JETS

46/4 (December 2003) 589–603

WHEN DID SOLOMON DIE?

rodger c. young*

The work of Edwin Thiele has become the starting place for all subse-

quent studies of OT chronology that take seriously the text of the Hebrew

Scriptures as preserved in the Masoretic tradition.

It is to be lamented that

Thiele’s original working hypothesis, that the text as received was without

factual error when referring to these “mysterious numbers,” was abandoned

when he was unable to reconcile certain data related to the reign of Heze-

kiah. It was therefore left to later scholars to point out that the problems

that led Thiele to reject the authenticity of the biblical synchronisms for the

time of Hezekiah could be overcome by positing a coregency of Hezekiah and

Ahaz, under which Hezekiah’s sole reign began in 716 or 715

Any study which is faithful to the text of Kings and Chronicles must be

solidly based on an understanding of certain fundamental questions that

must be addressed. Thiele presented these questions as ﬁve variables.

They are: (1) Were the king’s years counted according to the accession sys-

tem, in which the year he came to the throne was his “accession” or zero

year, and was thus not counted in the total years for his reign, or was the

non-accession system in use, whereby that ﬁrst partial year was counted in

the sum? (2) In which month was the year considered to begin? (3) When

reference is made to the years of a king in the rival kingdom, does such a

reference reckon the time of reign according to the system of the rival king-

dom, or according to the system used in the writer’s homeland? (4) Is a core-

gency involved? (5) Did the same method of chronological procedure continue

without change during the period in question?

Thiele resolved these issues to his satisfaction as follows. (1) For the ﬁrst

few kings, Judah applied accession reckoning and Israel non-accession reck-

oning for their own kings. (2) Judah always began its regnal years in Tishri

Edwin R. Thiele,

The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings

(2d ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerd-

mans, 1965). There was an earlier edition published in 1951, and a third edition published by

Zondervan (Grand Rapids) in 1983. References to Thiele in the present article cite page numbers

in the second edition.

See, for example, K. A. Kitchen and T. C. Mitchell in

NBD

(ed. J. D. Douglas; Grand Rapids:

Eerdmans, 1962) 217; Harold Stigers, “The Interphased Chronology of Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah,

and Hoshea,”

BETS

(1966) 81–90; R. K. Harrison,

Introduction to the Old Testament

(Grand Rap-

ids: Eerdmans, 1969) 734; and Leslie McFall, “Did Thiele Overlook Hezekiah’s Coregency?”

BSac

(1989) 393–404. McFall’s article, by a careful study of the Hebrew texts related to the reigns of

Ahaz and Hezekiah, showed that all synchronisms for these two monarchs are consistent with the

ending of their coregency fourteen years before the invasion of Sennacherib in 701

Mysterious Numbers

17–22.

* Rodger Young resides at 1115 Basswood Lane, St. Louis, MO 63132.

journal of the evangelical theological society

590

(the fall), while Israel always began its regnal years in Nisan (the spring).

(3) Regarding references from one kingdom to another, Thiele wrote that

“both Judah and Israel used their own systems for the years of the neigh-

boring kings.”

Regarding item (4), a careful study of the dates given requires coregencies

for certain kings. For item (5), the scriptural data requires and even signals

that a change in reckoning methods occurred in the middle of the 9th cen-

tury

Thiele established the absolute chronology of the kings of Israel based on

synchronisms with Assyria. He then combined this data with regnal years

and synchronisms for the southern kingdom to produce the chronology of

Judah, at the same time using the Judean synchronisms and reign lengths

to reﬁne the dates for Israel. The results of this process are shown in Table

1 for the ﬁrst ten kings of Israel. The middle column shows the beginning

year of the king according to the Nisan calendar employed in Israel. The

third column shows how the dates are more exactly deﬁned from the Judean

synchronisms; in this column, a ﬁgure like 931t/930n means a time span be-

ginning on the ﬁrst of Tishri, 931, but ending before the ﬁrst of Nisan, 930.

There are two problems related to Thiele’s solution for issue number 3

(whether references to the rival kingdom used that kingdom’s counting

practices). The ﬁrst is that, in Thiele’s chronology, the two kingdoms only

partially used the system of their own kingdom when referring to the other

kingdom, because they used the starting month of the year that the other

kingdom used while rejecting the method of counting years. The other prob-

lem is that although Thiele demonstrated that his assumption works, he did

not show that no other assumption can give equally satisfactory answers.

The purpose of the present paper is to show that there is an alternate so-

lution to issue 3 which makes sense of the biblical data just as well as, or

better than, the approach used by Thiele. Before dealing with the details of

this solution, however, there are some statements that can be made about

what is affected and what is not affected by this alternate chronology.

(1) None of the accession times or reign lengths for the northern kingdom

after Jeroboam will be changed in any way. These are ﬁrmly established by

the Assyrian synchronisms, and to change them by as much as six months

in either direction would wreak havoc in the whole chronological structure.

(2) The only dates that will be affected are the starting date for Jero-

boam I and dates for the southern kingdom for the period from Solomon

through Jehoshaphat. The chronology after Jehoshaphat will not be changed,

because the alternate chronology and Thiele’s chronology give the same dates

for Jehoshaphat’s successor Jehoram, and from that time onward both king-

doms used the same system, whether accession or non-accession, so that issue

3 is no longer relevant.

