MENAHEM: Sixteenth king of Israel, son of
Gadi, usurper and successor of Shallum. His dates
according to the old chronology are 772-763 s.c.;
according to Kamphausen, 740-738; according
to
Curtis, 741-737 (DB, i.
401); according to Kittel, 740-737. The narrative in
II Kings xv. 14-22
makes Menahem march from Tirzah and kill
Shallum in Samaria, and then waste the region
about Tappuah (so the corrected text) because that
town had declined to receive him. Tirzah, the old
capital of
the northern kingdom, was doubtless
well fortified, and Menahem was its commandant.
He may have been the head of one of the two
portions into which the kingdom split after the
death of Jeroboam. His victory over Shallum must
have been the result of a severe conflict, and
Tappuah was doubtless the center of the opposition
to Menahem (cf.
Isa. ix. 19-20;
Hos. vii. 7, viii. 4).
The Biblical narrative also states that Pul (Tiglath
P°.leser, see
Assyria, VI., 3, § 9) came against the
land and that Menahem paid him a tribute of
1,000 talents to be recognized as king. This does
not involve that it was at
Menahem's invitation
that Tiglath Pileser came, but it appears that the
Assyrian had been in Syria as early as 740
B.C., that his intervention in Israel was a part of his
general plan to reduce that land to a province of
his empire, and that Menahem took advantage of
the situation. It is hardly possible to allow
to Menahem the full ten years assigned to
his reign in
II Kings xv. 17.
His tribute to Pul belongs to the year 738, and he can not
have reigned long after this to allow for the other
reigns which fell before the destruction of Samaria
in 722.
(R. Kittel.)
Bibliography:
The sources are
II Kings xv. 14-22.
Consult: R. Hittel, Geschichte der Hebräer, ii, 488-472, Gotha,
1909; DB, iii. 340; EB, iii. 3019-20; JE, viii. 485
168, and the pertinent sections of the literature given under
Ahab;
and
Israel, History of.
