MANAHEM (HEBREW MĒNAHĒM). - Son of Gadi, sixteenth king of Israel after the separation from the Kingdom of Judah and founder of the VII dynasty, which died out with his son Pekahiah. According to the best calculations he reigned from 742 (according to others: 744) to 737 B.C. (according to II Kings 15:17, 23 he would have reigned 10 years, but there must be an alteration in the numbers). Setting out from the fortress of Tirzah, the first capital of the Kingdom of Israel, he conquered Samaria, killing there King Shallum, after the latter had taken the throne and the life of Zechariah son of Jeroboam II (v.) barely a month earlier. Having seized the kingdom, he established a regime of cruelty and terror (II Kings 15:16-22).
In particular he took barbarous vengeance on the city of Tappuah south of Shechem (the Masoretic text Tiplisah must be considered erroneous; the Lucianic recension of the Septuagint is better: Tappuah), slaughtering the inhabitants and even ripping open the pregnant women, because they had not opened their gates to him (ibid. 15:16). In religious policy he followed the reprehensible example of his predecessors. During his reign the king of the Assyrians, Pul or Tiglath-Pileser III, descended into Israel, the first time an Assyrian army penetrated the soil of Israel.
Perhaps M. himself had turned to him for help, «to give him a hand to hold the scepter in his grasp» (ibid. 15:19). But he paid dearly for his vassalage, since he had to disburse to the Assyrian king a very heavy tribute, about 3 million shekels, that is 1000 talents of silver, taxing Israel, that is the wealthy of the Kingdom, 50 shekels of silver per person. The promptness of the payment induced Tiglath-Pileser for this time to withdraw, without leaving garrisons of troops in the country. With the biblical account agrees the notice contained in the inscription of Tiglath-Pileser, where the Assyrian king boasts of having collected, around the 8th year of his reign (738 B.C.), in an expedition against the states of western Syria, a tribute in gold, silver, ivory, etc. «from Kuštāšpi of Kummuh (Commagene), from Rasūnu of Damascus (Rezin, cf. II Kings 15:37), from Menihimme (M.) of Samaria...».
M. was a contemporary of the prophet Hosea, in whose book there are allusions to the troubles of that troubled period of the Kingdom of Israel, particularly to the frequent conspiracies and usurpations of the throne (cf. Hos. 7:7; 8:4; even more Isa. 9:19-20).
Bibliography2 works
Gaetano Stano