Zadok II


 * ''This article concerns the second high priest of this name, and father-in-law of King Uzziah of Judah. For the first of this name, see Zadok I. For other uses, see Zadok (disambiguation).

Zadok II ("Name means::just") (ca. 871/0–fl. 840–781/0 BC) was the nineteenth high priest of Israel. His career began early after the murder of his father Zechariah I and lasted for about sixty years, during which time his daughter Jerushah married King Uzziah of Judah.

Genealogy
Zadok must have been born in the tenth year of the reign of King Joash of Judah, because neither the Bible nor any other ancient source suggests that the high priesthood fell vacant after Zechariah's death. Flavius Josephus calls him "Sudeas", and the Seder 'Olam Zuṭa calls him "Zedekiah" (meaning "right of YHWH" or "justice of YHWH").

Zadok had a daughter, Jerushah, who married King Uzziah of Judah. They had a son, the future King Jotham, in 3221 AM. This marriage is the second of three connections between the House of David and the House of Aaron, and the most logical assumption is that each such connection took place when the Aaronite man involved was the current high priest. (The first such connection was the marriage of Princess Jehosheba to Zadok's grandfather Jehoiada, and the third would be the marriage of Zadok's great-granddaughter Abi to Prince Ahaz.)

Career
Zadok took the ephod at a time of great turmoil. The courtiers of King Joash had murdered his father Zechariah after he had protested against Joash's policy of returning to the worship of local Canaanite gods. But within a year of that tragedy, the kingdom suffered a national humiliation at the hands of King Hazael of Syria. After this, two officers of the court murdered the king in his bed.

The new king, Amaziah, put those two courtiers to death, but did not punish anyone else. Thereafter Zadok continued to serve as high priest, but does not appear to have distinguished himself in any way. He made no protest when Amaziah started to worship captured Edomite idols; another (unnamed) prophet made this protest. Nor did he get involved in any way when, after King Joash of Israel humiliated Amaziah and created a 400-cubit breach in the wall of Jerusalem, a court conspiracy sprang up and apparently continued for fifteen years.

He lived to see Prince Uzziah crowned at the age of sixteen. Twenty-six years later, he consented to the marriage of his daughter Jerushah to the king. He probably died four years after that, at the age of ninety.