Jehu’s Revolt and Tribute to Assyria
841 BC, firm dateFirm date
The army commander Jehu, anointed at Elisha’s word, kills the kings of Israel and Judah, Jezebel and the house of Ahab, and destroys the temple of Baal in Samaria. In the same year Assyrian records show him paying tribute to Shalmaneser III.
Joram, son of Ahab, had been wounded fighting Hazael of Aram at Ramoth-gilead and lay recovering at Jezreel, where Ahaziah, king of Judah, came to visit him (2 Kings 8:28–29). Elisha sent one of the prophets to the army at Ramoth-gilead to anoint Jehu, one of its commanders, as king, with the charge to destroy the house of Ahab. His fellow officers spread their cloaks under him and proclaimed him king (2 Kings 9:1–13).
Jehu drove to Jezreel. He shot Joram with an arrow and had the body thrown onto the field that had been Naboth’s. Ahaziah was wounded as he fled and died at Megiddo (2 Kings 9:16–28); Chronicles has him caught in hiding in Samaria (2 Chronicles 22:9). Jezebel was thrown from a window (2 Kings 9:30–37). The guardians of Ahab’s seventy sons in Samaria sent Jehu their heads; relatives of Ahaziah were killed on the road; and in Samaria Jehu gathered the worshippers of Baal into their temple, had them killed and turned the building into a latrine (2 Kings 10:1–28).
Kings gives a divided verdict. Jehu did what the Lord intended to Ahab’s house, and his sons would rule to the fourth generation; but he kept the golden calves of Bethel and Dan, and in his days Hazael took all Israel’s land east of the Jordan (2 Kings 10:29–33). The prophet Hosea, about a century later, speaks of the blood of Jezreel as a debt still owed by Jehu’s house (Hosea 1:4).
The Assyrian record adds something Kings leaves out. In his eighteenth year Shalmaneser III crossed the Euphrates, defeated Hazael, shut him up in Damascus and marched on to a headland on the coast. At that time, the annals say, he received the tribute of Tyre, Sidon and Jehu of Israel (Shalmaneser III, Annals RIAo 12, lines 21–30). The Black Obelisk, set up at Kalhu near the end of the reign, shows the scene. A figure bows to the ground before the king, and the caption lists what Jehu sent: silver, gold, gold vessels, tin, staffs and spears (Black Obelisk caption 2 (RIAo 88)). The Assyrian scribes call him “son of Omri”, that is, ruler of the land they named after Omri, and say nothing of how he came to the throne.
The revolt ended the dynasty of Omri and the royal cult of Baal, and it founded a dynasty that held the throne for four more generations (2 Kings 15:12). The tribute is the earliest recorded payment by a king of Israel to Assyria. A third account of these deaths, in the name of an Aramean king, survives on the House of David Inscription from Tel Dan.
How this is dated
Firm date. Fixed by contemporary documentation and not seriously disputed.
Shalmaneser’s annals place his defeat of Hazael in his eighteenth regnal year (Black Obelisk lines 54–66 and 97–99), and the fuller versions add that he then received the tribute of Jehu (Shalmaneser III, Annals RIAo 12, lines 21–30). His sixth year is the eponymy of Dayan-Ashur, 853 BC, so the eighteenth is 841 BC (Assyrian Eponym Chronicle entries for 853/852 and 841/840 BC). The caption on the Black Obelisk has no date of its own (Black Obelisk caption 2 (RIAo 88)).
Kings does not tie Jehu’s revolt to any outside event. Jehu was king by 841, and Ahab, who was alive in 853 (Kurkh Monolith ii 91–92), was followed by two sons whose reigns Kings gives as two and twelve years (1 Kings 22:51; 2 Kings 3:1). Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (3rd ed., 1983), argues that Israel then counted both the first and the last part-year of a reign as full years. On that reckoning the two reigns fill the twelve years between the Assyrian dates, and the revolt falls in 841 BC, shortly before the tribute.
Primary sources
Scripture
Annals of Shalmaneser III (Other Copies)
- Shalmaneser III, Annals RIAo 12, lines 21–30oracc.museum.upenn.edu
The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III
- Black Obelisk caption 2 (RIAo 88)oracc.museum.upenn.edu
- Black Obelisk lines 54–66 and 97–99oracc.museum.upenn.edu
The Kurkh Monolith of Shalmaneser III
- Kurkh Monolith ii 91–92oracc.museum.upenn.edu
In context
Grows out of
- about 850 BC, traditional date
- 853 BC, firm date
Leads to
- about 840 BC, estimated date