Now we can return to our main inquiry. We have found that the chronology in the books of the Kings is entirely consistent and correctly spans the period between the accession of Jehu and the fall of Samaria, with a reasonable fit for the year of the separation of the two kingdoms. But we want to resolve the problem of the reign of Hezekiah, whether the books of the Kings are right, or whether modern scholars are right in denying the accuracy of the books of the Kings.

There is a tradition that Jeremiah was the author of the books of the Kings. Even if he wasn't, the author was more than two thousand five hundred years closer to those events than we are, and in fact probably lived less than a century after the fall of Samaria. Even if Baruch his scribe was the actual compiler of those books, he too lived in that recent memory of those events and those kings. Thus we should be careful before we assume that the author of the books of the Kings made errors.

Almost all authorities insist on placing the reign of Hezekiah starting in the 715th or 714th year before the common era, which is 7 years AFTER the fall of Israel. But the second book of the Kings asserts positively that Hezekiah was king of Judah at the time of the fall of Israel: he began to reign in the 3rd year of Hoshea, who was the last king of Israel and reigned 9 years, Shalmaneser besieged Samaria in the 7th year of the reign of Hoshea, which was the 4th year of the reign of Hezekiah, and Samaria was taken in the 9th and last year of the reign of Hoshea of Israel, which was the 6th year of the reign of Hezekiah. These overlaps were also accepted by the author of the 2nd book of the Chronicles two centuries later.

The belief that Hezekiah became king in the year 714 BCE is based on the 13th verse in the second book of the Kings, chapter 18, which reads:

Now Sennacherib is known from Assyrian records to have besieged Jerusalem in the year 701 BCE, and if this was the 14th year of Hezekiah's reign, then indeed he began to reign in the year 714 BCE, 14 years earlier. But this is 8 years AFTER the capture of Samaria by Sargon II. Now did the author of the second book of the Kings make an error when he (or she) tells us that Hezekiah began to reign in the 3rd year of Hoshea, 6 years BEFORE the fall of Samaria, or did the author perhaps make a mistake in telling us that the year that Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem was the FOURTEENTH year of Hezekiah's reign?

All scholars seem to have concluded that II Kings 18:13 refers to the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib in 701 BCE, and that therefore II Kings 18:1,9,10 are mistaken in telling us that Hezekiah began to reign in the 3rd year of Hoshea, and that the siege of Samaria began in the 4th year of Hezekiah, and that it ended in the 6th year of Hezekiah. Thus immediately the acceptance of II Kings 18:13 means the assumption that three other verses of chapter 18 are wildly incorrect.

But it seems unbelievable that the author of the books of the Kings made a mistake about who was the king of Judah in the year of the carrying away of the tribes of Israel into captivity! Such an error would be like our making a mistake about who was prime minister of Great Britain during World War II! This belief requires us to assume that the author of the books of the Kings made at least FIVE errors: telling us that Hezekiah began to reign in the 3rd year of Hoshea when he did not, telling us that Shalmaneser besieged Samaria in the 4th year of Hezekiah when it was a decade before that, telling us that Samaria was taken in the 6th year of Hezekiah when it wasn't, telling us that Ahaz died in the 3rd year of Hoshea which was BEFORE the fall of Israel if his son Hezekiah became king in the 7th year AFTER the fall of Israel, and telling us that Hoshea became king in the 12th year of Ahaz and that Hezekiah became king in the 16th year of Ahaz if the fall of Israel was between those two dates!

Furthermore, it means that the book of the Kings made errors in telling us the reigns of Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Josiah. To see this, we can compute that if Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Josiah reigned 29, 55, and 31 years respectively, then there were 115 years between the accession of Hezekiah and the death of Josiah, and if we add Amon's reign then there were 117 years. But Josiah was killed when Necho marched from Egypt upon Assyria, which is known from Egyptian and Assyrian records to have been in the 608th year BCE, so that, if we add the 117 years to the year 608 BCE, the accession of Hezekiah would have been in the 725th year BCE, which is 10 years before the year 715 BCE. So if it is assumed that Hezekiah did not become king until 715 BCE, then either Josiah did not reign 31 years, or Manasseh did not reign 55 years, or Hezekiah did not reign for 29 years, or every one of these could be an error.

And it seems incredible that the Jewish priests could have made such errors, both in the number of years during which a king reigned, and in the corresponding year of the ruler of the other kingdom, when they were capable of such great astronomical precision in their calendar, computing each month of each year, year after year, in a 19 1/2 year cycle, with months alternating regularly with 29 or 30 days so that each month began at a new moon and the 14th of each month was a full moon, and an extra month intercalated every two or three years to keep the lunar months aligned with the solar year! Surely they knew who was king of Judah when Israel was carried away, and how many years it had been since he became king! as well as how many years all the other kings had reigned!

The only resolution of this problem is to assume that Hezekiah really did begin to reign 6 years before the fall of Samaria, and that the reigns of his son and grandson and great-grandson are given as the correct number of years. After all, this was the century during which Jeremiah himself lived! Then we find that the only discrepancy is over whether the year in which Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem was the 14th year of Hezekiah's reign, or whether Jeremiah meant that something else happened the 14th year after Hezekiah's accession, which is now lost from the second book of the Kings.

There is another apparent discrepancy between the books of the Kings and Assyrian and Babylonian records, in chapter 17 of II Kings where it says that "Pul" of Assyria came into Israel during Menahem's reign. Since this name is found in the Babylonian lists to apply to Tiglath-Pileser III, who reigned later than the years computed for Menahem in the chronology of the books of the Kings, scholars have assumed that Menahem ruled later and therefore Pekah's reign was shorter than reported in II Kings. I shall consider this problem in a later section.

I   intend to propose an answer to what it was that has been lost from the second book of the Kings. Before doing that, however, I wish to demonstrate further that the scholarly methods of computing the years of the kings are erroneous, and that the principles used by the Hebrew historians were consistent and correct.