Chronology of Israel / Judah’s Monarchy
Includes Prophets and Foreign Kings

Table of Contents

• General Info
• Timeline
• Challenges of Dating the Reigns of Kings

General Info

The period of Israel’s monarchy began when Samuel, the last judge, anointed Saul as the first king about 1050 BC.  The nation split into the northern (Israel) and southern (Judah) kingdoms in 931 BC.  The northern kingdom was conquered and deported by Assyria in 722 BC, and Judah later fell to the Babylonians, with the final of three exiles coming in 586 BC.

Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon in 539 BC and issued a decree allowing the first of the Jews to return to Jerusalem the following year under Zerubbabel.  Many events from Israel’s post-exilic period are recorded in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther.

Our chronology chart below covers the period from the beginning of the monarchy (~1050 BC) to the approximate end of OT times (~400 BC).  See Timelines of the OT History Books for events corresponding with the chart below.

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Timeline

All Dates are BC.  A tilde symbol ( ~ ) indicates an approximate date.   A date with a forward slash ( / ) indicates a co-regency (see the next chapter below).  For example, “820/810-795” indicates that the king began his co-regency (or co-reign, usually with his father) in 820 BC, then ruled from in 810 until 795 BC.

Color Codes:

King of Israel or Judah
Prophet
Foreign King

(1)  After Saul’s death, David became king over Judah and Saul’s son Ish-Bosheth proclaimed himself king over the northern tribes (~1011 BC - 2Sam 1-4).  After he was killed, David became king over United Israel (~1004 BC - 2Sam 5).

(2)  After Solomon’s reign. the kingdom of Israel split into two nations, the northern tribes (Israel) and the southern tribes (Judah).

(3)  Most likely date, but Joel’s prophecy has been dated anywhere from the ninth to the fifth century BC.

(4)  Some date Obadiah’s ministry ~850~840 BC.

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Challenges of Dating the Reigns of Kings

There are several challenges associated with dating the reigns of Israel’s kings.  Factors that must be taken into consideration in assembling chronological data of the period include the Hebrew calendar year, accession vs non-accession year dating, and co-regencies.  Yet, as we will discover (and would expect), the events in the Bible’s historical books covering the era of the monarchy (Samuel, the Kings, and the Chronicles) are consistent with the external history records.

Hebrew Calendar Year

The annual calendars of ancient Egypt, Israel, Assyria, and Babylon do not correlate with our modern calendar.  Some were solar-based, while others were founded on a lunar cycle.  In addition, Israel’s united monarchy and Judah’s kings used a royal or civil-year dating method beginning with the month of Tishri (around September or October on our modern Gregorian calendar), but the northern kingdom of Israel, along with Babylon, used a dating method beginning with the first calendar month of Nisan (Gregorian March or April).  See our articles on Calendar Systems for more information on ancient and modern calendars.

Regnal-Year Dating - Accession and Non-Accession Years

During this time period, events were not fixed to a set calendar date, but with reference to the reign of a particular king.  The number of years of a king’s reign is given in “regnal-years”, that is years beginning from the date or anniversary of a ruler’s coronation (the word “regnal” comes from the Latin regnum, meaning rule, authority, kingdom or realm).  In addition, there there were no partial regnal years, only whole years that coincided with whichever calendar was in effect.  So, if the throne changed rulers during the year, that year would only count toward the reign of one king or the other but not both.  To complicate matters further, there were two different methods in counting the year in which a new ruler took over.  The first, known as the “accession system” (aka post dating) credited the entire transition year to the departing king.  Thus, the new king’s first regnal year begins on the first day of the following calendar year.  By contrast, the “non-accession system” (aka ante-dating) credited the transition year to the incoming king.

By comparing Biblical, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Israeli records, it has been determined that Assyria, Babylon and Judah used the accession year system for counting the reigns of their kings, while Egypt and Israel typically used the non-accession year method.  Thus, when determining  a year for an event based on the harmonization of Jewish records versus other nations, differences between both the regnal-year counting method and the appropriate calendar systems must be taken into account.

Co-regencies

Finally, we must account for the co-regency system, in which a son would officially begin his reign while his father was still living.  This system was particularly popular in the southern kingdom of Judah, probably to allow the son to gain experience to ensure a more orderly transfer of power.

Some chronological lists count the son’s years from the time he began his co-regency, while others begin from the time of his sole reign.  We have attempted to provide both dates in our chart above.

Conclusion

At first glance, it might appear that these dating complexities might be very difficult to resolve.  Yet, we can gladly acknowledge that scholars have essentially overcome these obstacles, so that we can be confident of the dependability of the biblical dating, usually within an accuracy of a few months.

This task is greatly aided by many archaeological findings, including several key Assyrian documents.  One in particular, the Assyrian Eponym Canon, not only contains the names of the Assyrian kings from 910-612 BC, but also records key events including battles, weather (droughts and floods) and cosmological incidents that occurred during each year.  Extremely significant was the inclusion of eclipses, whose predictable patterns allowed scholars to connect events to our modern calendar system.

Numerous other Assyrian documents mention events that occurred in Israel and Judah.  For example, 2Kings 18:13 reads “In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.”  The Sennacherib Relief found at Nineveh goes into great detail concerning the Assyrian attack on the city of Lachish.  King Sennacherib built a siege ramp at the southwestern corner of the city and employed archers, infantry, and machines to overcome its defenses.  The Judeans responded by erecting a counter-siege ramp, but could not prevent Sennacherib’s victory.  Both actual ramps have now been uncovered by archeologists.  In addition (and of particular value to establishing the date), a six-sided prism dating to 689 BC has been found that contains the annals of the Assyrian King Sennacherib (704–681 BC) .  The prism describes eight military campaigns, including information on Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem that allows us to date the siege in 701 BC.  Thus we can date the fourteenth year of Judah’s King Hezekiah’s reign to the same year.

We can also determine the dates of the Israeli kings Ahab and Jehu from the annals of Assyrian King Shalmaneser III (859–824 BC).  Shalmaneser III erected a large stone monument now known as the Black Obelisk that contains a sculpture depicting King Jehu of Israel paying tribute to the Assyrian King.  Since we now have fixed dates for both Israeli and Judean kings, we can determine the dates of other Jewish kings simply by counting forward and backward using the Biblical text while taking the appropriate preceding factors into account.  We also have the relative regnal-year data throughout the history books of the Bible that cross-references between the Judean and Israeli kings to verify our dates.

Due to the abundance of the aforementioned and other available historical documentation, the relative (regnal year) dates in the biblical text can be accurately converted into fixed dates on our modern calendar system.  Furthermore, the incredible harmony between the records of these various nations adds to our confidence in the reliability of the sources.

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