Report on when the Kings of ancient Israel Reigned

The kings of ancient Judah were under David’s covenant. Covenants are usually measured with their own calendar, starting at the day the covenant starts. It may be that the king’s reigns are given as covenant time, rather than calendar time. This report indicates this is quite possible with Judah’s kings but not with Israel’s. The math for Judah’s kings works out correctly to the day across more than 400 years.

Background

Each king of ancient Israel was a "bond man" bound by covenant as king. That suggests a restart in the time that each king reigns. So, for example, a 55 year reign begins a 55 year period with its own specialized calendar, the sabbath months falling for that contract at the 7, 14, ... 49, 50th years in the contract.

If it works this way the king’s reign is NOT marked from the running wall calendar. This would explain how most kings have only so many years recorded for them, but then certain kings, with precise day counts. Instead of using modern error analysis, we should just consider God meant what he said, and each king had a precise time, following his contract, except when noted.

To explore this hunch the following report shows the expected periods of reign where the time of reign is a new contract that picks up at the day after the end of the previous king’s contract. Generally speaking this will cause the overall span of time covered by these kings to come up short, as only Manasseh will reign long enough to pass a Jubilee.

The test that this is a correct rendering is that the end of the stated reigns must agree with the specific dates at the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonian army. Here we don’t have the year from any fixed point but we do have the day of the month.

We start with a rather odd condition, given in 1 Kings...

What this doesn’t say is exactly where we’re supposed to start Solomon’s reign. We’ll begin this exercise by suggesting he is crowned at the 29th day of the last month of the year 9976. 9976/12/29, with his first day of reign being the 30th day of that month. This gives him claim to the year 9977 as his first year, 78, as 2nd, 79, as 3rd and 480 FE, or 9980 AA as his 4th.

Checking the last date in the chart above, it agrees with the given date for the fall of Jerusalem.

It appears that each king did rule for a contract number of days. Any variation anywhere in the kings list would have caused this to hit some other terminal date.

By Phil Stone
Posted 12991-09-20 (2000-09-25)
Revised 12999-10-09 (2008-10-02)