20 Biblical Kings Whose Disastrous Choices Destroyed Kingdoms

Herod the Great reigned over Judea (from 37 to 4 BCE) as a client king appointed by Rome. According to the Gospel of Matthew, when foreign astrologers on the hunt for a “newborn king” failed to report back to him, Herod had all male children aged two and younger killed in the small village of Bethlehem, where historians estimate 10 to 20 boys were affected. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus doesn’t mention it, although he does report that Herod executed his own wife and three sons.

In 1 Kings 11, Solomon, who ruled from about 970 to 931 BCE, is said to have had 700 royal wives and 300 concubines from surrounding nations, numbers Scripture is probably using to indicate the magnitude of his alliances rather than a literal tally. As an old man, his wives “turned his heart” to the worship of foreign gods, and he erected shrines for Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Molech. In response, God declares that most of the kingdom will be taken from Solomon’s son, leaving him with only a small part.

The Book of Daniel presents Belshazzar as king of Babylon, although historical records identify him as the crown prince and co-regent ruling while his father, Nabonidus, was away in Tayma. Cuneiform texts, however, confirm that Belshazzar exercised royal authority. According to Daniel 5, he threw a party for 1,000 nobles, and they drank from the sacred vessels taken from the Jerusalem Temple while worshiping other gods. A disembodied hand appeared and wrote these words on the wall: “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.” Daniel explains the inscription to mean that God had numbered the days of Belshazzar’s kingdom, judged him and found him wanting, and would divide his kingdom between the Medes and Persians. In 539 BCE, the Persians conquered Babylon, and Belshazzar was killed.

Daniel prophesied against King Nebuchadnezzar II (who reigned c. 605-562 BCE). According to Daniel 4, the prophet had warned him against pride a year earlier. Later, while taking a stroll on the roof of his palace in Babylon, he boasted: “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?” He went mad until he recognized another power and regained his senses after “seven periods” spent living like an animal.

The prophet Samuel told Saul, Israel’s first king, to wipe out the Amalekites, an enemy tribe, along with their king, Agag, and all their cattle. Instead, Saul spared Agag and kept the best of the livestock, claiming it was for sacrifice. Samuel told him that “to obey is better than sacrifice,” and that God had rejected him as king. And thus ended the possibility of any future dynasty descended from Saul.

King Uzziah of Judah ruled 52 prosperous years, expanding Judah’s army and farmlands. He entered the Holy Place of the Jerusalem Temple, an area reserved for priests descended from Aaron, and burned incense there. Azariah, the high priest, and 80 other priests stood in his way. Uzziah became angry, and he was stricken with a skin disease. From that day forward, Uzziah lived in isolation until his death. His son Jotham governed the kingdom in his stead.

Abimelech, son of the great judge Gideon, killed 69 of his 70 half-brothers on one rock at Ophrah (the youngest, Jotham, got away). Three years into his rule, when the city of Thebez was under siege, a woman threw a millstone down on his head from the wall. He called for his armor-bearer to kill him with the sword, lest someone say he’d been killed by a woman.

In his 701 BCE attack on Jerusalem, Assyrian king Sennacherib dispatched a general to taunt King Hezekiah of Judah from the city’s ramparts, asserting that not even Yahweh would stand up against him. In the Bible’s 2 Kings 19, Hezekiah responds with a prayer, and 185,000 of the invading army are killed in a single night. Sennacherib’s inscribed clay prism, known as the Taylor Prism, boasts that he shut Hezekiah up “like a caged bird,” but doesn’t mention taking Jerusalem. Sennacherib was later slain by his sons while praying inside a temple in the capital, Nineveh.

After Solomon’s death around 930 BCE, his son Rehoboam met northern leaders at Shechem. Elder advisers urged him to lighten the labor demands his father had placed on them. Rehoboam instead listened to his young peers, warning, “My father chastised you with whips; I will chastise you with scorpions.” The ten northern tribes revolted under Jeroboam I, permanently splitting the kingdom in two.

Ahab of Israel married Jezebel, daughter of Sidon’s King Ethbaal, to secure a Phoenician alliance in the 9th century BCE. He built a temple to the god Baal in Samaria and let Jezebel kill prophets of Yahweh, and his idolatry brought on a 3.5-year drought. He also allowed the killing of a man named Naboth to seize his vineyard, and the prophet Elijah prophesied the violent end of Ahab’s entire house.

