Lives of Scripture

Pekah, son of Remaliah, assassinated Pekahiah in the royal citadel and reigned twenty years over Israel, continuing the sins of Jeroboam like every northern king before him (2 Kings 15:25-28). His reign is defined largely by a major military alliance with Rezin, king of Aram, against Judah -- the Syro-Ephraimite war -- in which the two kings besieged Jerusalem, killed a great number of Judah's forces, and took captives, though Judah's ally-turned-enemy Assyria would soon overshadow the entire conflict (2 Kings 16:5; 2 Chronicles 28:5-8). This crisis is the backdrop for Isaiah's famous confrontation with King Ahaz of Judah, urging him to trust the LORD rather than fear Pekah and Rezin, whom Isaiah dismissed as two 'stubs of smoldering firebrands' soon to fail (Isaiah 7:1-9). Ahaz instead appealed directly to Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria for help, a decision with lasting consequences (2 Kings 16:7-9). Tiglath-pileser responded by attacking Israel itself during Pekah's reign, capturing large territories including Gilead and Galilee, and deporting their populations to Assyria -- an early, decisive stage of the process that would end the northern kingdom entirely within a generation (15:29). Pekah's reign ended when Hoshea conspired against him, struck him down, and took the throne as Israel's final king (15:30).