Tiglath-Pileser III - or Tilgath-Pil-neser, was the Assyrian throne-name of Pul, king of Assyria (744 - 727 BC). Assyrian inscriptions records, in the fifth year of his reign (739 BC), a victory over Azariah (who is called Uzziah in 2 Chronicles 26:1), king of Judah, whose achievements are described in 2 Chr. 26:6-15. However, he is first mentioned in the Bible as gaining a victory over Pekah, king of Israel, and Rezin of Damascus, who had allied against him. He put Rezin to death, and punished Pekah by taking a considerable portion of his kingdom, and carrying off a vast number of its inhabitants into captivity (2 Kings 15:29; 16:5-9; 1 Chronicles 5:6, 26), the Reubenites, the Gadites, and half the tribe of Manasseh whom he settled in Gozan. In the Assyrian annals it is further related that, before he returned from Syria, he held a court at Damascus, and received submission and tribute from the neighbouring kings, among whom were Pekah of Samaria and "Yahu-khazi [i.e., Ahaz], king of Judah" (compare 2 Kings 16:10-16).
He was the founder of what is called the second Assyrian Empire, an empire meant to embrace the whole world, the center of which should be Nineveh. On his death, he was succeeded by a general of his army, Ulula, who assumed the name Shalmaneser IV.
This is an article from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897. This article is written from a nineteenth century Christian viewpoint, and may not reflect modern opinions or recent discoveries in Biblical scholarship. Please help the Wikipedia by bringing this article up to date.
