PEKAH pe’ kə (פֶּ֨קַח, he has opened [the eyes], a shortened form of פְּקַחְיָ֖ה, Yahu has opened [the eyes]). King in Israel 741-732 b.c., contemporary with Ahaz of Judah and Rezin of Damascus.
The actual chronology of Pekah’s reign appears inconsistent with the Biblical data of his accession and death, but a survey of the Biblical data and historical records will resolve the problem. The problem may be stated that the dates 753/752 b.c. (Thiele, Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings , 79-81) for the thirty-eighth year of Uzziah, and the fall of Samaria in 732 b.c. do not permit enough time for the reigns of Zachariah (six months), Shallum (one month), Menahem (ten years), Pekahiah (two years), Pekah (twenty years) and Hoshea (nine years), the total being forty-one years and seven months while the actual time was only thirty years.
The solution is based on
Comparing the reigns of the kings noted above and the claim of Pekah to have reigned twenty years, places the beginning of his twenty years at about the time of the accession of Zachariah. Since Pekah was designated a captain of fifty men who were Gileadites (
As demonstrated by his subsequent actions, Pekah knew that his own independence required resistance to Assyria, but he had little power; hence his “alliance” with Rezin and their attempt to coerce Judah to join them against Assyria. It may be that Pekah was more of a subject of Rezin than the Bible indicates. Rezin most likely sought out Pekah and forced him into an alliance to gain more strength to oppose Assyria. They found a fearful Ahaz a flank threat and moved against him to remove him and put a puppet on the throne (
In 734 b.c., Tiglath invaded the W, i.e., Naphtali (
The invasion of Israel by Tiglath did not stop the efforts to oppose Assyria. According to
Pekah is evaluated in terms of the sins of Jeroboam (
E. R. Thiele, Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (1951; rev. ed., 1965); H. Stigers, “The Interphased Chronology of Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah and Hoshea,” BETS, IX, 81ff.; H. Tadmore, “The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur,” JCS, XII, 22-40, 77-100.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915)
Son of Remaliah, and 18th king of Israel. Pekah murdered his predecessor, Pekahiah, and seized the reins of power (
Pekah came to the throne with the resolution of assisting in forming a league to resist the westward advance of Assyria. The memory of defeat by Assyria at the battle of Karkar in 753, more than 100 years before, had never died out.
2. Attitude of Assyria:
Tiglath-pileser III was now ruler of Assyria, and in successive campaigns since 745 had proved himself a resistless conqueror. His lust for battle was not yet satisfied, and the turn of Philistia and Syria was about to come. In 735, a coalition, of which Pekah was a prominent member, was being formed to check his further advance. It comprised the princes of Comagene, Gebal, Hamath, Arvad, Ammon, Moab, Edom, Gaza, Samaria, Syria, and some minor potentates, the list being taken from a roll of the subject-princes who attended a court and paid tribute after the fall of Damascus. Ahaz likewise attended as a voluntary tributary to do homage to Tiglath-pileser (
3. Judah Recalcitrant:
While the plans of the allies were in course of formation, an obstacle was met with which proved insurmountable by the arts of diplomacy. This was the refusal of Ahaz, then on the throne of David, to join the confederacy. Arguments and threats having failed to move him, resort was had to force, and the troops of Samaria and Damascus moved on Jerusalem (
4. Chronicles Ancillary to Kings:
The severely concise manner in which the writer of Kings deals with the later sovereigns of the Northern Kingdom is, in the case of Pekah, supplemented in Chronicles by further facts as to this campaign of the allies. The Chronicler states that "a great multitude of captives" were taken to Damascus and many others to Samaria. These would be countrymen and women from the outlying districts of Judah, which were ravaged. Those taken to Samaria were, however, returned, unhurt, to Jericho by the advice of the prophet Oded (
5. Fall of Damascus; Northern and Eastern Palestine Overrun:
The messengers sent from Jerusalem to Nineveh appear to have arrived when the army of Tiglath-pileser was already prepared to march. The movements of the Assyrians being expedited, they fell upon Damascus before the junction of the allies was accomplished. Rezin was defeated in a decisive battle, and took refuge in his capital, which was closely invested. Another part of the invading army descended on the upper districts of Syria and Samaria. Serious resistance to the veteran troops of the East could hardly be made, and city after city fell. A list of districts and cities that were overrun is given in
6. Deportation of the Inhabitants:
These places and territories were not merely attacked and plundered. Their inhabitants were removed, with indescribable loss and suffering, to certain districts in Assyria, given as Halah, Habor, Hara, and both sides of the river Gozan, an affluent of the Euphrates. The transplantation of these tribes to a home beyond the great river was a new experiment in political geography, devised with the object of welding the whole of Western Asia into a single empire. It was work of immense difficulty and must have taxed the resources of even so great an organizer as Tiglath-pileser. The soldiers who had conquered in the field were, of course, employed to escort the many thousands of prisoners to their new locations. About two-thirds of the Samarian kingdom, comprising the districts of Samaria, the two Galilees, and the trans-Jordanic region, was thus denuded of its inhabitants.
7. Death of Pekah:
Left with but a third of his kingdom--humbled but still defiant--Pekah was necessarily unpopular with his subjects. In this extremity--the wave of invasion from the North having spent itself--the usual solution occurred, and a plot was formed by which the assassination of Pekah should be secured, and the assassin should take his place as a satrap of Assyria. A tool was found in the person of Hoshea, whom Tiglath-pileser claims to have appointed to the throne. The Biblical narrative does not do more than record the fact that "Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah, and smote him, and slew him, and reigned in his stead" (
8. References in Isaiah:
For the first time, the historian makes no reference to the religious conduct of a king of Israel. The subject was beneath notice. The second section of Isaiah’s prophecies (
W. Shaw Caldecott