Kings of Israel & Judah
From Saul's anointing (c. 1050 BC) through Judah's fall to Babylon (586 BC): every king, their moral rating, and the prophets who served alongside them. Every name that has a page is a door; every reign links to the chapters that tell it.
Historical Notes: dates, coregencies, and the one break in the line
- How long each king reigned is Scripture's own number, and every one carries the verse it comes from. The BC dates are a reconstruction: chronologies differ by up to about a decade in the early years of the divided kingdom, and close to within a year or two by the exile.
- Several kings had overlapping coregencies (e.g., Uzziah & Jotham, Jeroboam II & Zechariah).
- Samaria was not the northern capital from the start: Omri bought the hill and built the city about fifty years into the kingdom (1 Kings 16:24). Before that the seat moved from Shechem to Penuel to Tirzah.
- Jerusalem's fall is dated 586 BC here, following Thiele. Many scholars date it 587; the difference turns on how Zedekiah's eleventh year is counted, and nothing else in the story changes.
- Pekah's reign is debated: he may have been a rival king from 752 BC while Menahem ruled part of Israel.
- Athaliah was not of David's line: her inclusion marks the only break in the Davidic succession (2 Kings 11:1).
The BC dates follow Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (3rd ed., 1983) — the standard reconciliation of the regnal synchronisms in Kings and Chronicles. The reign lengths are not derived from those dates: each one is the figure Kings and Chronicles give, printed with the verse that gives it. The good / evil / mixed column is the book's own verdict formula, not ours: “he did that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah” or “that which was evil,” read where the formula is given and weighed against the reign's own record where Chronicles adds to it, with Matthew Henry's Exposition(1710) and Jamieson, Fausset & Brown's Commentary (1871) consulted on the mixed reigns. Every source behind MannaFest →