Pekah

Pekah
King of Israel
Pekah from Guillaume Rouillé's Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum
Predecessor	Pekahiah
Successor	Hoshea

Pekah (/ˈpɛ.kɑː/ or /ˈpiː.kɑː/;Hebrew: פֶּקַח‎‎, Pẹqaḥ; "open-eyed"; Akkadian: Paqaḫa; Latin: Phacee) was king of Israel. He was a captain in the army of king Pekahiah of Israel, whom he killed to become king. Pekah was the son of Remaliah (/rɛm.ə.ˈlaɪ.ə/;Latin: Romelia).

Pekah became king in the fifty-second and last year of Azariah, king of Judah, and he reigned twenty years. In the second year of his reign Jotham became king of Judah, and reigned for sixteen years. Jotham was succeeded by his son, Ahaz in the seventeenth year of Pekah's reign. William F. Albright has dated his reign to 737 – 732 BC, while E. R. Thiele, following H. J. Cook and Carl Lederer, held that Pekah set up in Gilead a rival reign to Menahem's Samaria-based kingdom in Nisan of 752 BC, becoming sole ruler on his assassination of Menahem's son Pekahiah in 740/739 BC and dying in 732/731 BC. This explanation is consistent with evidence of the Assyrian chronicles, which agree with Menahem being king in 743 BC or 742 BC and Hoshea being king from 732 BC.