The thesis to be discussed is now the following: that Solomon died in the

ﬁrst half of the year that began in Nisan, 931

, rather than in the second

Ibid. 25.

when did solomon die

591

half of the year as assumed by Thiele. A corollary of this thesis is the re-

quirement that Judah used the complete method of the other kingdom (not

just the yearly starting time) when referring to reign lengths of the kings of

Israel, in the time span from Rehoboam through Jehoshaphat.

Just when did Solomon die? Thiele established that the divided monarchy

had to begin in the time period from Nisan 1, 931

to the day before Nisan

1, 930

. We may write this in a shorthand way as 931n or, more fully,

931n/930n, with the understanding that the time span ends at the end of

the month before Nisan of the second number given. Without explaining why,

Thiele assumed that Solomon died in the latter half of year 931n,

which we

may represent as 931t/930n, the “t” representing the month of Tishri. But

there is nothing in the Scripture that would rule out his dying in the ﬁrst

half of 931n. For a natural death (that is, one not occurring in warfare),

dying in the ﬁrst six months of the year was just as likely as dying in the

latter six months.

If Solomon died in the ﬁrst six months of 931n, then according to the

Judean method of starting the year in the fall (Tishri), his last year ofﬁcial

year was 932t/931t, not the 931t/930t assumed by Thiele. This simple change

will move back one year the regnal years of all Judean kings from Solomon

through Jehoshaphat, except that Jehoshaphat’s last year remains the same.

It will be shown that this change is consistent with all the biblical data for

the period, as long as we assume (contra Thiele) that Judean scribes of this

period used Israel’s non-accession method when referring to the kings of

Israel.

Thus the present thesis is not really a contradiction of Thiele’s monu-

mental work in establishing the principles of Hebrew chronology. Instead, it

Ibid. 54.

Table 1.

Starting years for first ten kings of Israel (after Thiele)

King Starting Year

(Nisan years)

Reﬁned

Starting date

Jeroboam 1 (Thiele) 931 931t/930n

(J 1 advocated in this article) 931n/931t

Nadab 910 910t/909n

Baasha 909 909t/908n

Elah 886 886t/885n

Zimri 885 885t/884n

Tibni 885 885t/884n

Omri (rival to Tibni) 885 885t/884n

Ahab 874 874t/873n

Ahaziah 853 853n/853t

Joram 852 852n/852t

journal of the evangelical theological society

592

may be regarded as the investigation of a possibility that Thiele, by an over-

sight, failed to consider. But that brings up another question: If such a thor-

oughgoing scholar as Thiele overlooked a viable alternative scheme, could we

be doing the same? Could there be other ways to combine the basic data that

also produce chronologies consistent with the biblical and extra-biblical data?

The answer to this question is “No.” There are only two sets of assump-

tions for the time period in question that satisfy the data. These are either

the assumptions made by Thiele, or the assumptions that Solomon died in

931n/931t and Judean scribes used non-accession reckoning for Israelite

kings.

i. ruling out all combinations except two

In order to demonstrate that these two sets of assumptions, and only these

two sets, satisfy the data, we can make use of Decision Tables. For those

unfamiliar with Decision Tables, beyond what might be seen on the U.S.

federal tax form, the next section could be quite tedious. If the reader does

not care to see the demonstration that rules out the other alternatives he

can skip forward to Table 3, which shows the comparative years of Judean

kings based on the two sets of assumptions. In the table, “Rule 2” refers to

the assumption that Solomon died in the ﬁrst half of the year 931n and that

Judean scribes used non-accession years for synchronisms with Israel. “Rule

3” refers to the assumption that Solomon died in the second half of the year

and that Judean scribes used accession years for synchronisms with Israel

(Thiele’s assumption).

Decision tables are a method of considering all the parameters that affect

an outcome or series of outcomes, and of making sure that no combination

of conditions is overlooked. The top left section of a decision table lists all

the conditions that affect the results of interest. The values that these con-

ditions can assume are put in the top right section. A column number (also

called rule number) is put at the top of the columns for easy reference.

The bottom left section of a decision table lists all the results that are

affected by the conditions above them. The bottom right section has, in each

column (rule), the value that the result will have if all the conditions in the

top part of the column are satisﬁed.

When considering the chronology of Judean kings from Solomon through

Asa, we look at the synchronisms given, from a Judean standpoint, in 1 Kgs

15, verses 1, 2, and 9. The conditions that affect the results are the following:

(1) Did Judean chroniclers use Tishri or Nisan years when counting the reg-

nal year of an Israelite monarch? (2) Did Solomon die in the ﬁrst or second

half of the year 931n? (3) Do the references use accession or non-accession

years for Israelite reign lengths?

These three conditions allow for eight possible combinations among them.

Possibilities 1 through 4 have been chosen to reﬂect the hypothesis that

Judah recognized Nisan years for Israelite monarchs. The table for possi-

bilities 5 through 8 is not shown here, but if the reader constructs it he will

see that no combination of hypotheses will work when associated with the

when did solomon die

593

hypothesis that Judah applied Tishri months to Israel for the synchronisms

of 1 Kings 9.

