Introduction King Baasha was the third king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. According to 1 Kings 15:33, he reigned for 24 years from the Israelite capital of Tirzah, at the end of the 10th-beginning of the 9th centuries B.C.E.. Baasha was a usurper who had come to power through a coup d’etat, in which…

King Jehu was the tenth king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, who ruled the kingdom for most of the second half of the 9th century B.C.E. According to the Bible, Jehu ruled for 28 years (2 Kings 10:36) in Samaria. Information regarding the times and reign of Jehu can be found in the Bible,…

King Jehoram was the ninth king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and the final king of the Omride Dynasty, who ruled in the 9th century B.C. He reigned for 12 years, according to the Bible (2 Kings 3:1). Jehoram’s name – consisting of the verb rum and the theophoric element yah (an abbreviation of…

Ancient Samaria is one of the most well-known and notorious cities of the Bible. For hundreds of years, it served as the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and a rival center to Jerusalem. Condemned by the Bible as a sinful and apostate city, the city housed several infamous Israelite kings over the years,…

In circa. 736 B.C.E., an Israelite military officer named Pekah launched a military coup d’etat against King Pekahiah, assassinating him and seizing the throne of Israel (2 Kings 15:25). Pekah then collaborated with King Rezin of Aram-Damascus, along with multiple other states in the southern Levant, in a resistance movement against King Tiglath-pileser III of…

Introduction King Jehoahaz (also referred to in some sources as “Joahaz”) was the 11th king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, who reigned, according to most chronologies, in the late 9th century B.C.E. Jehoahaz was the son of King Jehu (who had previously usurped the throne from the earlier Omride Dynasty; cf. 2 Kings 9-10),…

According to the Bible, King Jeroboam I, after coming to power in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, set up golden calves at the sites of Bethel and Dan. Jeroboam said in his heart: “Now the kingdom will return to the house of David. If this people continues to go up to offer sacrifices at the…