Jehoram of Judah
Encyclopedia
Jehoram of Judah was the king of the southern Kingdom of Judah
, and the son of Jehoshaphat
.
According to , Jehoram became king of Judah in the fifth year of Jehoram of Israel
, when his father Jehoshaphat was (still) king of Judah, indicating a co-regency
. The author of Kings also speaks of both Jehoram of Israel and Jehoram of Judah in the same passage, which can be confusing. Jehoram took the throne at the age of 32 and reigned for eight years. To secure his position Jehoram killed all his brothers.
William F. Albright
has dated his reign to 849 BC – 842 BC. Edwin Thiele
placed a coregency of Jehoram with his father Jehoshaphat
, starting in 853/852 BC, with the beginning of his sole reign occurring in 848/847 and his death in 841/840 BC. As explained in the Rehoboam
article, Thiele's chronology for the first kings of Judah contained an internal inconsistency that later scholars corrected by dating these kings one year earlier, so that Jehoram's dates are taken as one year earlier in the present article: coregency beginning in 854/853, sole reign commencing in 849/848, and death in 842/841 BC.
Jehoram formed an alliance with the Kingdom of Israel by marrying Athaliah
, the daughter of Ahab
. Despite this alliance with the stronger northern kingdom, Jehoram's rule of Judah was shaky. Edom
revolted, and when Jehoram marched against this people, his army fled before the Edomites, and he was forced to acknowledge their independence. The town of Libnah
revolted during his reign, according to , because he "had abandoned Yahweh
, God of his fathers."
2 Chronicles relates that a raid consisting of Philistines, Arab
s and Ethiopia
ns looted the king's house, and carried off all of his family except for his youngest son Jehoahaz
. During this time the king received a letter of warning from Elijah . After this, Jehoram suffered a painful inflammation of the abdomen, and he died two years later when his bowels fell out.
Dates in the present article are one year earlier than those given in the third edition of Thiele's Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, thereby correcting an internal consistency that Thiele never resolved, as explained in the Rehoboam
article.
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). 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. 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.
Kingdom of Judah
The Kingdom of Judah was a Jewish state established in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. It is often referred to as the "Southern Kingdom" to distinguish it from the northern Kingdom of Israel....
, and the son of Jehoshaphat
Jehoshaphat
Jehoshaphat was the fourth king of the The Kingdom of Judah, and successor of his father Asa. His children included Jehoram, who succeeded him as king...
.
According to , Jehoram became king of Judah in the fifth year of Jehoram of Israel
Jehoram of Israel
Jehoram was a king of the northern Kingdom of Israel. He was the son of Ahab and Jezebel.According to , in the fifth year of Joram of Israel, Jehoram became king of Judah, when his father Jehoshaphat was king of Judah, indicating a co-regency...
, when his father Jehoshaphat was (still) king of Judah, indicating a co-regency
Co-regency
A coregency is the situation where a monarchical position , normally held by only a single person, is held by two....
. The author of Kings also speaks of both Jehoram of Israel and Jehoram of Judah in the same passage, which can be confusing. Jehoram took the throne at the age of 32 and reigned for eight years. To secure his position Jehoram killed all his brothers.
William F. Albright
William F. Albright
William Foxwell Albright was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist and expert on ceramics. From the early twentieth century until his death, he was the dean of biblical archaeologists and the universally acknowledged founder of the Biblical archaeology movement...
has dated his reign to 849 BC – 842 BC. Edwin Thiele
Edwin R. Thiele
Edwin R. Thiele was an American missionary in China, an editor, archaeologist, writer, and Old Testament professor. He is best known for his chronological studies of the Hebrew kingdom period.- Biography :...
placed a coregency of Jehoram with his father Jehoshaphat
Jehoshaphat
Jehoshaphat was the fourth king of the The Kingdom of Judah, and successor of his father Asa. His children included Jehoram, who succeeded him as king...
, starting in 853/852 BC, with the beginning of his sole reign occurring in 848/847 and his death in 841/840 BC. As explained in the Rehoboam
Rehoboam
Rehoboam was initially king of the United Monarchy of Israel but after the ten northern tribes of Israel rebelled in 932/931 BC to form the independent Kingdom of Israel he was king of the Kingdom of Judah, or southern kingdom. He was a son of Solomon and a grandson of David...
article, Thiele's chronology for the first kings of Judah contained an internal inconsistency that later scholars corrected by dating these kings one year earlier, so that Jehoram's dates are taken as one year earlier in the present article: coregency beginning in 854/853, sole reign commencing in 849/848, and death in 842/841 BC.
Jehoram formed an alliance with the Kingdom of Israel by marrying Athaliah
Athaliah
Athaliah was the queen of Judah during the reign of King Jehoram, and later became sole ruler of Judah for six years. William F. Albright has dated her reign to 842–837 BC, while Edwin R. Thiele's dates, as taken from the third edition of his magnum opus, were 842/841 to 836/835 BC...