In Table 2, Rule 3 corresponds to the conditions assumed by Thiele’s chro-

nology. To see this, start at the top of column (Rule) 3 and go down; Solomon

is here assumed to die on or after Tishri 1, 931n, and the Judean scribe is

assumed to use accession reckoning for the synchronisms of chap. 15. The

results that follow, below the thick bar, are then the dates given by these

assumptions of Thiele. The results in column (Rule) 2 are those that follow

Table 2.

Table which assumes the Judean chronicler used Nisan years in

counting regnal years of Israelite kings in 1 Kgs 15:1, 2, 9.

1234

Did Solomon die

before or after

Tishri 1, 931?

Before Before After After

Accession or non-

accession years used

for synchronisms of

1 Kgs 15:1,9?

acc. non-acc. acc. non-acc.

A. Death of Solomon

and accession of

Rehoboam and

Jeroboam

932t

(=931n/931t)

932t

(=931n/931t)

931t

(=931t/930n)

931t

(=931t/930n)

B. 17th year of

Rehoboam—

accession of Abijah

(1 Kgs 14:21)

915t 915t 914t 914t

C. 3 years later

(death of Abijah

and accession of Asa,

1 Kgs 15:2,9)

912t 912t 911t 911t

D. Accession (or 1st)

year of Jeroboam

931n 931n 931n 931n

E. “18th” year of

Jeroboam (1 Kgs 15:1)

913n 914n 913n 914n

F. “20th” year of

Jeroboam (1 Kgs 15:9)

911n 912n 911n 912n

G. Overlap between

B and E: death of

Rehoboam &

accession of Abijah

none 914n/914t 913n/913t 914t/913n

H. Overlap between

C and F: death of

Abijah and accession

of Asa

911n/911t 912t/911n 911t/910n none

journal of the evangelical theological society

594

from assuming that Solomon died before Tishri 1, 931, and that the Judean

scribes used non-accession years for Israelite monarchs.

Any hypothesis must be rejected which does not show an overlap between

the months possible for the accession of Abijah (row B) and the “eighteenth”

year of Jeroboam (row E), and another overlap between the accession of Asa

(row C) and the “twentieth” year of Jeroboam (row F). Hypotheses 1 and 4

do not fulﬁll these conditions. The only viable hypotheses remaining are 2

and 3. (The corresponding table that assumes that the Judean chronicler

used his own Tishri years in synchronisms with Israel would show that no

columns have overlap in both Rows G and H.)

Before going further, we should consider the reverse side of this, that is,

synchronisms from Israel to Judah. In this early period, did the Israelite

scribes use accession years or non-accession years when referring to a Ju-

dean king? Thiele assumed they would use their own non-accession method,

but there is no

a priori

reason for this assumption, except that it worked for

Thiele.

Let us examine the possibilities. The ﬁrst to be considered is the assump-

tion that Rule 3 holds, and that Israel is using accession years when refer-

ring to a Judean king. Then consider the reference in 1 Kgs 15:25, which

says that Nadab of Israel began his reign in the second year of Asa of Judah.

Asa began in 911t (Rule 3), and his second year would be 909t/908t under

the assumed accession reckoning. Nadab’s accession year in terms of Nisan

years is well established as 910n/909n, which is too early for the 909t/908t

timeframe under these assumptions. We therefore conclude that the combi-

nation of Rule 3 with accession years used for the synchronisms from Israel

to Judah is not possible. With Rule 3, Israel must use non-accession reckon-

ing for Judean kings in this time period, as Thiele assumed.

Can Rule 2 be used with non-accession references for the synchronisms

from Israel to Judah? To test this, consider the case of Ahaziah of Israel,

who, according to the Israelite record, began in the seventeenth of Jeho-

shaphat (1 Kgs 22:51). Under Rule 2, the end of Asa’s forty-one year reign

and the beginning of the sole reign of Jehoshaphat occurred in 912t–41 =

871t. Jehoshaphat’s seventeenth year, for an Israelite scribe using his own

non-accession reckoning, was thus 871t–16 = 855t. But there is no overlap

of this date with the known beginning for Ahaziah in 853n. For accession

reckoning, the seventeenth year is 854t and there is an overlap, namely

853n/853t. We conclude that for Rule 2, Israel must use accession reckoning

for Judean kings.

From Table 2, we thus have only two alternatives. They are (1) Rule 2 with

accession references by the Israelite scribe, and (2) Rule 3 with non-accession

references by the Israelite scribe. A little thought will show that these have

exactly the same results when it comes to examining a synchronism from

To exhaust all possibilities, the supposition that Israel used Nisan years when referring to the

kings of Judah can be examined. It would be seen that this is not possible for Rule 2 in the case

of Ahaziah, or for Rule 3 in the case of Nadab.

One [Body] Line Short

when did solomon die

595

Israel to Judah; Rule 3 has the Judean kings start one year later, but the

non-accession reference removes that year from the subtraction, so the end

result is the same as for Rule 2. This means we will not be able to make a

choice between Rules 2 and 3 based on simple synchronisms from Israel.

This is also the reason that, if Rule 2 reﬂects the true state of affairs, Thiele

would not have discovered any errors in his analysis, except the one that

will be mentioned later regarding Jehoshaphat.

