2 Kings 15:27

PEKAH'S EVIL REIGN OVER ISRAEL FOR TWENTY YEARS

"In the two and fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah Pekah the son of Remaliah began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned twenty years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, wherewith he made Israel to sin. In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria and took Ijon, and Abel-beth-maacah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali; and he carried them captive to Assyria. And Hoshea the son of Elath made a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah, and smote him, and slew him, and reigned in his stead, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah. Now the rest of the acts of Pekah, and all that he did, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel."

(See our comments in Isaiah 7:1-9 and in Isaiah 8:1-8 regarding the plot in which Pekah was ambitious to replace Ahaz king of Judah with a puppet who was favorable to Pekah's plans. The prophet Isaiah frustrated his efforts.)

The shameful condition of affairs in Israel are highlighted by the fact that a man like Pekah, without the advantage of having some dissident faction in the kingdom to aid him, but merely through his evil ambition to take the throne, was able to do so. How pitiful is the state of any nation when any ambitious freebooter may simply lay a plot, kill the king, and take over the kingdom!

During the evil reign of Pekah, the first deportation of citizens of the Northern kingdom to Assyria took place under Tiglath-pileser who took over all of the Trans-jordan territory of Israel as well as Galilee. With this tragic episode, the doom of Northern Israel was sealed.

Hammond reports the following from the Assyrian records of Tiglath-pileser:

"The goods of its (Israel's) people and their furniture I sent to Assyria. Pekah their king (I caused to be put to death?), and Hoshea I appointed to the kingdom over them; their tribute I received, and their treasures to Assyria I sent."[17]

"And Hoshea the son of Elath made a conspiracy against him" (2 Kings 15:30). The Assyrian records just quoted shed light on that conspiracy which was no doubt initiated and supported by Tiglath-pileser. That, of course, accounts for its success.