Five Coups in Twenty Years: How the Kingdom of Israel Ended

After the death of Jeroboam II the Northern Kingdom lasted some thirty years and went through six kings. Four of them came to the throne by murder, and four were murdered.

Zechariah son of Jeroboam—six months. The fourth and last generation of the house of Jehu, exactly as promised to Jehu: "your sons to the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel." Shallum son of Jabesh struck him down before the people.

Shallum—one month. Menahem son of Gadi came up from Tirzah and killed him. On the way he took Tiphsah, which would not open its gates, and "ripped open all its pregnant women"—a line Scripture neither explains nor softens.

Menahem—ten years. In his reign the king of Assyria entered the land for the first time: Pul, that is Tiglath-pileser III. Menahem gave him a thousand talents of silver "that his hands might be with him to strengthen the kingdom in his hand," and raised the money from the people: fifty shekels from every man of means. This is the first time Israel buys its own existence, and the price is itemised per head.

Pekahiah son of Menahem—two years. He was killed by Pekah son of Remaliah, his own officer, with fifty men of Gilead, in the citadel of the royal house in Samaria.

Pekah—twenty years. He allied with Aram against Judah, and King Ahaz called Assyria for help. Tiglath-pileser came and took Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead and Galilee—"all the land of Naphtali"—and carried the people off to Assyria. Half the kingdom was gone before the capital fell.

Hoshea son of Elah—nine years, the last king of Israel. He killed Pekah and became Assyria's vassal himself, then tried to lean on Egypt and stopped paying. Shalmaneser besieged Samaria; the city held three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea Samaria was taken and Israel was carried away to Halah, to the Habor, the river of Gozan, and the cities of Media.

Academic history dates this event differently. In the age of the kings the divergence is not the one familiar from the Persian period, where Seder Olam runs about a hundred and sixty-five years short. Here academic chronology reckons some reigns as overlapping — father and son on the throne together — so its span from the division of the kingdom to the destruction of the Temple comes out nearly three decades shorter. The gap therefore grows: a hundred and thirty-five years at the division, a hundred and fifty-four at Sennacherib, a hundred and sixty-four at the destruction. The anchors of the academic count are external documents: the battle of Qarqar (853), Jehu's tribute on the Black Obelisk (841), the fall of Samaria (722), Sennacherib's campaign (701), Megiddo and Nebuchadnezzar's campaigns in the Babylonian Chronicles (609, 605, 597). Both dates appear on the timeline when the divergence layer is on.