For the Khazar ruler of the same name, see Menahem (Khazar)

Menahem (Khazar)

Menahem ben Aaron was a Khazar ruler of the late 800s CE. He was the son of Aaron I and the father of Benjamin.-Sources:*Kevin Alan Brook. The Jews of Khazaria. 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2006.*Douglas M...

. For the medieval poet and philologist, see Menahem ben Saruq

Menahem ben Saruq

Menahem ben Saruq was a Spanish-Jewish philologist of the tenth century CE. He was a skilled poet and polyglot. He was born in Tortosa around 920 and died around 970. Menahem produced an early dictionary of the Hebrew language...

.

Menahem, ' onMouseout='HidePop("95055")' href="/topics/Greek_language">Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

: Manaem in the Septuagint, Manaen in Aquila

Aquila of Sinope

Aquila of Sinope was a 2nd Century CE native of Pontus in Anatolia known for producing an exceedingly literal translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek around 130 CE. He was a proselyte to Judaism and a disciple of Rabbi Akiba...

; ; full name: , Menahem Ben Gadi) was a king of the northern Israelite

Israelite

According to the Bible the Israelites were a Hebrew-speaking people of the Ancient Near East who inhabited the Land of Canaan during the monarchic period .The word "Israelite" derives from the Biblical Hebrew ישראל...

 Kingdom of Israel. He was the son of Gadi, and the founder of the dynasty known as the House of Gadi or House of Menahem.

Menahem's ten year reign is told in . When Shallum

Shallum of Israel

Shallum of Israel was the king of the ancient Kingdom of Israel, and the son of Jabesh. He "conspired against Zachariah, and smote him before the people, and slew him, and reigned in his stead" . He reigned only "a month of days in Samaria" before Menahem rose up, put him to death , and became...

 conspired against and murdered Zachariah in Samaria

Samaria

Samaria, or the Shomron is a term used for a mountainous region roughly corresponding to the northern part of the West Bank.- Etymology :...

, and set himself upon the throne of the northern kingdom, Menahem refused to recognize the usurper. Menahem marched from Tirzah

Tirzah

Tirzah is a Hebrew word meaning "she is my delight." In the Bible it is the name of a woman, one of the daughters of Zelophehad.-Hebrew name:...

 to Samaria, about six miles westwards, laid siege to Samaria, took it, murdered Shallum a month into his reign , and set himself upon the throne. According to Josephus

Josephus

Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...

, he was a general of the army of Israel.

Menahem became king of Israel in the thirty-ninth year of the reign of Azariah

Uzziah

Uzziah , also known as Azariah , was the king of the ancient Kingdom of Judah, and one of Amaziah's sons, whom the people appointed to replace his father...

, king of Judah, and reigned for ten years. According to the chronology of Kautsch, he ruled from 743 BC; according to Schrader, from 745 – 736 BC. William F. Albright

William F. Albright

William Foxwell Albright was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist and expert on ceramics. From the early twentieth century until his death, he was the dean of biblical archaeologists and the universally acknowledged founder of the Biblical archaeology movement...

 has dated his reign from 745 – 738 BC, while E. R. Thiele

Edwin R. Thiele

Edwin R. Thiele was an American missionary in China, an editor, archaeologist, writer, and Old Testament professor. He is best known for his chronological studies of the Hebrew kingdom period.- Biography :...

 offers the dates 752 – 742 BC.

He brutally suppressed a revolt at Tiphsah. He destroyed the city, which has not been located, and put all its inhabitants to death, even ripping open the pregnant women. The Prophet

Prophet

In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...

 Hosea

Hosea

Hosea was the son of Beeri and a prophet in Israel in the 8th century BC. He is one of the Twelve Prophets of the Jewish Hebrew Bible, also known as the Minor Prophets of the Christian Old Testament. Hosea is often seen as a "prophet of doom", but underneath his message of destruction is a promise...

 describes the drunkenness and debauchery implied in the words "he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam

Jeroboam

Jeroboam was the first king of the northern Israelite Kingdom of Israel after the revolt of the ten northern Israelite tribes against Rehoboam that put an end to the United Monarchy....

