Working Theory

Yesterday I reasoned out a theory to something that has been bugging me for the past few weeks: when during the reign of King Hezekiah was Manasseh declared heir apparent? Hezekiah was 25 years old when he was crowned and, according to my calculations, there was very little coregency between him and his father, King Ahaz. So Hezekiah served solo for the first few years of his reign.

Conventional thinking has Hezekiah becoming king after the fall of Samaria (supposedly fell in 722 BC), but that doesn't jive with the Biblical narrative. Given that, its difficult to trust the conventional data for the split of Israel (931 BC). So we must start at the end and work backwards. Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar the second time in 586 BC. Working backwards we know that Manasseh was crowned as heir in 696 BC. But Manasseh was crowned when he was 12 years old. Because of his youth (and the fact that his father was king for 29 years) I am assuming that there was a period where both were king at the same time. In the rest of the Bible, you can cross check the reign of a Judah king vs the reign of an Israel king and vice versa. This keeps one honest in figuring out where each king reigned. Manasseh doesn't have that check so we have a floating point in the timeline.

My theory goes like this. In the 14th year of Hezekiah, he became very ill. The prophet Isaiah himself came to see the king and told him to put his house in order because he was going to die. Hezekiah prayed and God elected to heal him and let him reign for another 15 years because of how faithful Hezekiah had been. But Hezekiah was skeptical and asked for sign. God gave him one and Hezekiah recovered (see 2Kings 20:1-11). It is my working theory that when Hezekiah was told to put his house in order, the first thing he did was declare his heir to the throne, Manasseh. As such, Manasseh would have been crowned an anointed, even though he was only 12. But Hezekiah recovered and reigned for another 15 years, overlapping his son's reign of 55 years. Using this date, we push back the beginning of Hezekiah's reign to 710 BC and the fall of Samaria to 704 BC.

Now, I have to work out the details of how this cracks the reigns of Sargon, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon of Assyria, but I'm working on that. Mostly through the theory that Sargon and Sennacherib were the same person, but that's the subject of another post.