Although the use of Rule 3 with accession references gives the same start-

ing dates for kings of Israel after Jeroboam as does Rule 2 with non-accession

references, the rules have this fundamental difference: under Rule 2, the

ﬁrst Judean kings began their reigns one year earlier than in Thiele’s chro-

nology (Rule 3).

In summary: Rule 2 necessarily contains the further proviso that, in the

early years of the divided monarchy, both kingdoms used the correct system

from the other kingdom in synchronisms. Rule 3 necessarily contains the pro-

viso that the two kingdoms were not entirely consistent in imposing their

methods on data from the other kingdom; they used the other kingdom’s

starting month, but not its means of counting years.

ii. refining the dates of the first kings of judah

Let us look at what Table 2 tells us about the ﬁrst few kings of Judah

and Israel, comparing the results of assuming Rule 2 with the results of as-

suming Rule 3.

Rehoboam.

Rehoboam, Rule 2

. This assumes that Rehoboam began in 931n/931t.

His first official year was thus 932t. According to 1 Kgs 14:21, he ruled sev-

enteen years, which is an accession (= acc.) figure, as are all reign-lengths

for these first Judean kings. Therefore his ending year must be 932t–17 =

915t. He died in the eighteenth year of Jeroboam, which is treated as a non-

accession number under the conditions of Rule 2, so the synchronism to Jer-

oboam’s Nisan years is 931n–17 (acc.) = 914n. Overlap of 915t/914t and

914n/913n is 914n/914t, the time of death of Rehoboam and beginning of

reign of Abijah if Rule 2 is true.

Rehoboam, Rule 3

. Starting year is 931t and seventeen years later is

914t. Jeroboam’s eighteenth year, under conditions of Rule 3, must be cal-

culated on an accession basis, so we have 931n–18 = 913n. Overlap of 914t

and 913n is 913n/913t, the date of Rehoboam’s death and Abijah’s start

according to Rule 3.

Abijah.

Abijah, Rule 2

. Start is 914n/914t (see above). 1 Kgs 15:2 gives him

three (acc.) years, so subtracting this from his first official year, 915t, gives

912t for his death. This is correlated with the twentieth year of Jeroboam

journal of the evangelical theological society

596

(1 Kgs 15:9), which must be 931n–19 (acc.) = 912n under the conditions of

Rule 2. Overlap with 912t is 912t/911n, the date of Abijah’s death and Asa’s

start under Rule 2.

Abijah, Rule 3

. He began in 913n/913t, so three years later is 914t–3

= 911t. Under conditions of Rule 3, the twentieth (acc.) year of Jeroboam is

931n–20 = 911n. The overlap of 911t and 911n is 911t/910n for Abijah’s

death and Asa’s start.

Asa.

Asa, Rule 2

. He began in 912t/911n and reigned forty-one years (1 Kgs

15:10), so his date of death is 912t–41 = 871t. This is called the fourth of

Ahab (1 Kgs 22:41), which must be 874n–3 (acc.) = 871n under the assump-

tions of Rule 2. Overlap is 871t/870n for death of Asa and beginning of (sole)

reign of Jehoshaphat.

Asa, Rule 3

. Forty-one years after 911t is 870t. Overlap with fourth

(acc.) year of Ahab, 870n, is 870t/869n for death of Asa.

Comparative results for Rules 2 and 3 are shown in Table 3. Dates for

Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, and Ahaziah in this table are calculated in the text

following the table.

iii. coregencies of jehoshaphat

We can now use dates from the northern kingdom to shed light on the co-

regencies related to the reign of Jehoshaphat. We shall follow Thiele’s method

of going forward in time to the reign of Ahaziah of Judah and working back-

ward from there.

Ahaziah of Judah and Joram of Israel were killed by Jehu at about the

same time (2 Kings 9). Jehu’s accession year, 841n, is thus the last year of

Ahaziah and the twelfth (eleventh, acc.) and last of Joram. There are two

texts in 2 Kings which give the time that Ahaziah reigned: 2 Kgs 8:25, 26

says he began in the twelfth year of Joram and reigned one year, whereas

2 Kgs 9:29 says he began to reign in the eleventh of Joram and no total of

years is given. As Thiele pointed out, the ﬁrst reference is by non-accession

reckoning and the second by accession reckoning; both of them imply that

he may have reigned for a few months but his reign did not cross a Tishri 1

boundary that would have assigned to him a year by accession counting or

two years by non-accession counting. These two verses, which would seem

to be a contradiction, are actually a red ﬂag to the chronologist, as if to say

“Warning! A change is taking place and previous assumptions may no longer

be valid.”

It is also important when considering the reign of Ahaziah to assume that

his death took place before Tishri 1, 841. This is rendered very likely because

of the record of Shalmaneser III, who in his eighteenth year (841n) received

tribute from Jehu of Israel. If Amaziah began after Tishri 1, 841, then all of

his reign and at least part of Jehu’s reign would have to occur before Jehu

when did solomon die

597

paid tribute, which would put the synchronism between Jehu and Shalma-

neser in the late fall or winter, contrary to the usual campaign season of the

Assyrians. Thiele thus assumed that Ahaziah reigned for a few months be-

tween Nisan 1, 841, and Tishri 1, 841.

