"Pekah"

Pekah (r. 735-733 B.C.E.) – The son of Remaliah, who terminated the House of Menachem with the help of 50 Gileadites. Pekah may have reigned in Gilead for some years before assuming the throne in Israel. Once installed in Israel, he perpetuated the calf cult.

He conspired with Rezin of Aram to remove King Jotham of Judah from his throne near the end of the latter’s reign, probably in an effort to coerce Judah into an alliance against Assyrian hegemony. The kings invaded Judah and besieged Jerusalem, but failed to capture it. Still, Pekah slew 120,000 valiant Judahites in a single day and had 200,000 captive Judahites carried off to Samaria.

At the urging of the prophet Oded, these captives were promptly returned to Jericho in Judah. When Jotham’s son Ahaz acceded to the throne and with the usual bribe enlisted the help of Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria, Pekah and Rezin were forced to retreat northward to their own respective domains to defend them from the advancing Assyrians, who among other things invaded Galilee and exiled a multitude of its inhabitants. Pekah was murdered by the conspiring Hoshea, who brought the House of Pekah to an abrupt end.