Manasseh of Judah ruled for 55 years, which makes his reign the longest of any Davidic king. He undid the reforms his father Hezekiah had put in place. He constructed pagan altars and put a carved Asherah pole, a wooden symbol of the goddess Asherah, right inside the Temple. He even sacrificed his own son in the Valley of Hinnom. 2 Kings identifies his time on the throne as the reason for Judah’s eventual exile, even though Assyrian records describe him as a loyal vassal.

Following the schism of the monarchy around 930 BCE, when Israel split into northern and southern kingdoms, Jeroboam I was crowned the first ruler of the newly formed northern kingdom of Israel. Fearing that worshipers going up to the Temple in Jerusalem might revert to loyalty to the house of David, Jeroboam erected two golden calves, one in Dan and another in Bethel, providing priests for them as well as the appropriate feast days. The Bible calls this the “sin of Jeroboam.” Tel Dan has indeed yielded evidence of a cultic site.

The last king of Israel, Hoshea, at first sent tribute to Shalmaneser V, king of Assyria, but then ceased paying tribute and conspired with So, king of Egypt. When Shalmaneser learned of this, he arrested Hoshea and encamped against Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, which he besieged for three years. Shalmaneser died before the siege ended, and in 722 BCE his successor, Sargon II, took the city. Sargon claims that 27,290 Israelites were deported; the Northern Kingdom of Israel no longer existed.

In the days of King Jehoiakim of Judah, Jeremiah the prophet wrote down on a scroll a prophecy warning of coming Babylonian judgment. When the scroll was read in the king’s palace, Jehoiakim cut it up with a scribe’s knife and threw the pieces into a brazier (a container for burning coals) until they were consumed by flames. Then Jeremiah told the king that because he had burned the scroll, he would be buried like a donkey and dragged out of the city.

Threatened by an invasion from Israel and Syria, King Ahaz of Judah ignored the prophet Isaiah’s counsel to trust in God rather than foreign powers. Ahaz made Judah a vassal kingdom under Assyria, paying tribute to King Tiglath-Pileser III, an act attested to in Assyrian inscriptions that mention Ahaz as “Ia-u-ha-zi.” While in Damascus, Ahaz saw a pagan altar and brought back plans to construct one in Jerusalem; he then substituted this pagan altar for the Temple’s original bronze one.

When Hezekiah of Judah recovered from a grave illness, he received ambassadors from King Merodach-baladan of Babylon, and, in order to impress them, he displayed his royal treasures, his armory, and his gold. The prophet Isaiah then rebuked him, predicting that all these valuables, as well as Hezekiah’s own descendants, would eventually be carried away as captives to Babylon. Hezekiah had earlier built the Siloam Tunnel, an underground water conduit that brought water into Jerusalem, to secure Jerusalem’s water supply against future siege.

Jehoram of Judah put all six of his younger brothers to death to ensure that he would be king. He married Athaliah, a daughter of King Ahab of Israel. By her influence, he brought worship of Baal into Judah. Edom broke away from him. The Philistines and Arabs raided his palace and carried off his wives and sons. Jehoram had an intestinal disease that lasted for two years and was not healed. He died and was not buried with the other kings of Judah.

Josiah, King of Judah, was responsible for many religious reforms once he discovered the long-lost Book of the Law. In 609 BCE, the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II set out to bolster Assyria against Babylon, warning that he had no quarrel with Judah. Josiah sought to intercept him at Megiddo. There, Egyptian archers mortally wounded him, ending Judah’s last period of stability before its rapid decline.

As an infant, Joash of Judah was smuggled away from a royal family purge by the High Priest Jehoiada. He ruled well for many years, guided by Jehoiada until the latter’s death. Then Joash fell into idolatry. Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, publicly reproached the nation, and Joash ordered that he be stoned to death in the courtyard of the Temple. Less than a year later, a small Syrian army routed the forces of Judah, and Joash himself was murdered in his bed by his own men.

Nebuchadnezzar II installed Zedekiah as a vassal king after deporting his predecessor in 597 BCE, an event confirmed by Babylonian chronicle tablets. He swore an oath of fealty to Nebuchadnezzar but violated it when he allied with Egypt against the advice of Jeremiah the prophet. In 586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem and captured it. He destroyed the Temple and killed Zedekiah’s sons before his eyes. The Babylonians put out Zedekiah’s eyes and took him to Babylon in chains.

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