The kings of Israel and Judah

King Pekah

The kingdom of Israel (the north) · Reigned twenty years (2 Kings 15:27) · Evil before God · 2 Kings 15:27 to 31; 16:5 to 9; Isaiah 7

Pekah, the son of Remaliah, seized the throne by killing Pekahiah and reigned some twenty years. He did evil, keeping the sins of Jeroboam. He allied with Syria against Judah, trying to force King Ahaz to join them, which occasioned Isaiah's prophecy of Immanuel. In his reign the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser invaded and carried off large parts of Israel into captivity, the first great deportation of the north. Pekah was then assassinated by Hoshea.

In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglathpileser king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abelbethmaachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria.2 Kings 15:29 (KJV)

An evil king and a fateful alliance

Pekah reigned twenty years, and he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. He joined with Rezin king of Syria in a coalition against Judah, and the two came up to attack Jerusalem and to force Ahaz to join their alliance against Assyria, even plotting to replace him with a puppet king.

It was this crisis, the threat of Syria and Israel against Judah, that brought Isaiah to King Ahaz with the promise not to fear these two smoking firebrands, and with the great sign of Immanuel, a virgin's son who would be God with us.

The Assyrian deportation

Pekah's reign brought disaster on Israel. In his days came Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and took a long list of northern cities and regions, Ijon, Abel-beth-maachah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried the people captive to Assyria.

This was the first great tearing away of the northern kingdom, a foretaste of the total exile soon to come. Ahaz had appealed to Assyria for help against Pekah and Rezin, and the empire he called in devoured much of Israel in the process. The end of the north was now clearly in sight.

The biblical verdict and where it points

Pekah is judged evil, a king whose aggression against his brother kingdom of Judah and whose idolatry hastened the ruin of his own. Under him Israel lost its outlying territories and much of its people to Assyria, and he himself fell to the conspiracy of Hoshea, who struck him down and reigned in his place.

The crisis of his reign gave the world one of its greatest promises. Against the plotting of Pekah and Rezin, God spoke of Immanuel, showing that the schemes of kings cannot overthrow his purposes. The northern kingdom that Pekah helped destroy would pass away, but the sign given in that hour points across the centuries to Christ, God with us, whose kingdom no empire can carry into exile.

A note on the record: everything here is drawn from the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. Kings and Chronicles sometimes tell a reign differently, Chronicles often adding a king's repentance or building works, and where they differ this is said plainly rather than smoothed over. The exact lengths and overlaps of the reigns are genuinely complex, because kings often shared the throne with a son for a time, so the totals in Scripture do not always add up in a simple line. The verdict good or evil is the Bible's own assessment, whether a king did right or evil in the sight of the LORD.

Related: Pekahiah · Hoshea · Ahaz · All the kings of Israel and Judah