Ahaziah was preceded by his father Jehoram, who is given eight years in

2 Kgs 8:17. The entire passage in chap. 8 uses non-accession years for a Ju-

dean monarch, as is evident from a consideration that if Jehoram reigned

eight years and ended in 841n/841t, his accession year would be 850t for

accession counting. This does not overlap the ﬁfth year of Joram of Israel

(2 Kgs 8:16), which would be 848n under the non-accession counting as-

sumed for Rule 2 or 847n for the accession counting assumed under Rule 3.

Therefore Judah was using the non-accession method at this point, and we

are safe in assuming that it was in effect for both kingdoms. Jehoram’s ﬁrst

year of sole reign was thus 849t (842t + 7), and this overlapped the ﬁfth

(fourth, acc.) of Joram, 848n, in 848n/848t. This is independent of whether

Rule 2 or Rule 3 is used for earlier dates. 848n/848t thus marks the death

of Jehoram’s father Jehoshaphat.

A coregency between Jehoram and Jehoshaphat is implied by 2 Kgs 1:17,

where it is said that Joram of Israel began in the second year of Jehoram of

Judah. This same year is called the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat in 2 Kgs

3:1; the eighteenth year was 853t whether measured from the death of his

father Asa in an accession sense (Rule 2) or non-accession sense (Rule 3).

853t overlaps Joram’s known beginning year, 852n, in 852n/852t. The “sec-

ond of Jehoram” (2 Kgs 1:17) is thus 852n/852t. If this number is to be

taken in an accession sense, then the coregency of Jehoshaphat and Jeho-

ram began in 855t; if a non-accession sense is assumed, it was 854t.

Table 3.

Chronology of Judean kings, Rehoboam through Ahaziah,

showing differences between Rules 2 and 3

King Rule Begin co-regency Begin sole reign End sole reign

Rehoboam Rule 2 931n/931t 914n/914t

Rule 3 931t/930n 913n/913t

Abijah Rule 2 914n/914t 912t/911n

Rule 3 913n/913t 911t/910n

Asa Rule 2 912t/911n 871t/870n

Rule 3 911t/910n 870t/869n

Jehoshaphat Rule 2 873t/872t 871t/870n 848n/848t

Rule 3 873t/872t 870t/869n 848n/848t

Jehoram Rule 2 854t/853t 848n/848t 841n/841t

Rule 3 854t/853t 848n/848t 841n/841t

Ahaziah Rule 2 841n/841t 841n/841t

Rule 3 841n/841t 841n/841t

journal of the evangelical theological society

598

Thiele assumed that the years of a coregency are measured in a non-

accession sense.

A reason for this might be that the reigning king was likely

to install his son as coregent at the beginning of a new regnal year. Since the

son shared rule for the full year, rather than the normal partial year of an

accession year, that year may have been imputed to him as his ﬁrst full year.

We shall follow this rule also; it does not affect the beginning or ending dates

of the monarch’s sole reign. The beginning of the Jehoshaphat/Jehoram co-

regency is then 854t. For Jehoshaphat’s “twenty-ﬁve” year (non-acc.) reign,

we measure from his 848n/848t ending date as given above back to the be-

ginning of his coregency with Asa in 849t + 24 (acc.) = 873t. This date is the

same under both Rule 2 and Rule 3, but under Rule 2, in which Asa began

in 912t, this would be Asa’s thirty-ninth year, whereas under Rule 3 it would

be his thirty-eighth year—a point that will be returned to shortly.

We have now ﬁlled in all the numbers for Table 3, showing comparative

dates for the kings of Judah from Rehoboam through Amaziah, and demon-

strating how the assumptions of Rules 2 and 3 affect the chronology of the

period. Whether Rule 2 or Rule 3 is chosen does not affect any dates from

the time of Jehoram and later.

iv. deciding between rules 2 and 3

Table 3 shows the differences given by following Rules 2 or 3. How are

we to decide between them? One way would be if a synchronism were found

with an Assyrian king, such as were found for the kings of Israel. There are

currently no similar exact synchronisms for these early kings of Judah, al-

though it is possible that such might come to light in the future.

There are, however, two considerations that can help in determining

which rule is the more likely. The ﬁrst consideration is a consequence of the

dates we have already established. The second consideration examines an

extra-biblical reference that offers an interesting and entirely independent

piece of evidence. The two considerations are:

(1) The beginning of the coregency of Jehoshaphat, 873t under both Rule

2 and Rule 3, argues in favor of Rule 2. Thiele cited 2 Chr 16:12 as giving

a very good reason for establishing Jehoshaphat as coregent in Asa’s thirty-

ninth year; that was the year that Asa “became diseased in his feet. His dis-

ease was severe . . .” (

nasb

Although Thiele gave this as a reason for the

coregency, under his chronology (Rule 3) the year in which the coregency be-

Mysterious Numbers

159.

If Egyptian chronology for this period were well established independently of the scriptural

tradition, and we knew from Egyptian records that the invasion of “Shishak” occurred in, say, the

spring of 925

, then by referring to 1 Kgs 14:25 we could conclude that Rehoboam’s accession

year was 931t, establishing Rule 3 as correct. However, any textbook which says that Pharaoh

Sheshonq of Egypt invaded Israel in 925

got this information from assuming that Shishak =

Sheshonq, and the year is taken from a conjectural biblical chronology, not from any independent

Egyptian chronology. Since Sheshonq is dated from the scriptural chronology, his dates cannot be

used to establish biblical dates.

