The genealogy of the kings of Judah, along with the kings of Israel.
Template:Kings of Judah
The Kings of Judah ruled the ancient Kingdom of Judah after the death of Saul, when the tribe of Judah elevated David to rule over it. After seven years, David became king of a reunited Kingdom of Israel. However, in about 930 BC the united kingdom split, with ten of the twelve Tribes of Israel rejecting Solomon's son Rehoboam as their king. The Tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained loyal to Rehoboam, and reformed the Kingdom of Judah, while the other entity continuing to be called the Kingdom of Israel, or Israel.
The Davidic dynasty began when the tribe of Judah made David its king, following the death of Saul. The Davidic line continued when David became king of the reunited Kingdom of Israel. When the united kingdom split, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin continued to be loyal to the Davidic line, which ruled it until the kingdom was destroyed in 586 BC. However, the Davidic line continued to be respected by the exiles in Babylon, who regarded the Exilarchs as kings-in-exile.
A more complete biography of the Kings of Judah than that of the Hebrew Bible were written by Iddo the Seer and in the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah, both of which are mentioned in the Bible. However, both of these works have been lost.
Reigned over Israel & Judah in Jerusalem for 40 years. Death: natural causes Son of David by Bathsheba, his rights of succession were disputed by his older half-brother Adonijah
Death: King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon sent for him and brought him to Babylon, where he lived and died. Jerusalem was captured by the Babylonians and Jehoiachin deposed on 16 March, 597 BC. Called Jeconiah in Jeremiah and Esther
Death: unknown. His reign saw the second rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar (588-586 BC). Jerusalem was captured after a lengthy siege, the temple burnt, Zedekiah blinded and taken into exile, and Judah reduced to a province.
Biblical scholars have tried to synchronise biblical dating of the Israelite kings with those of other states and empires of the region. The exercise has generated academic disagreements.
Using the information in Kings and Chronicles, Edwin Thiele has calculated the dates of the reigns of the kings of Judah from the division of the kingdom, which he calculates to have been in 931-930 BC. Thiele noticed that for the first seven kings of Israel (ignoring Zimri's inconsequential seven-day reign), the synchronisms to Judean kings fell progressively behind by one year for each king. Thiele saw this as evidence that the northern kingdom was measuring the years by a non-accession system (first partial year of reign was counted as year one), whereas the southern kingdom was using the accession method (it was counted as year zero). Also he concluded that the calendars for reckoning the years of kings in Judah and Israel were offset by six months, that of Judah starting in Tishri (in the fall) and that of Israel in Nisan (in the spring). This is the conclusion from cross-synchronizations between the two kingdoms which often allows the narrowing of the beginning and/or ending dates of a king to within a six-month range, indicating the difference being due to the calendar starting date. Once these were understood, the various reign lengths and cross-synchronisms for these kings was worked out, and the sum of reigns for both kingdoms produced 931/930 BC for the division of the kingdom when working backwards from the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC.
Thiele showed that for the reign of Jehoram, Judah adopted Israel's non-accession method of counting the years of reign, meaning that the first partial year of the king's reign was counted as his first full year, in contrast to the "accession" method previously in use whereby the first partial year was counted as year "zero," and "year one" was assigned to the first full year of reign. Thiele attributed this change to the rapprochement between Judah and Israel, whereby Jehoshaphat, Jehoram's father, made common cause with Ahab at the battle of Ramoth-Gilead, and chose a daughter for his son from the house of Ahab (1 Kings 22:1–38, 2 Kings 8:18).[3] This convention was followed in Judah for the next three monarchs: Ahaziah, Athaliah, and Jehoash, returning to Judah's original accession reckoning in the time of Amaziah. These changes can be inferred from a careful comparison of the textual data in the Scripture, but because the Scriptural texts do not state explicitly whether the reckoning was by accession or non-accession counting, nor do they indicate explicitly when a change was made in the method, many have criticized Thiele's chronology as being entirely arbitrary in its assignment of accession and non-accession reckoning. The arbitrariness, however, apparently rested with the ancient kings and their court recorders, not with Thiele. The official records of Tiglath-Pileser III show that he switched (arbitrarily) to non-accession reckoning for his reign, in contrast with the accession method used for previous kings of Assyria.[4] Tiglath-Pileser left no record explaining to modern historians which kind of method he was using, nor that he was switching from the method used by his predecessors; all of this is determined by a careful comparison of the relevant texts by Assyriologists, the same as Thiele did for the regnal data of Judah and Israel.
Another potential confusion arises from periods of co-regency when a son may be made king during the continuing reign of the father, as an equal of the father. In those situations the year reigns are counted in terms of both the father and of the son. At times the period of co-regency is clearly indicated (for example in 2 Kings 8:16), while in others it must be inferred from the dating.
Another potential confusion arises from the convention of dating the reigns of the Israelite kings by reference to the Gregorian calendar. This potential confusion arises because year numbers of the Gregorian calendar commence on 1 January, while year numbers for dating biblical events start on 1 Tishri of the Hebrew calendar, which is not fixed in terms of the Gregorian year, and also usually occurs in September–October of the Gregorian year. Accordingly, an event which takes place after 1 Tishri, between, say, November and December under Gregorian dating, would be in the next year under biblical dating.
The Babylonian Chronicles give 2 Adar (16 March), 597 BC, as the date that Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem, thus putting an end to the reign of Jehoaichin.[5] Zedekiah's installation as king by Nebuchadnezzar can therefore be firmly dated to the early spring of 597 BC.
Historically there has been considerable controversy over the date when Jerusalem was captured the second time and Zedekiah's reign came to an end. There is no dispute about the month: it was the summer month of Tammuz (Jeremiah 52:6). The problem has been to determine the year. It was noted above that Albright preferred 587 BC and Thiele advocated 586 BC, and this division among scholars has persisted until the present time. If Zedekiah's years are by accession counting, whereby the year he came to the throne was considered his "zero" year and his first full year in office, 597/596, was counted as year one, Zedekiah's eleventh year, the year the city fell, would be 587/586. Since Judean regnal years were measured from Tishri in the fall, this would place the end of his reign and the capture of the city in the summer of 586 BC. Accession counting was the rule for most, but not all, of the kings of Judah, whereas "non-accession" counting was the rule for most, but not all, of the kings of Israel.[6][7]
The publication of the Babylonian Chronicles in 1956, however, gave evidence that the years of Zedekiah were measured in a non-accession sense. This reckoning makes year 598/597, the year Zedekiah was installed by Nebuchadnezzar according to Judah's Tishri-based calendar, to be year "one," so that the fall of Jerusalem in his eleventh year would have been in year 588/587, i.e. in the summer of 587 BC. The Bablyonian Chronicles allow the fairly precise dating of the capture of Jehoiachin and the start of Zedekiah's reign, and they also give the accession year of Nebuchadnezzar's successor Amel-Marduk (Evil Merodach) as 562/561 BC, which was the 37th year of Jehoiachin's captivity according to 2 Kings 25:27. These Babylonian records related to Jehoiachin's reign are consistent with the fall of the city in 587 but not in 586, thus vindicating Albright's date.
