Long Reigns in Judah, Shattered Successions in Israel

The synchronism does not sit easily with 14:23, where Jeroboam began in Amaziah's fifteenth year, which would put Azariah's accession near Jeroboam's fifteenth, not his twenty seventh. Most chronologies solve the gap with overlapping reigns, a son ruling beside his father, an inference the numbers seem to require.

Fifty two years is the longest reign Judah has yet seen; only Manasseh will exceed it. His mother's name, Jecholiah, means the LORD is able, and her son takes the throne at sixteen after his father's murder.

Measured by Amaziah rather than by David, and Amaziah had been measured by his own father. Each approval in this run of kings is handed down one generation at a time, and each carries the previous one's reservations with it.

The reservation now falls explicitly on “the people”, who go on sacrificing “still”. The high places are presented less as a royal policy than as a habit of the countryside that no king of this era is willing to confront.

The Hebrew word behind “leper” covered a range of skin diseases, not only what is now called leprosy. The law required such a person to live apart (Leviticus 13:46), so even the king obeys it. Naaman the Aramean was cleansed in chapter 5; Judah's own king never is.

Uzziah's death dates the most famous vision in the prophets: “In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord” (Isaiah 6:1). The Second Book of Chronicles says Isaiah himself wrote up the rest of this king's acts (2 Chronicles 26:22).

Chronicles is more precise: buried in a field beside the royal tombs, because he was a leper (2 Chronicles 26:23). A stone plaque from centuries later, found in Jerusalem, reads in Aramaic that the bones of Uzziah king of Judah were brought there and must not be opened.

Six months, after his father's forty one years. Zachariah is the only king of Jehu's house to be given a reign measured in months, and the notice of his accession is almost as long as the account of his rule.

“As his fathers had done” is plural, and fitting: four generations of Jehu's line are summed up in one phrase, all of them keeping the calves at Bethel and Dan that Jehu himself had left standing (10:29).

“Before the people” is an odd phrase in the Hebrew, and the Greek translators read a place name, Ibleam, where Jehu had struck down Ahaziah of Judah (9:27). If that reading is right, Jehu's line ends where his bloodshed began. Shallum's father's name may point to Jabesh in Gilead.

The northern notices in this chapter swing between the question “are they not written” and the flat “behold, they are written”. The source is the same lost court annal either way; only the phrasing shifts.

The book keeps a ledger of fulfilled words against northern dynasties: Jeroboam's house (1 Kings 15:29), Baasha's (1 Kings 16:12), Ahab's (10:17), and now Jehu's. His was the longest of them, roughly ninety years, and its end is recorded as a promise kept, not a disaster.

A “full month” is literally a month of days. Shallum is the only king in this chapter given no verdict at all, good or evil; there was not time for one. Judah's king is now called Uzziah, the other form of Azariah's name.

Tirzah had been the northern capital before Omri moved the court to Samaria (1 Kings 16:23–24). Menahem marches from the old royal city to the new one. His father's name, Gadi, may mark him as a man of the tribe of Gad.

Of Shallum's whole reign the record names one act: “his conspiracy which he made”. The way he took the throne is the only thing about him the annals thought worth listing.

Tiphsah elsewhere is Thapsacus on the Euphrates (1 Kings 4:24), far beyond Menahem's reach from Tirzah. The Greek reads Tappuah, a town near Tirzah, which suits the geography better. Either way the town that shut its gates was treated like a foreign enemy.

Menahem's accession falls in Azariah's thirty ninth year, the same year as Shallum's. Within about twelve months Israel has had three kings: Zachariah, Shallum and Menahem.

“All his days” is added to the usual verdict, and not for any other king in this chapter. Menahem held the throne long enough for the phrase to mean something, ten years with no turn from the calf worship.

Pul was the name Tiglath-pileser III used as king of Babylon. His own annals list “Menihimmu of Samaria” among the kings who paid him tribute. A thousand talents of silver weighed something like thirty tons.

At three thousand shekels to the talent, fifty shekels a head means about sixty thousand men were taxed. The phrase “mighty men of wealth” once meant warriors; by now it means landowners, the class Boaz belonged to (Ruth 2:1).

“All that he did” has already been shown in two acts: the sack of Tiphsah and the silver levy. The book selected the two deeds that show what his throne cost other people.

Of the five northern kings in this chapter, Menahem alone dies in his bed and passes the throne to his son. The other four are all killed by the man who replaces them.

The numbers check: Menahem's ten years from Azariah's thirty ninth bring his son to the throne in the fiftieth. Pekahiah inherits a kingdom paying tribute to Assyria.

Pekahiah means the LORD has opened his eyes. His murderer's name, Pekah, is the same name in its short form, so one Pekah replaces another.

The palace here is the armon, the fortified keep of the royal house, so the killing reaches its most defended room. Argob and Arieh may be Pekahiah's officers killed with him; Argob is otherwise the name of a region in Bashan (Deuteronomy 3:4). In 1611 “in his room” meant in his place.

Pekahiah does not appear in the Assyrian records that name his father and his murderer. Two years, a verdict and a death make up everything known of him.

Twenty years is hard to fit between Menahem and the fall of Samaria. Many historians infer that Pekah counted his reign from a rival claim in Gilead, begun while Menahem still ruled; the fifty Gileadites of verse 25 suit that reading.

This is the last time the full sentence about Jeroboam son of Nebat is pronounced over an individual king. Hoshea's verdict in 17:2 is worded differently, and the next use of the name comes in the obituary of the whole kingdom (17:21–22).

The towns run from north to south down the route into Israel, much as Ben-hadad's raid did in 1 Kings 15:20. Isaiah 9:1 remembers this blow on Zebulun and Naphtali and promises light to “Galilee of the nations”.

Jotham reigned sixteen years (verse 33), so a twentieth year of Jotham counts past his reign, likely from when he began to govern for his leprous father. Tiglath-pileser's own inscription claims he set Hoshea on the throne after Pekah was overthrown.

Pekah is the last northern king given a closing “rest of the acts” notice. Hoshea's reign ends in chapter 17 with no source cited, no burial and no successor.

Jotham's accession is dated by Pekah's second year, so the reader steps back in time. Chapter 15 runs the northern kings forward to Hoshea and then returns south to pick up Judah where it left off.

Only Jotham's mother, among the queen mothers of this chapter, is given a father. Zadok was the name of Solomon's high priest, and it is possible, though not stated, that Jerusha came from the priestly family.

Chronicles adds the qualification that matters: Jotham did as his father did, “howbeit he entered not into the temple of the LORD” (2 Chronicles 27:2), the act that had brought Uzziah his disease.

Ezekiel places “the higher gate” on the north side of the temple court (Ezekiel 9:2), and Jeremiah was put in the stocks at “the high gate of Benjamin” (Jeremiah 20:2). Jotham's one recorded building work is an entrance to the sanctuary.

The Second Book of Chronicles, drawing on fuller sources, adds building on the wall of Ophel, towns in the hill country and a victory over Ammon with three years of tribute (2 Chronicles 27:3–5).

The LORD “began to send” the two kings, so the pressure starts under Jotham and peaks under his son. Isaiah 7 meets the same pair, calling them two smoking stubs of firebrands. Rezin will be the last king of Damascus.

David is called Jotham's father though he lived two and a half centuries earlier; the dynasty speaks of its founder as a living parent. Ahaz inherits the throne with an alliance already marching against it.