Mysterious Numbers

70.

when did solomon die

599

gan, 873t, is the thirty-eighth year of Asa, not the thirty-ninth; the coregency

began before the reason for it. Under Rule 2, the coregency also begins in

873t, but that year is indeed the thirty-ninth of Asa and the reason for the

coregency and its beginning date are synchronized.

(2) Rule 2 positions Solomon’s ﬁrst year as 972t, or 971t if his forty-year

reign is to be taken in a non-accession sense, as for other coregencies. His

fourth year, in which the construction of the Temple began (1 Kgs 6:1) was

968t, whether accession years (start in 972t and subtract 4) or non-accession

years (start in 971t and subtract 3) are used for Solomon. Construction began

in the second month of the year (months are always counted from Nisan),

that is, the spring of 967

for Rule 2. Under Rule 3, this would be one year

later, the spring of 966

. The next section will show why 967

for the

start of the Temple is in exact agreement with an extra-biblical chronologi-

cal reference that so far has not entered into most discussions of the chro-

nology of the kings of Israel.

v. jubilees, the exodus, and the conquest

The chronologist, muddling his or her way through the seemingly discor-

dant ﬁgures of Kings and Chronicles, must often wonder if there was not a

better way to keep track of dates—even given the obvious fact that “

” and

“

” had not yet been invented. Many have probably noted that there indeed

was a much better way to measure time given in the Bible itself—in the Pen-

tateuch. That was the institution of sabbath years and Jubilees.

According to the system of sabbath years, every seventh year was to be

marked by leaving the ground fallow for that year. The seven-year cycle was

short enough that there was no possibility of any confusion as to when the

next sabbath year was to begin, and the events that were supposed to occur

had such an impact on the life of the nation that the effect of these years

could not be overlooked, even if observed in a half-hearted way. In addition

to this seven-year cycle, there was a longer cycle called the Jubilee, described

in Leviticus 25 and 27. For the Jubilee, there was even a more marked effect

on the daily lives of the people; they were to leave the ground fallow for two

years, and property that had been sold was to return to the ownership of

the family that sold it. The value for which property could be sold was to be

measured, at any time, according to the years remaining to the Jubilee.

Apparently Thiele later realized that the disparity he had glossed over in his second edition

needed ﬁxing. In the third edition, he moved the reign of Jehoshaphat, and with it those of Jeho-

ram and Ahaziah, down one year, so that he was able to claim that the coregency of Jehoshaphat

began in the same year that Asa’s disease started. By doing so, however, he ran into an immov-

able rock, namely the ﬁrst year of Athaliah, which is dated by its synchronism with the ﬁrst year

of Jehu to 842t. Compare the chart on page 101 of the third edition, which shows Ahaziah begin-

ning in 841t, with the statement on page 104 which places the beginning of Athaliah’s reign in

842t. Since Athaliah seized the throne after the death of her husband Ahaziah, these dates can-

not agree. Thiele must have been aware that things were not right, because the tables of starting

years at the beginning of the third edition are consistent with those of the second edition for these

monarchs. The proper solution to the problem is to move the starting year of Jehoshaphat’s sole

reign back one year, and with it the reigns of all the kings of Judah who preceded him.

journal of the evangelical theological society

600

Whatever the effect this must have had on the people, for the chronolo-

gist it is a system marvelously suited to keeping track of the years over a

long period of time. Alas, that the people of Israel through their recorded

history seemed to disobey the commands of the Lord to observe the sabbath

years and the Jubilee cycle! How convenient it would be to have an occa-

sional reference like this: “In year x of king Jehoshaphat, the Jubilee was

observed,” then about ﬁfty years later “In year y of Joash the land was left

fallow for two years because of the Jubilee.” With these kind of checkpoints

along the way, Hebrew chronology could have been put on a sound basis

centuries, if not millennia, before the present time.

As it is, there seems to be only one reference to the observance of a sab-

bath year in the scriptural record. That is in Isa 37:30 and its parallel pas-

sage in 2 Kings, where the prophet says during the invasion of Sennacherib,

“You shall eat this year what grows of itself, in the second year what springs

from the same, and in the third year sow, reap, plant vineyards, and eat

their fruit” (

nasb

). The crop of the current year apparently had been ruined

by the besieging Assyrians; in spite of that the people were to observe a sab-

bath for the land in the fall of the next year.

There is evidence, nevertheless, that the people of Israel, or at least their

priests, were aware of when the Jubilee should be observed, however lax

the nation may have been in obeying its provisions. The Talmud records the

occasion of two Jubilees: one in the eighteenth year of Josiah (

b. Meg.

14b)

and one which was announced on the Day of Atonement speciﬁed in Ezek

40:1 (

b. Arak

. 12a). The Jubilee associated with Ezek 40:1 is speciﬁcally

called the seventeenth and last by the Talmud, which makes the one in the

days of Josiah the sixteenth. The seventeenth Jubilee could not be observed

because the people were in captivity.

