Isaiah's first significant acts as a prophet occurred when Judah, under king Ahaz, faced invasion from Israel and Aram Damascus ( Syria ) after refusing to join them in a revolt against Assyria, the dominant imperial power of the age.

Of notable importance is Isaiah 7: 14, where the prophet is assuring king Ahaz that God will save Judah from the invading armies of Israel and Syria ; the sign that will prove this is the forthcoming birth of a child called Emmanuel, " God With Us ".

In addition, Ahaz is specifically identified as " king of Judah.

Hezekiah (;, Ezekias, in the Septuagint ; ; also transliterated as Ḥizkiyyahu or Ḥizkiyyah ) was the son of Ahaz and the 14th king of Judah.

He ceased to pay the tribute imposed on his father, Ahaz, and " rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not ," but entered into a league with Egypt (; ).

Ahaz, king of Judah, at this crisis refused to co-operate with the kings of Israel and Syria in opposition to the Assyrians, and was on that account attacked and defeated by Rezin of Damascus and Pekah of Israel (; ).

So long as Ahaz reigned, the kingdom of Judah was unmolested by the Assyrian power ; but on his accession to the throne, Hezekiah, who was encouraged to rebel " against the king of Assyria " (), entered into an alliance with the king of Egypt ().

* 729 BC — Hezekiah succeeds Ahaz as king of Judah ( or 726 BC ).

* 726 BC — Hezekiah succeeds Ahaz as king of Judah ( or 729 BC ).

* 724 BC — Ahaz, king of Judah ( 740 BC – 726 BC ) dies.

Ahaz (; Akhaz ; ; an abbreviation of Jehoahaz, " Yahweh has held ") was king of Judah, and the son and successor of Jotham.

Ahaz was twenty when he became king of Judah and reigned for sixteen years.

In c. 732 BCE, when Pekah, king of Israel, allied with Rezin, king of Aram, threatened Jerusalem, Ahaz appealed to Tiglath-Pileser III, the king of Assyria, for help.

It bears the seal of King Ahaz of Judah, who ruled from 732-716 BC. Another important source regarding the historicity of Ahaz comes from Tiglat Pileser III annals, mentioning tributes and payments he received from Ahaz, king of Judah and Menahem, king of Israel

In c. 732 BCE, Pekah allied with Rezin, king of Aram, threatened Jerusalem, and Ahaz, king of Judah, appealed to Tiglath-Pileser III, the king of Assyria, for help.

# Abijah ( queen ), the daughter of Zechariah ( 2 Chronicles 29: 1 ), who married King Ahaz of Judah.

Ahaz, against Isaiah's advice to seek the protection of God, invited the Assyrians to protect him, turning Judah into an Assyrian vassal.

" Thus declaring that the burnt offering of both animals and humans ( which may have been practiced in Judah under Kings Ahaz and Manasseh ) is not necessary for God.

Chapter 1: 1 identifies the prophet as " Micah of Moresheth " ( a town in southern Judah ), and states that he lived during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, roughly 750-700 BC.

King Ahaz's Seal which is a piece of reddish-brown clay that belonged to King Ahaz of Judah, who ruled from 732 to 716 BCE.

" The Hebrew inscription, which is set on three lines, reads as follows: " l ' hz * y / hwtm * mlk */ yhdh ", which translates as " belonging to Ahaz ( son of ) Yehotam, King of Judah.

It is stated in the first verse of the Book of Isaiah that he prophesied during the reigns of Uzziah ( or Azariah ), Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, the kings of Judah ().

The seal impression of Ahaz King of Judah

The inscription reads: “ Belonging to Ahaz ( son of ) Yehotam, King of Judah .” Given the process that created and preserved bullae, they are virtually impossible to forge.

Edwin Thiele concluded that Ahaz was coregent with Jotham from 736 / 735 BC, and that his sole reign began in 732 / 731 and ended in 716 / 715 BC.

For Ahaz, the Scriptural data allow dating the beginning of his coregency with Jotham to some time in the six-month interval beginning of Nisan 1 of 735 BC.

Ahaz is given sixteen years in these annals, measuring from the start of his sole reign, instead of the twenty or twenty-one years that he would be credited with if the counting started from 736t 736 / 735 BC, when he deposed Jotham.

This date is consistent with the statement that Jotham of Judah began to reign in Pekah's second year, 750 BC (), and that Jotham's successor Ahaz began to reign in his 17th year, 735 BC ().

