Editing Pekah (section)

=== Pekah as commander under Pekahiah ===
A major objection to the idea that Pekah headed a kingdom that was rival to Menahem's reign in Samaria is that he is listed as a commander (''shalish'') of Pekahaiah, Menahem's son, whom he slew (2 Kings 15:25). Young remarks,
<blockquote>The objections to Pekah being a rival to Menahem usually center on Pekah’s position as an officer in the army of Pekahiah, Menahem’s son and successor (2 Kgs 15:25). But there is nothing inherently unreasonable about two rivals reaching a détente under which one contender accepts a subordinate position, and he then bides his time until the opportunity comes to slay his rival (or his rival’s son) in a coup. Once the rivalry had begun, the external threat (Assyria) provided compelling reasons for a détente.<ref name=Young>[http://home.swbell.net/rcyoung8/samaria.pdf Young, "When Was Samaria Captured?" 582, n. 11]{{Dead link|date=May 2020 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref></blockquote>

Any rivalry between Menahem and Pekah could only appear more and more foolish in light of the growing menace of Assyria. In 733, Tiglath-Pileser campaigned against Damascus, the capital of the Arameans, Pekah's erstwhile ally, and he returned to destroy the city in 732. Pekah must have seen the handwriting on the wall in 733 or earlier, and any feeling for ''Realpolitik'' would dictate that it was time for the two rivals to put aside their differences under some sort of accommodation. But ''Realpolitik'' would also suggest that this accommodation should not include giving your potential rival a position of leadership in the army, which Pekahiah learned too late.

This is based on inference from the political situation of the time. Gleason Archer showed how inference is used to reconstruct a rivalry in the neighboring kingdom of Egypt that has striking parallels to the Pekah/Menahem rivalry.<ref>Gleason Archer in Normal L. Geisler, ed., ''Inerrancy'' (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1979) 71.</ref> When [[Thutmose II]] died, the intended heir was his son [[Thutmose III]], who was still a boy. However, some time not long after the death of her husband (Thutmose II), [[Hatshepsut]] assumed the royal regalia and the title of pharaoh, reigning for 21 years. As he grew older, Thutmose III was given the position of commander of the army, similar to Pekah's position as commander, but still under his aunt and stepmother Hatshepsut. After Hatshepsut died, Thutmose, in an inscription describing his first campaign, said it was in his 22nd year of reign, thereby counting his regnal years from the time his father died, not from the death of Hatshepsut. Thutmose left no explanation for modern historians that his 22nd year was really the first year of sole reign, any more than Pekah or the historian of 2 Kings left an explanation that Pekah's 12th year, the year in which he slew Pekahiah, was really his first year of sole reign. Modern historians rely on a comparison of inscriptions and chronological considerations to reconstruct the chronology of Thutmose III, and there is unanimity among Egyptologists that he counted as his own years the 21 years that Hatshepsut was on the throne, even though no inscription has ever been found explicitly stating this fact. Commenting on the fact that Egyptologists have no problem in reconstructing history using inference of this sort, whereas critics will sometimes not allow the same historical method to be applied to the Bible, Young writes, "Do those who reject the Menahem/Pekah rivalry as improbable also reject as improbable this reconstruction from Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty that Egyptologists use to explain the regnal dates of Thutmose III? How do they explain Hosea 5:5?"<ref name=Young/>