MANAHEM (Hebr. Mēnahēm). — Son of Gadi, sixteenth king of Israel after the separation from the Kingdom of Judah and founder of the seventh dynasty, which came to an end with his son Phaceia. According to the best calculations, he reigned from 742 (according to others, 744) to 737 B.C. (according to II Reg. 15:17, 23 he would have reigned for 10 years, but there must be an alteration in the numbers). Advancing from the fortress of Thersa, the first capital of the Kingdom of Israel, he conquered Samaria and killed King Sellum there, barely a month after the latter had seized the throne and taken the life of Zaccariah, Ieroboam II (v.). Having taken possession of the kingdom, he established a regime of cruelty and terror (II Reg. 15:16-22).
In particular, he barbarously avenged himself on the city of Tappuah, south of Shechem (the Masoretic text’s Tiplisah must be regarded as erroneous; the Lucianic recension of the Septuagint, Tappuah, is preferable), slaughtering the inhabitants and even disemboweling the pregnant women because they had not opened the gates to him (ibid. 15:16). In religious policy he followed the reprehensible example of his predecessors. During his reign, the Assyrian king Phul or Theglathphalasar III came down into Israel: it was the first time that an Assyrian army had penetrated the land of Israel.
Perhaps M. himself had appealed to him for help, “so that he might give him a hand in keeping the sceptre in his grasp” (ibid. 15:19). But he paid dearly for his vassalage, since he had to hand over to the Assyrian king a very substantial tribute, approximately 3 million shekels, that is, 1,000 talents of silver, taxing Israel—that is, the wealthy men of the Kingdom—at 50 silver shekels per person. The promptness of the payment induced King Theglathphalasar, on this occasion, to withdraw without leaving garrisons in the country. The biblical account agrees with the information contained in Theglathphalasar’s inscription, in which the Assyrian king boasts that, around the eighth year of his reign (738 B.C.), during an expedition against the states of western Syria, he collected tribute in gold, silver, ivory, etc. “from Kuštāšpi of Kummuh (Commagene), from Rasūnu of Damascus (Rasin, cf. II Reg. 15:37), from Menihimme (M.) of Samaria...”.
M. was a contemporary of the prophet Hosea, whose book alludes to the disturbances of that troubled period in the Kingdom of Israel, particularly to the frequent conspiracies and usurpations of the throne (cf. Os. 7:7; 8:4; even more so Is. 9:19-20).