An important reason for believing that the Talmud account is authentic

is the following: it is exactly forty-nine years from the eighteenth of Josiah

to the Day of Atonement fourteen years after the city was conquered (Ezek

40:1), on which the seventeenth Jubilee was announced. Josiah began in

641t, so his eighteenth year was 623t. The Jubilee would have been an-

nounced on the Day of Atonement in Tishri, 623.

Jerusalem fell on the

The actual year involved is problematic. A cursory reading of the relevant passages in 2 Kings,

Isaiah, and Chronicles would give the impression that there was only one invasion of Sennacherib

that is described, in which Hezekiah ﬁrst bought off the Assyrian monarch with a heavy tribute

of gold and silver (2 Kgs 18:14–16), but then the Assyrian king immediately besieged Jerusalem

anyway (2 Kgs 18:17–19:36). The tribute of gold and silver is supported by the annals of Sennach-

erib for the year 701

. Many biblical scholars, however, believe that the siege of Jerusalem

came a few years later than the tribute. They would date it some time between the beginning

year of Pharaoh Tirhaka (2 Kgs 19:9), who began to reign in 690 or 689

, but before the death

of Sennacherib in 681

. See an excellent summary of the arguments for a second Assyrian in-

vasion in the discussion by Harvey Finley,

Beacon Bible Commentary

(10 vols.; Kansas City: Bea-

con Hill Press, 1965) 2.478–81.

The references to the Jubilees in the Talmud were ﬁrst brought to the attention of the author

by David Rice of San Diego in an internet forum.

The 623 date for the announcement of the sixteenth Jubilee explains a reference to the “thir-

tieth year” in Ezek 1:1 that has always puzzled commentators. According to some, it referred to

when did solomon die

601

ninth day of the fourth month, 587

. By Tishri reckoning this was the

year 588t.

Fourteen years later was 574t. In Tishri of that year the Jubi-

lee was announced, according to the Talmud and its reference to Ezek 40:1.

The difference between 623t and 574t is forty-nine years, which establishes

that the ﬁftieth year, or Year of Jubilee, was counted as the ﬁrst year of the

next Jubilee cycle, thus keeping the seven-year cycle in harmony with the

Jubilees, a point that is debated interminably in the Talmud. Further sup-

port for forty-nine years rather than ﬁfty is found in the practice of the Sa-

maritans, who kept the Jubilee as a forty-nine year cycle.

The apocalyptic

Book of Jubilees

, usually dated to the Second Century

, also used a Jubi-

lee cycle of forty-nine years.

It is extremely unlikely that these pieces of information could have been

contrived to establish someone’s ideas of chronology. We thus have no rea-

son to reject these important observations from the Talmud. They can be

taken as a historical reference independent of the scriptural record, the same

as if some ancient document from the Near East mentioned a date that could

be tied independently to a biblical date. As such, the Talmud reference is of

great historical value in corroborating the chronology that was worked out

by Thiele and later scholars.

Once these dates for the sixteenth and seventeenth Jubilees are estab-

lished, they can be used to determine when the Jubilee cycles began. Since

the sixteenth cycle ended with a Jubilee that was announced in Tishri, 623,

the ﬁrst Jubilee must have been announced 15

49 = 735 years earlier, in

1358

. If Tishri of 1358

was in the forty-ninth year of the ﬁrst cycle,

then the ﬁrst year, forty-eight years earlier, was 1406

According to Lev 25:2, 8–10, counting of the sabbath and Jubilee cycles

was to start when Israel entered the Promised Land. Since the ﬁrst year of the

Jubilee cycle was observed in 1406, the beginning of the Conquest occurred

in Nisan of that year (Josh 4:19). The exodus, forty years earlier, occurred in

1446

In 1 Kgs 6:1, it is said that the foundation of the Temple was laid in the

fourth year of Solomon, in the second month of the year (the month after

Nisan). As was shown above, this was the spring of 967

for Rule 2, or the

That Ezekiel used Tishri years is shown by comparing Ezek 33:21 with 2 Kgs 25:2, 3. That the

city fell in 587

, not a year later as is often assumed, can be seen by comparing the accession

ﬁgure of the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar in Jeremiah 52:29 with the non-accession nine-

teenth year in 2 Kgs 25:8. Both of these calculate as 587n, so the fourth month was in the summer

of 587

A. Neubauer,

Chronique Samairitaine

(1873) 3, 8 ff., cited in

Encyclopedia Judaica

(Jerusa-

lem: Keter, 1972) 14.579.

the thirtieth year of the prophet’s life, but this is not the usual way to express such an idea. Vari-

ous rabbis had speculated that it was the thirtieth year of a Jubilee cycle, while Jerome and the

Targum of Jonathan

interpreted it as the thirtieth year from the reforms of Josiah that re-insti-

tuted the Passover (Harrison,

Introduction

837). By establishing this date as the fourth month of

594t (the ﬁfth of the exile of Jehoiachin as measured from the start of exile in 598t, Ezek 1:1, 2),

it is shown that both these last two opinions were correct; it was the thirtieth year measured from

either the announcement of the Jubilee in 623t or from the reforms of Josiah in that same year.

journal of the evangelical theological society

602

spring of 966

for Rule 3. The Kings passage also says that it was the

480th year of the departure from Egypt, a phrase that has long been recog-

nized (often in an attempt to discredit it) as establishing the biblical date of

the exodus. Since this is an important phrase, it bears careful exegesis.