Albright, Jotham ruled from 742 BC until 735 BC and his son Ahaz ruled from his death until 715 BC.

Nahum prophesied, according to some, in the beginning of the reign of Ahaz ( 740s BC ).

Some writers have proposed that Hezekiah served as coregent with his father Ahaz for about 14 years, beginning during 729 BC.

Hezekiah was born in c. 739 BC as the son of King Ahaz and Abijah ().

* 733 BC: According to the Bible, Jerusalem becomes a vassal of the Neo-Assyrian Empire after Ahaz of Judah appeals to Tiglath Pileser III of the Neo-Assyrian Empire to protect the city from Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Aram.

On the death of Ahaz, c. 715 BCE, his son Hezekiah followed a policy which Isaiah saw as dangerous, waging war on the Philistine cities and on Edom even though territory under direct Assyrian control ( i. e., the former kingdom of Israel ) now came to within a few miles of Jerusalem.

In 715 BCE, following the death of Ahaz, Hezekiah became the sole regent of Judah and initiated widespread religious changes, including the breaking of religious idols.

Ahab became king of Israel in the thirty-eighth year of Asa, king of Judah, and reigned for twenty-two years.

During Ahab's reign, Moab, which had been conquered by his father, remained tributary ; while Judah, with whose king, Jehoshaphat, he was allied by marriage, was probably his vassal.

David, who was accepted as king by Judah alone, was meanwhile reigning at Hebron, and for some time war was carried on between the two parties.

# Abijah ( king ) of the Kingdom of Judah, also known as Abijam ( אבים ' aḄiYaM " My Father is Yam "), who was son of Rehoboam and succeeded him on the throne of Judah.

( The Deuteronomist author may have used the then-recent 701 BCE campaign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib in Judah as his model ; the hanging of the captured kings is in accordance with Assyrian practice of the 8th century ).

God's commission to Joshua in chapter 1 is framed as a royal installation, the people's pledge of loyalty to Joshua as successor Moses recalls royal practices, the covenant-renewal ceremony led by Joshua was the prerogative of the kings of Judah, and God's command to Joshua to meditate on the " book of the law " day and night parallels the description of Josiah in 2 Kings 23: 25 as a king uniquely concerned with the study of the law — not to mention their identical territorial goals ( Josiah died in 609 BCE while attempting to annex the former Israel to his own kingdom of Judah ).

Daniel 1: 1-" In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnez ' zar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it.

The king appoints him as governor of Judah and he travels to Jerusalem.

It derives its name from, and records the visions of, Jeremiah, who lived in Jerusalem in the late 7th and early 6th centuries BC during the time of king Josiah and the fall of the Kingdom of Judah to the Babylonians, and who subsequently went into exile in Egypt.

According to the book of Ezra-Nehemiah they did so under the joint leadership of a descendant of the last king and the last High Priest, rebuilding the Temple and reconstituting Judah ( now called Yehud ) as a holy community ruled by priests.

The elders of Judah anoint David as king, but in the north Saul's son Ishbaal rules over the northern tribes.

Hezekiah, the 14th king of Judah " did what was right in the eyes of the Lord " and institutes a far reaching religious reform, centralising sacrifice at the temple at Jerusalem and destroying the images of other gods.

Further levels of editing have also been proposed, including: a late 8th century edition pointing to Hezekiah of Judah as the model for kingship ; an earlier 8th century version with a similar message but identifying Jehu of Israel as the ideal king ; and an even earlier version promoting the House of David as the key to national well-being.

The theological bias is seen in the way it judges each king of Israel on the basis of whether he recognises the authority of the temple in Jerusalem ( none do, and therefore all are " evil "), and each king of Judah on the basis of whether he destroys the " high places " ( rivals to the Temple in Jerusalem ); it gives only passing mention to important and successful kings like Omri and Jeroboam II and totally ignores one of the most significant events in ancient Israel's history, the battle of Qarqar.

In Esther 2: 5 – 6, either Mordecai or his great-grandfather Kish is identified as having been exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BCE: " Mordecai son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, who had been carried into exile from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, among those taken captive with Jeconiah king of Judah.

Assyria lasted a few more years after the loss of its fortress, but attempts by Egyptian Pharaoh Neco II to rally the Assyrians failed due to opposition from king Josiah of Judah, and it seemed to be all over by 609 BC.

This points to a post-exilic date of composition both because of the use of the Persian period term and because Judah had a king before the exile.