Kings of the Jews: The Origins of the Jewish Nation

Ahaziah

KINGS OF THE JEWS 110 AHAZIAH 841–840 BCE The manner of Ahaziah’s death is of greater historical interest than his life. Of the sons of King Jehoram, only he, the youngest, survived when Philistine marauders pillaged Jerusalem while his father was away from the capital. When Jehoram subsequently died, Ahaziah, then twenty-two years old, inherited the throne of Judah. At the time, Judah and Israel enjoyed congenial relations, underpinned by an earlier diplomatic marriage between offspring of the rulers of the two kingdoms. As a mark of friendship between the two Jewish nations that had so often suffered an adversarial relationship, young Ahaziah sent troops from Judah to the aid of his cousin, King Jehoram of Israel, who bore the same name as his late father. The Judaean troops were to fight alongside the Israelites in their war with Damascus . When Jehoram was wounded in battle, Ahaziah went to visit him at Jezreel, the Israelite winter capital, to which Jehoram had gone to recover. While he was at Jezreel, Israel’s military commander, Jehu, staged a coup, killed the recuperating Jehoram and fatally wounded the visiting Ahaziah. Having spent little time in Judah as its ruler, he’d had little to do with administering it and had made no impression on its affairs or the ways of its people. During most of the one year Ahaziah had been king, his mother, Athaliah, had ruled the land in his name. When word reached Jerusalem of his death, she installed herself as queen of Judah. ...