, the daughter of Ahab
Ahab
Ahab or Ach'av or Achab in Douay-Rheims was king of Israel and the son and successor of Omri according to the Hebrew Bible. His wife was Jezebel....
. Despite this alliance with the stronger northern kingdom, Jehoram's rule of Judah was shaky. Edom
Edom
Edom or Idumea was a historical region of the Southern Levant located south of Judea and the Dead Sea. It is mentioned in biblical records as a 1st millennium BC Iron Age kingdom of Edom, and in classical antiquity the cognate name Idumea was used to refer to a smaller area in the same region...
revolted, and when Jehoram marched against this people, his army fled before the Edomites, and he was forced to acknowledge their independence. The town of Libnah
Libnah
Libnah or Lobna was a town in the Kingdom of Judah. The town of Libnah revolted during the reign of King Jehoram of Judah, according to II Chronicles , because he "had abandoned [the] God of his fathers."...
revolted during his reign, according to , because he "had abandoned Yahweh
Yahweh
Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jews and Christians.The word Yahweh is a modern scholarly convention for the Hebrew , transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton, for which the original pronunciation is unknown...
, God of his fathers."
2 Chronicles relates that a raid consisting of Philistines, Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
s and Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
ns looted the king's house, and carried off all of his family except for his youngest son Jehoahaz
Ahaziah of Judah
Ahaziah of Judah was king of Judah, and the son of Jehoram and Athaliah, the daughter of king Ahab of Israel. He is also called Jehoahaz ....
. During this time the king received a letter of warning from Elijah . After this, Jehoram suffered a painful inflammation of the abdomen, and he died two years later when his bowels fell out.
Chronological notes
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). Cross-synchronizations between the two kingdoms therefore often allow narrowing of the beginning and/or ending dates of a king to within a six-month range. For Jehoram, the Scriptural data allow the narrowing of the first year of his sole reign to some time between Nisan 1 of 848 BC and the day before Tishri 1 of the same BC year. For calculation purposes, this should be taken as the Judean year beginning in Tishri of 849/848 BC, or more simply 849 BC. His death occurred at some time between Nisan 1 and the day before Tishri 1 of 841 BC, i.e. in 842/841 BC according to the Judean calendar. For calculation purposes this can be written in the simpler form 842 BC, even though Jehoram's death occurred in the next BC year. This potential confusion is because of expressing dates in a January-based (Roman) calendar; a better notation would be something like 842t, the "t" standing for Tishri, indicating that the year crossed over into the two years 842 and 841 of the modern calendar.Dates in the present article are one year earlier than those given in the third edition of Thiele's Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, thereby correcting an internal consistency that Thiele never resolved, as explained in the Rehoboam
Rehoboam
Rehoboam was initially king of the United Monarchy of Israel but after the ten northern tribes of Israel rebelled in 932/931 BC to form the independent Kingdom of Israel he was king of the Kingdom of Judah, or southern kingdom. He was a son of Solomon and a grandson of David...
article.
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
Jehoshaphat
Jehoshaphat was the fourth king of the The Kingdom of Judah, and successor of his father Asa. His children included Jehoram, who succeeded him as king...
, 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). This convention was followed in Judah for the next three monarchs: Ahaziah
Ahaziah of Judah
Ahaziah of Judah was king of Judah, and the son of Jehoram and Athaliah, the daughter of king Ahab of Israel. He is also called Jehoahaz ....
, Athaliah
Athaliah
Athaliah was the queen of Judah during the reign of King Jehoram, and later became sole ruler of Judah for six years. William F. Albright has dated her reign to 842–837 BC, while Edwin R. Thiele's dates, as taken from the third edition of his magnum opus, were 842/841 to 836/835 BC...
, and Jehoash
Jehoash of Judah
Jehoash or Joas , sometimes written Joash or Joás , was the eighth king of the southern Kingdom of Judah, and the sole surviving son of Ahaziah. His mother was Zibiah of Beersheba ....
, returning to Judah's original accession reckoning in the time of Amaziah
Amaziah of Judah
Amaziah of Judah, Amasias , pronounced , and Amatzyah was the king of Judah, the son and successor of Joash. His mother was Jehoaddan and his son was Uzziah . He took the throne at the age of 25...
. 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
Tiglath-Pileser III
Tiglath-Pileser III was a prominent king of Assyria in the eighth century BC and is widely regarded as the founder of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Tiglath-Pileser III seized the Assyrian throne during a civil war and killed the royal family...
show that he switched (arbitrarily) to non-accession reckoning for his reign, in contrast with the accession method used for previous kings of Assyria. 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.