PFIACEE (Hebrew *Pégaï*). — King of Israel (736–732 BC), the 18th after the division of the kingdom, insistently called “son of Remaliah” (2 Kings 15:27; 30; 18:7, 4, 5, 9; 8:6), an obscure and perhaps despicable figure. As commander of the royal army, on 18:7, 4, 5, 9; 8:6, with the figure of Pecaiah (v.), he formed a conspiracy against him, murdered him, and usurped the throne (2 Kings 15:27–31), which he held for three or four years (not twenty, as a scribal error reads in the biblical text).
The conspiracy appears to have been provoked by popular resentment at the heavy tribute that Israel, since the days of King Menahem (v.), had been forced to pay to the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III (v.). This explains the new king’s hostile stance toward Assyria. To this end he formed an anti-Assyrian league with Rezin II, king of Damascus, who was also a tributary of Tiglath-pileser, and sought to draw into it Ahaz, king of Judah (v.). When Ahaz refused, Pecaiah and Rezin marched, most likely, along the Yabbok River. His name is explained by the patriarch himself: “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved” (Gen 32:31). In a later period the existence of a fortified city in that region is recorded. Why its
To this episode is linked the intervention of the prophet Isaiah on behalf of the threatened house of Judah, ALZON, EMMANUEL D' (v.) and the prediction of the imminent ruin of the kingdom of Samaria (Isa 7:1–16). ACAZ (v.) turned for help to the Assyrian monarch, who promptly marched to punish Pecaiah and Rezin and to reduce them, with their other allies, to permanent subjection. As Theglathphalasar approached (c. 732), Pecaiah and Rezin raised the siege of Jerusalem and hastened to defend their own lands. With the fall of Damascus, the keystone of the league, the Assyrian army burst into the kingdom of Israel, which offered no serious resistance. All Galilee and Transjordan were lost, and the tribe of Naphtali and the Transjordanian tribes were deported to Assyria (1 Chron 5:26); only the mountainous territory around Samaria remained to Israel.
King Pecaiah did not long survive the disaster: an internal revolt broke out, and he was slain by Hoshea (v.), who took the crown (2 Kings 15:30). The Assyrian king may well have had a hand in the conspiracy, for in his annals he reports the event, doubtless exaggerating but in accord with the biblical account: “The house of Omri (thus the Assyrian documents call the kingdom of Israel even after the dynasty of Omri had disappeared: V. AMORI), all its people together with its possessions, deported to Assyria. When they slew Paqaha (Pecaiah) their king, I placed Ausi (Hoshea) over them” (cf. H. Grossmann, *Altorient. Texte*, Berlin 1926, pp. 346–48).