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Pekah ("open-eyed"), was king of Israel, the son of Remaliah, and a captain in the army of Pekahiah, king of Israel. William F. Albright has dated his reign to 737 BCE-732 BCE, while E. R. Thiele offers the dates 740 BCE-732 BCE. Although Pekah is said to reign for twenty years in the Book of Kings, such a lengthy reign cannot be supported from the evidence of the Assyrian chronicles, which show Menahem to have been King in 740 BC and Hoshea to have been King from 732 BC.

With the aid of a band of Gileadites, he slew Pekahiah and assumed the throne (2 Kings 15:25). According to the book of kings, seventeen years after this he entered into an alliance with Rezin, king of the Arameans, and took part with him in a siege of Jerusalem (2 Kings 15:37; 16:5). But Tiglath-Pileser III, who was in alliance with Ahaz, king of Judah, came up against Pekah, and carried away as captives many of the inhabitants of his kingdom (2 Kings 15:29; Tiglath-Pileser also records this act in one of his inscriptions). This was the beginning of the Captivity. Soon after this Pekah was put to death by Hoshea, the son of Elah, who usurped the throne (2 Kings 15:30; 16:1-9; compare Isaiah 7:16; 8:4; 9:12), although Tiglath-Pileser claims in an inscription to have replaced Pekah with Hoshea himself. He is supposed by some to have been the "shepherd" mentioned in Zechariah 11:16.

Preceded by: Pekahiah

King of Israel

Succeeded by: Hoshea

This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897.