The kings of Israel and Judah

King Shallum of Israel

The kingdom of Israel (the north) · Reigned one month (2 Kings 15:13) · Evil before God · 2 Kings 15:13 to 15

Shallum, the son of Jabesh, murdered king Zechariah and seized the throne of Israel, but reigned only one month before he was himself killed by Menahem, who took the crown from him. His reign is among the shortest in the Bible, one of a rapid succession of usurpers in the last chaotic decades of the northern kingdom, when kings rose and fell by conspiracy and the nation lurched toward destruction.

Shallum the son of Jabesh began to reign in the nine and thirtieth year of Uzziah king of Judah; and he reigned a full month in Samaria.2 Kings 15:13 (KJV)

A month-long usurpation

Shallum came to power by conspiracy, striking down Zechariah before the people and ending the dynasty of Jehu. But he had no more claim to keep the throne than to take it, and he held it a full month in Samaria.

Scripture records almost nothing of him beyond the manner of his rise and fall, so brief and violent was his time. He belongs to the pattern of the north's collapse, in which the crown passed from murderer to murderer.

Overthrown in turn

Menahem the son of Gadi came up from Tirzah to Samaria, struck Shallum and killed him, and reigned in his place. The rest of the acts of Shallum, and his conspiracy which he made, are noted in the chronicles of the kings of Israel, but nothing else of him is preserved.

The man who had seized the throne by conspiracy lost it to another conspiracy within weeks, a stark picture of a kingdom that had abandoned God and dissolved into violence.

The biblical verdict and where it points

Shallum is counted among the evil kings and remembered only as a usurper swiftly overthrown. His single month on the throne is one of the clearest images in Scripture of the emptiness of power seized apart from God.

The chaos of these final reigns, king after king murdered and replaced, shows a kingdom under judgment tearing itself apart. Against such instability the Bible sets the unshakeable kingdom promised to David, and the King who does not grasp at a crown by violence but receives it from his Father and holds it for ever. Where Shallum reigned a month and died, Christ lives and reigns eternally.

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: Zechariah of Israel · Menahem · All the kings of Israel and Judah