House of Omri

The House of Omri (929-884BC by Ussher, or 885-841BC by Thiele ) is the dynasty of four kings, beginning with Omri, a rebel general who seized power from one who himself had murdered a previous king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. It lasted for forty-five years.

Beginning
The House of Omri began when a general named Omri, commanding the troops of the Northern Kingdom at the siege of Gibbethon, led the entire army to Tirzah to take over the kingdom from King Zimri, who had seized power by murdering King Elah seven days before. Omri won the day when Zimri burned the palace down over his own head and perished in the flames.

Soon afterward, however, the army split into two equal halves, the one following Omri, and the other following a pretender named Tibni. Omni spent four years quelling this rivalry. To do it, he might have made a military treaty with King Ithobaal I of Tyre, involving the marriage of his son Ahab to Ithobaal's daughter Jezebel. We do know that Athaliah, daughter of Omri and eventual queen of the Southern Kingdom, was born two years into the civil war.

Baal worship
The marriage of Ahab and Jezebel was to prove instrumental in introducing the worship of Baal to the Northern Kingdom and even to the Southern. During the reign of Ahab, Jezebel systematically exterminated almost all the prophets of God then living in the Northern Kingdom--except that a palace steward hid a hundred of them in at least two locations, and two prophets, the great Elijah and his student Elisha, strove against Baal worship beginning in the ninth year of Ahab to the very end of the House of Omri, through lessons, demonstrations, and occasionally direct action.

End of the House of Omri
The House of Omri ended with the death, in yet another military coup, of Jehoram, second son of Ahab, at the hand of his general, Jehu.