PHACEE (Heb. Pēqāh). - King of Israel (736-732 B.C.), 18th after the division of the Kingdom, insistently called "son of Remaliah" (II Kings 15:27, 30; Isa. 7:4, 5, 9; 8:6), a figure otherwise unknown and perhaps contemptible. Commander of the armed forces of King Phaceia (v.), he plotted a conspiracy against him and did away with him, usurping his throne (II Kings 15:27-31), which he held for 3 or 4 years (certainly not 20 years, as is read in the biblical text through a copyist's error).
The conspiracy originated, it seems, from popular discontent over the heavy tribute that Israel was forced to pay, from the years of King Menahem (v.), to the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III (v.). This explains the hostile stance that the new King adopted toward the Assyrian power. To this end he promoted, together with Rezin II king of Damascus, already a tributary of Tiglath-Pileser, an anti-Assyrian league, to which he sought to attract the king of Judah, Jotham (v.), as well. But when the latter refused, P. and Rezin made war on him, with the further intention of dividing the Kingdom of Judah between them (the Syro-Ephraimite war).
Hostilities flared up even more when Jotham was succeeded by his son Ahaz, who, defeated in the field, withdrew into fortified Jerusalem, and was there besieged.
To this episode is linked the intervention of the prophet Isaiah on behalf of the threatened house of Judah, with the famous prophecy of Emmanuel (v.) and the prediction of the imminent ruin of the Kingdom of Samaria (Isa. 7:1-16). Ahaz (v.) turned for help to the Assyrian monarch, who immediately set out to punish P. and Rezin and to bring them, along with their other allies, back into definitive subjection. As Tiglath-Pileser approached (ca. 732), P. and Rezin lifted the siege of Jerusalem and hastened to defend their own lands. Once Damascus, the linchpin of the league, had fallen, the Assyrian army burst into the Kingdom of Israel, which offered no serious resistance. The whole of Galilee and Transjordan were lost, and the tribe of Naphtali and the Transjordanian tribes were deported to Assyria (I Chron. 5:26); all that was left to Israel was the mountainous territory around Samaria.
King P. did not long survive the disaster: an internal revolt broke out, and he was killed by Hoshea (v.), who took the crown from him (II Kings 15:30). The Assyrian King was probably not uninvolved in the conspiracy, and he thus reports the event in his annals, undoubtedly exaggerating, yet in agreement with the biblical account: "The house of Omri (for so the Kingdom of Israel is called in the Assyrian documents even after the disappearance of the dynasty of Omri: v. AMBI), all its people together with its possessions, I deported to Assyria. When they overthrew Paqaha (Phacee) their king, I placed Ausi (Hoshea) over them as ruler" (cf. H. Gressmann, Altorient. Texte, Berlin 1926, pp. 346-48).
Bibliography4 works
Gaetano Stano