." ( and )

Menahem seems to have died a natural death, and was succeeded by his son Pekahiah

Pekahiah

Pekahiah was a king of Israel and the son of Menahem, whom he succeeded, and the second and last king of Israel from the House of Gadi. He ruled from the capital of Samaria....

.

The author of the Books of Kings

Books of Kings

The Book of Kings presents a narrative history of ancient Israel and Judah from the death of David to the release of his successor Jehoiachin from imprisonment in Babylon, a period of some 400 years...

describes his rule as one of cruelty and oppression. The author is apparently synopsizing the "annals of the Kings of Israel

Chronicles of the Kings of Israel

The Chronicles of the Kings of Israel is a book that gives a more detailed account of the reigns of the kings of ancient Kingdom of Israel than that presented in the Hebrew Bible, and may have been the source from which parts of the biblical account was drawn...

", and gives scant details of Menahem's reign.

Tributary of Assyria

Tiglath-Pileser III

Tiglath-Pileser III

Tiglath-Pileser III was a prominent king of Assyria in the eighth century BC and is widely regarded as the founder of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Tiglath-Pileser III seized the Assyrian throne during a civil war and killed the royal family...

 of Assyria began his reign in 745 BC three years before Menahem became king of Israel.

During Menahem's reign, the Assyrians first entered the kingdom of Israel, and had also invaded Aram Damascus

Aram Damascus

Aram Damascus was an Aramaean state around Damascus in Syria, from the late 12th century BCE to 734 BCE.Sources for this state come from texts that can be divided into three categories: Assyrian annals, Aramaean texts, and the Hebrew Bible....

 to the north-east: "And Pul

Tiglath-Pileser III

Tiglath-Pileser III was a prominent king of Assyria in the eighth century BC and is widely regarded as the founder of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Tiglath-Pileser III seized the Assyrian throne during a civil war and killed the royal family...

, king of the Assyrians, came into the land". The Assyrians may have been invited into Israel by the Assyrian party. Hosea

Book of Hosea

The Book of Hosea is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible. It stands first in order among what are known as the twelve Minor Prophets.-Background and Content:...

 speaks of the two anti-Israelite parties, the Egyptian and Assyrian.

To maintain independence, Menahem was forced to pay a tribute

Tribute

A tribute is wealth, often in kind, that one party gives to another as a sign of respect or, as was often the case in historical contexts, of submission or allegiance. Various ancient states, which could be called suzerains, exacted tribute from areas they had conquered or threatened to conquer...

 of a thousand talents of silver - which is about 37 tons (about 34 metric tons) of silver. It is now generally accepted that Pul referred to in is Tiglath-Pileser III of the cuneiform inscriptions. Pul was probably his personal name and the one that first reached Israel. Tiglath-Pileser records this tribute in one of his inscriptions.

To pay the tribute, Menahem exacted fifty shekel

Shekel

Shekel , is any of several ancient units of weight or of currency. The first usage is from Mesopotamia around 3000 BC. Initially, it may have referred to a weight of barley...

s of silver - about 1 1/4 pounds or 0.6 kg - from all the mighty men of wealth of the kingdom. To collect this amount, there would have had to be at the time some 60,000 "that were mighty and rich" in the kingdom.

After receiving the tribute, Tiglath-Pileser returned to Assyria. However, from that time the kingdom of Israel was a tributary of Assyria; and when Hoshea

Hoshea

See also Hosea, who has the same name in Biblical Hebrew.Hoshea was the last king of the Israelite Kingdom of Israel and son of Elah . William F. Albright dated reign to 732 – 721 BC, while E. R. Thiele offered the dates 732 – 723 BC.Assyrian records basically confirm the Biblical...

 some ten years later refused to pay any more tribute, it started a sequence of events which led to the destruction of the kingdom and the deportation of its population.

Source