Literally, the verse says, “In the 480th year ‘of the going-out’ (

taxEl}

) of the

descendants of Israel from the land of Egypt . . .” The phrase

taxEl}

refers, in

the language we have become familiar with, to non-accession reckoning. It

is similar, in English, to speaking of our ﬁrst year of college, meaning the

time before we had been there one full year. To show that it is to be taken

in a non-accession sense, consider ﬁrst Exod 16:1, which says that the people

came to the wilderness of Sin “on the ﬁfteenth day of the second month ‘of

their going-out’ (

µt:axEl}

) from the land of Egypt.” Most commentators would

agree that only one month had passed, not two. More conclusive is the repe-

tition of the same phrase in Num 33:38, regarding the death of Aaron. Aaron

died “in the fortieth year ‘of the going-out’ (

taxEl}

) of the descendants of Israel

from the land of Egypt, on the ﬁrst day of the ﬁfth month.” The forty years

in the wilderness had not yet expired, as is evident from Josh 5:6. If the date

of the exodus were to be calculated from the date that Aaron died, in the

“fortieth year of the going-out,” we would have to subtract thirty-nine years,

not forty, to get the correct date for the departure from Egypt.

The proper way to derive the date of the exodus from 1 Kgs 6:1 is there-

fore to add 479 years, not 480, to the year in which the foundation of the

Temple was laid. For Rule 2, this gives 967 + 479 = 1446

, with the be-

ginning of the Conquest in Nisan, 1406. Rule 3, starting from 966

, gives

1445

and 1405

for these two dates. The Jubilee cycles afﬁrm the ear-

lier of these two sets of dates: 1446 for the exodus, 1406 for the Conquest,

and the beginning of the Temple in 967

. They also help us to answer the

question, “When did Solomon die?” by saying that these ﬁgures support a

date between Nisan 1 and Tishri 1 of 931, rather than between Tishri 1 of

931 and Nisan 1 of 930, as assumed by Thiele.

The correspondence between the date for the exodus, as derived from the

Jubilee cycles, and the date as derived from the text of 1 Kgs 6:1, is so re-

markable that it can hardly be assigned to coincidence. If the date for lay-

ing the foundation of the Temple is not exactly right, and if the 480 years of

1 Kgs 6:1 is also not exactly right, then it is extremely unlikely that these

two ﬁgures would produce precisely the same date for the beginning of the

exodus as calculated from the Jubilee cycles. Conversely, if the years remem-

bered in the Talmud for the last two observances of the Jubilee were not ex-

actly right, it would be extremely unlikely that these years would somehow

mysteriously match the dates for the exodus as derived from 1 and 2 Kings.

It is unfortunate that most English translations use the word “after” in 1 Kgs 6:1, which sug-

gests that a full 480 years had elapsed since the exodus. The Hebrew preposition used,

, does not

bear the meaning “after,” but is better translated “of,” which yields the literal translation “In the

480th year of the departure . . .” This is consistent with phrases such as, “In the twenty-ﬁfth year

of our exile” (Ezek 40:1), but it is somewhat ambiguous in English. A translation which resolves

the ambiguity and brings out the proper sense of the verse is, “In the 480th year, as measured

from the departure of the people of Israel from the land of Egypt, . . .”

when did solomon die

603

Neither can the correspondence of these two witnesses to the dates of the

exodus and Conquest be assigned to the conniving of a Talmudic redactor

who was trying to doctor the data so that, hundreds of years later when the

principles of OT chronology were ﬁnally understood, everything would come

out right. Even the forty-nine year difference between the sixteenth and

seventeenth Jubilees bears testimony to the authenticity of the Talmudic tra-

dition, because the lack of understanding of how to interpret the dates of

the kings weighs against this being contrived.

The ‘coincidence,’ then, is due to the fact that both traditions are authen-

tic. In the case of the Scriptures, this means that 1 Kgs 6:1 is not the cor-

rupt and mistaken guess of a later tradition which had forgotten the true

time spans involved.

A date for the exodus in the mid-ﬁfteenth century

has been much ma-

ligned because of favorite theories that identiﬁed various pharaohs of a later

date with the pharaohs of the oppression and exodus. There has always been

difﬁculty with such theories, and some scholars, ﬁnding little evidence to sub-

stantiate the biblical exodus in the annals of whichever thirteenth-century

pharaoh is currently favored, end up casting doubts that the exodus ever

occurred. It is hoped that the present study has strengthened the case for

the accuracy of the chronological numbers as preserved in the Masoretic text,

and at the same time has helped to discredit theories which put the exodus

anywhere but in the middle of the ﬁfteenth century

Jubilees were possibly the means, from a practical human standpoint, why the number of

years was remembered exactly from the time of the exodus to the days of Solomon. This “natural

explanation” of the reason for the Bible’s accuracy in this matter is not meant to detract from the

wisdom of God in instituting the Jubilees in the ﬁrst place, thereby providing one method for pre-

serving accurate chronological data for his inerrant word.