Pekahiah

Narrator: Ivona Gentwo
2 Kings 15:23‑26  •  2 min. read  •  grade level: 11
Jah has observed
2 Kings 15:23-26
The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them: but transgressors shall be taken in their own naughtiness. Prov. 11:5
“In the fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah, Pekahiah the son of Menahem began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned two 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.” Azariah (Uzziah), King of Judah, during his long reign of more than half a century, saw the death of five of Israel’s kings, three of whom were assassinated, in addition to a period of anarchy lasting at least eleven years. This marked contrast between the two kingdoms is what the prophet probably referred to when he wrote, “Ephraim encompasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit, but Judah yet walketh with God [El], and with the holy things of truth” (Hos. 11:12, N.TR.). This does not mean that all Judah’s ways pleased the Lord, but that unlike apostate Israel, Judah maintained the truth of Jehovah as revealed in the law and symbolized in the temple’s worship and service.
“But Pekah the son of Remaliah, a captain of his, conspired against him, and smote him in Samaria, in the palace of the king’s house, with Argob and Arieh, and with him fifty men of the Gileadites: and he killed him, and reigned in his room.” Pekahiah was assassinated by his captain (shalish, aide-de-camp, probably; “the general of his house,” Josephus says) Pekah, with two of his followers, and a company of fifty Gileadites. Gilead was a direct descendant of Manasseh, oldest son of Joseph, and head of a large, powerful family, to whom Moses gave the conquered territory east of Jordan called Gilead (see Num. 32:39-41; Deut. 3:13; and Judg. 12:4). These Gileadites appear to have been a rough, wild class, a kind of Hebrew highlanders, and ready in Pekahiah’s day for any and all manner of villainy. See Hos. 6:8. They slew the king in his very palace (“with his friends at a feast;” Josephus Antiquities 9.11.1), so bold were they. Pekahiah means “Jah has observed” and implies that God had witnessed the murder of Shallum by Pekahiah’s father Mena-hem, and had avenged that murder in the death of his son (2 Chron. 24:22). His name, like his father’s and grandfather’s, does not occur anywhere else in Scripture.
“And the rest of the acts of Pekahiah, and all that he did, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.” His death ended the seventh dynasty of the Israelitish kings.