leadership in the army, which Pekahiah learned too late.
This is based on inference from the political situation of the time. Gleason Archer showed how inference is used to reconstruct a rivalry in the neighboring kingdom of Egypt that has striking parallels to the Pekah/Menahem rivalry.[26] When Thutmose II died, the intended heir was his son Thutmose III, who was still a boy. However, some time not long after the death of her husband (Thutmose II), Hatshepsut assumed the royal regalia and the title of pharaoh, reigning for 21 years. As he grew older, Thutmose III was given the position of commander of the army, similar to Pekah's position as commander, but still under his aunt and stepmother Hatshepsut. After Hatshepsut died, Thutmose, in an inscription describing his first campaign, said it was in his 22nd year of reign, thereby counting his regnal years from the time his father died, not from the death of Hatshepsut. Thutmose left no explanation for modern historians that his 22nd year was really the first year of sole reign, any more than Pekah or the historian of 2 Kings left an explanation that Pekah's 12th year, the year in which he slew Pekahiah, was really his first year of sole reign. Modern historians rely on a comparison of inscriptions and chronological considerations to reconstruct the chronology of Thutmose III, and there is unanimity among Egyptologists that he counted as his own years the 21 years that Hatshepsut was on the throne, even though no inscription has ever been found explicitly stating this fact. Commenting on the fact that Egyptologists have no problem in reconstructing history using inference of this sort, whereas critics will sometimes not allow the same historical method to be applied to the Bible, Young writes, "Do those who reject the Menahem/Pekah rivalry as improbable also reject as improbable this reconstruction from Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty that Egyptologists use to explain the regnal dates of Thutmose III? How do they explain Hosea 5:5?"[25]
Chronological note
The calendars for reckoning the years of kings in Judah and Israel were offset by six months, that of Judah starting in Tishri (in the fall) and that of Israel in Nisan (in the spring). Cross-synchronizations between the two kingdoms therefore often allow narrowing of the beginning and/or ending dates of a king to within a six-month range. A study of the relevant texts in Scripture allows the narrowing of the start of the Pekah/Menahem rivalry on the death of Shallum to the month of Nisan, 752 BC, as Thiele showed in the second edition of Mysterious Numbers, pp. 87–88. In order to simplify things for the reader, Thiele, in the third edition, omitted the logic that allows this accuracy. The third edition also frequently fails to make explicit the six-month narrowing of dates that is possible from the Biblical data, settling instead on a somewhat inexact notation like "931/930 BC" or even simply "931 BC." For Pekah, synchronisms with the kings of Judah show that he assassinated Pekahiah sometime between Tishri 1 of 740 BC and the day before Nisan 1 of 739 BC. He was slain by Hoshea sometime between Tishri 1 of 732 BC and the day before Nisan 1 of 731 BC.
See also
Notes
- Latin: Romelia)
References
- IPA-ified from «pē´kä»
- IPA-ified from «rĕm-a-lī´a»
- ^ a b Cook, H. J., "Pekah," Vetus Testamentum 14 (1964) 14121–135.
- ^ Carl Lederer, Die biblische Zeitrechnung vom Auszuge aus Ägypten bis zum Beginne der babylonischen Gefangenschaft, 1887, cited in Cook, Pekah 126, n. 1.
- ^ Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (3rd ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan/Kregel, 1983) 129–134, 217.
- ^ T. C. Mitchell, "Israel and Judah until the Revolt of Jehu (931–841 B.C.)" in Cambridge Ancient History 3, Part 1, ed. John Boardman et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 326.
- ^ a b c "Pekah", Jewish Encyclopedia
- ^ Isaiah 7:6
- ^ Whittaker H. A. Isaiah Biblia, Cannock
- ^ Lester L. Grabbe, Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (New York: T&T Clark, 2007): 134
- ^ a b James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (3rd ed.; Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969) 283.
- ^ Pritchard p. 284.
- ^ Beegle, D.M., The Inspiration of Scripture (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963) 49.
- ^ Lederer, biblische Zeitrechnung 135ff.
- ^ Cook, pp. 132–134.
- ^ Rodger C. Young, "When Was Samaria Captured? The Need for Precision in Biblical Chronologies" Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47 (2004) 581–582, n. 11.[1][permanent dead link]
- ^ Thiele, Mysterious Numbers 120, 129–130.
- ^ Leslie McFall, “A Translation Guide to the Chronological Data in Kings and Chronicles,” Bibliotheca Sacra 148 (1991) 31
- ^ Francis Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 24 (Garden City NY: Doubleday 1980) 393.
- ^ T. C. Mitchell, "Israel and Judah until the Revolt of Jehu" 445–446.
- ^ Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology (rev. ed.; Peabody, MA.: Hendrickson, 1998), 246.
- ^ Stanley Rosenbaum, Amos of Israel: A New Interpretation (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1990) 26.
- ^ Pritchard, pp. 283–284.
- ^ Cook, p. 128.
- ^ a b Young, "When Was Samaria Captured?" 582, n. 11[permanent dead link]
- ^ Gleason Archer in Normal L. Geisler, ed., Inerrancy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1979) 71.
Sources
- Cook, H. J. (1964). "Pekah". Vetus Testamentum. 14 (Fasc. 2): 121–135. JSTOR 1516376.
- Pritchard, James B., ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (3rd ed.; Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969)
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Easton, Matthew George (1897). "Pekah". Easton's Bible Dictionary (New and revised ed.). T. Nelson and Sons.