PEKAHIAH
867
PELAGIANISM
vii-ix. Its chief result was the capture of the Jewish port of Elath, on the Red Sea ; but the unnatural alli- ance of Damascus and Samaria was punished through the final overthrow of the ferocious confederates by Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, whom Ahaz called to his assistance, and who seized the opportunity of adding to his own dominions and crushing a union which might have been dangerous. The ivingdom of Damascus was finally suppressed, and Rezin put to death, while Pekah was deprived of at least half of his kingdom, including all the northern portion, and the whole district to the east of Jordan. For though the writer in 2 Kings xv, 29 tells us tliat Tiglath-Pileser '• took Ijon, and Abel- beth-maachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilecul, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali," yet from comparing 1 Chron. v, 2G, we find that Gilead must include " the Reubenites and the Gadites and half the tribe of Jlanasseh." The inhabitants were carried off, according to the usual practice, and settled in re- mote districts of Assyria. Pekah himself, now fallen into the position of an Assyrian vassal, was of course compelled to abstain from further attacks on Judah. Whether his continned tyranny exhausted the patience of his subjects, or whether his weakness emboldened them to attack him, we do not know ; but, from one or tlie other cause, Hoshea the son of Elah conspired against hira, and put him to death. Josephus says that Hoshea was his friend (Ant. ix, 13, 1). Comp. Isa. viii, 16, which prophecy Hoshea was instrumental in fnimiing. Pekah ascended the throne B.C. 757. In order to bring down the date of Pekah's murder to the date of Hoshea's accession, some chronologists pro- pose to read twenty-nine years for twenty in 2 Kings xv, 27. Most, however, prefer to let the dates stand as at present in the text, and suppose that an interregnum, not expressly mentioned in the Bible, occurred between those two usurpers. The words of Isaiah (ix, 20, 21) seem to indicate a time of anarchy in Israel. See Chronology. Pekah must have begun to war against Judah B.C. 740, and was killed B.C. 737. The order of events above given is according to the scheme of Ewald's Geschichte des Volkes Israel, iii, 602. Mr. Raw- linson {Bampton Lectures for 1859, lect. iv) seems wrong in assuming two invasions of Israel by the As- syrians in Pekah's time, the one corresponding to 2 Kings XV, 29, the other to 2 Kings xvi, 7-9. Both these narratives refer to the same event, which in the first place is mentioned briefly in the short sketch of Pekah's reign, while, in the second passage, additional details are given in the longer biograjihy of Ahaz. It would have been scarcely possible for Pekah, when de- prived of half his kingdom, to make an alliance with Rezin, and to attack Ahaz. We learn further from INIr. RawHnson that the conquests of Tiglath-Pileser are mentioned in an Assyrian fragment, though there is a difficulty, from the occurrence of the name Aferuihem in the inscription, which may have proceeded from a mis- take of the engraver. Comp. the title, son of Khumri (Omri), assigned to Jehu in another inscription; and see Rawlinson, note 35 on lect. iv. As may be inferred from Pekah's alliance with Rezin, his government was no improvement, morally and religiously, on that of his predecessors. — Smith. See Iskael, Kingdom ok.
Pekahi'ah (Ileb. Pekachyah', fl^HpQ, oj^ninrj [of the eyes] by Jehovah ; Sept. i>aKt(Tiai: v. r. ^aKiiac ; .losephus, <t>a(ct(V/c, A7it. ix, 11, 1 ; Vulg. PhacpJ(i), son and successor of Menahem, was the seventeenth king of the separate kingdom of Israel. After a brief reign of two years (B.C. 758, 757), a conspiracy was organized against him by "one of liis captains" (probably of his body guard), Pekah, son of Remaliah, who, at the head of fifty (iileadites, attacked him in his palace at Sama- ria, assassinated him and his friends Argob and Arieh, and seized the throne. This reign was no better than those which had gone before; and the calf-worship was retained (2 Kings xv, 22-26J. See Israel, Kingdom of.
Pe'kod (Heb. Pel-od', TlpS, visitation), & symbolical appellative applied to the Chaldeans in Jer. 1, 21, and to the Chaldajans in Ezek. xxiii, 23, in the latter of which passages it is connected with Shoa and Koa, as if these three were in some way subdivisions of" the Babylonians and all the Chakteans." Authorities are undecided as to the meaning of the term. It is regularly formed from the root pakdd, "to visit," and in its secondary senses means " to punish," and " to appoint a ruler :" hence Pe- kod may be applied to Babylon in Jer. 1 as significant of its impending punishment, as in the margin of the A. V. "visitation." But this sense will not suit the other passage, and hence Gesenius here assigns to it the meaning of "prefect" (Thesaur. p. 1121), as if it were but another form of pa/dd. It certainly is unlikely that the same word would be applied to the same ob- ject in two totally diflTerent senses. Hitzig seeks for the origin of the word in the Sanscrit bhardn, " noble" — Shoa and Koa being respectively " prince" and " lord ;" and he explains its use in Jer. 1 as a part for the whole. The Sept. treats it as the name of a district {fbciKovKX Alex. ^ovS) in Ezekiel, and as a verb (t/oc^i/o/croi') in Jeremiah. — Smith. Flirst, however, remarks {Heh. Lex. s. v.) that the name is selected in Jeremiah by assonance with ^pQ, topmiish (1, 18), and Ji^pS (1, 27, 31), while the association in Ezekiel shows it must have been a people. Hence he suggests the Pcefp-ians of Herodotus (iii, 93; vii, 67), and the city of Pekod in the Talmud (Jerus. Xcdarim, x), both in Babylonia. See Koa.