Hezion

According to the genealogy given in the Books of Kings (1 Kings 15:18), Hezion was a king of Aram-Damascus, where Ben-Hadad I is said to be the "son of Tabrimmon, the son of Hezion, king of Aram, who lived in Damascus."^[1] The passage in 1 Kings refers to King Asa of Judah, who is dated by several scholars^[2] to not later than 866 BCE. In the 19th century many scholars equated him with Rezon the Syrian, an enemy of Solomon.

Ḫadiānu (also called Hezion II) was an eighth-century BCE king of Aram-Damascus. He is attested in the Pazarcık Stele, composed during the reign of Shalmaneser IV and dated to 773 BCE. The inscription states that the Assyrian commander Šamši-ilu marched to Damascus and received tribute from Ḫadiānu.^[3][4]

The designation Hezion II reflects the identification of Ḫadiānu with the name of the earlier, biblical Hezion. William F. Albright had previously argued that biblical Hezion was cognate with Hadianu.^[5] After the discovery of the Pazarcık inscription, Wayne Pitard suggested that the eighth-century ruler might have borne the same name as the earlier Hezion, although he considered the identification uncertain.^[6] Stefan Timm subsequently referred to the ruler as Hesion II.^[7] K. Lawson Younger renders the name as Ḥaḏyān II and its Assyrian form as Ḫadiānu.^[8]

• Aramean kings