AMON (Hebrew “builder”; Septuagint: 'Αμώς).—King (14th) of Judah (probably 641–39 B.C.; F. X. Kugler, A. Pohl: 639–38 B.C.). Son of Manasseh and Messalémet, he succeeded his father at the age of twenty-two.
He followed in his father’s footsteps, siding with the Assyrians and promoting idolatry: “he served all the idols that his father had served and worshipped them” (II Reg. 21:21). Indeed, he surpassed him in irreligion (II Par. 33:23), winning the sympathy of the corrupt lower classes.
His brief reign was inglorious and stained by rampant impiety. He was assassinated after two years of rule in a palace conspiracy (perhaps prompted by desires for religious reform). The “people of the land” (am hā-'āres, “the landowners”) rose up against the assassination, killed the conspirators, and proclaimed A.’s son, Giosia, king. A. was buried, like his father Manasseh, in the garden of Oza, which surrounded the villa he had outside Jerusalem. (II Reg. 21:19-26; II Par. 33:21-25).
While R. Kittel reduces it to one year (638), J. Coppens proposes, following R. Fruin, extending A.’s reign by two years, placing it between 644 (or 645) and 640 B.C. BIBL. R. Kittel, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, II, 7th ed., Stuttgart 1925, pp. 401 ff.; A. Pohl, Historia populi Israel, Rome 1933, pp. 20 ff., 149; J. Coppens, in Ephemerides theologica Lovaniense, 13 (1936), pp. 474, 480. Antonino Romeo