Amon
The name Amon designates several distinct figures in Scripture: a city governor under Ahab, a wicked king of Judah whose two-year reign ended in palace conspiracy, an ancestor of a Nethinim family returned from exile, and an Egyptian deity of Thebes named in oracles against Egypt. The biblical occurrences cluster around the king of Judah, but the other senses are clearly attested in the historical, post-exilic, and prophetic books.
Governor of the City
The earliest Amon in the historical record is the city governor to whom Ahab consigns the prophet Micaiah for imprisonment. Both the Kings and Chronicles versions of the Micaiah scene name him: "And the king of Israel said, Take Micaiah, and carry him back to Amon the governor of the city, and to Joash the king's son" (1Ki 22:26). The Chronicler reproduces the same instruction with a plural-marked imperative: "Take⁺ Micaiah, and carry him back to Amon the governor of the city, and to Joash the king's son" (2Ch 18:25). The governorship is over the royal city — Samaria — but the text identifies him only by office, with no further notice of his career.
King of Judah
The principal biblical Amon is the son and successor of Manasseh on the throne of Judah. Kings introduces him through the burial of his father: "And Manasseh slept with his fathers, and was buried in the garden of his own house, in the garden of Uzza: and Amon his son reigned in his stead" (2Ki 21:18). The regnal summary in Kings sets out his accession, his mother, and his moral profile in one sweep — twenty-two years old at accession, two years on the throne in Jerusalem, his mother Meshullemeth the daughter of Haruz of Jotbah, and a verdict that he "did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh, as did Manasseh his father," walking in all his father's way, serving and worshiping the idols his father had served, and forsaking Yahweh the God of his fathers (2Ki 21:19-23). The Chronicler's summary confirms the regnal data — "Amon was twenty and two years old when he began to reign; and he reigned two years in Jerusalem" (2Ch 33:21) — and intensifies the moral charge: "Amon sacrificed to all the graven images which Manasseh his father had made, and served them" (2Ch 33:22).
The Chronicler isolates the decisive contrast between father and son. Manasseh, in the Chronicler's narrative, had humbled himself before Yahweh after his Babylonian captivity; Amon refuses that turn: "And he didn't humble himself before Yahweh, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself; but this same Amon trespassed more and more" (2Ch 33:23). The trespass is not interrupted by repentance but cut short by conspiracy. Both accounts close the reign by the same sequence: a palace plot by his own slaves ends his life, and a popular reaction reverses the plot. "And his slaves conspired against him, and put him to death in his own house" (2Ch 33:24); "the slaves of Amon conspired against him, and put the king to death in his own house" (2Ki 21:19-23). The "people of the land" then execute the conspirators and install Josiah: "the people of the land slew all those who had conspired against King Amon; and the people of the land made Josiah his son king in his stead" (2Ki 21:24-26; cf. 2Ch 33:25). Kings closes with the standard regnal formula and a notice of burial in the garden of Uzza alongside his father (2Ki 21:25-26).
Amon's place in salvation history is fixed by his role as Josiah's father. The prophetic superscription of Zephaniah dates the prophet's ministry to "the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah" (Zep 1:1), so that the reform under Josiah is reckoned, in prophetic chronology, against the wickedness of the immediately preceding reign.
Ancestor of a Nethinim Family
A third Amon is the ancestor of one of the Nethinim families — temple servants — listed in the post-exilic register. Nehemiah's list closes a sequence of "sons of Solomon's slaves" with "the sons of Shephatiah, the sons of Hattil, the sons of Pochereth-hazzebaim, the sons of Amon" (Ne 7:59). Ezra's parallel register supplies an alternate form of the name: "the sons of Shephatiah, the sons of Hattil, the sons of Pochereth-hazzebaim, the sons of Ami" (Ezr 2:57). The two lists describe the same family under the variant forms Amon and Ami.
Amon of No
In Jeremiah's oracle against Egypt, Amon appears not as an Israelite figure but as the Egyptian deity of Thebes (No): "Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, says: Look, I will punish Amon of No, and Pharaoh, and Egypt, with her gods, and her kings; even Pharaoh, and those who trust in him" (Jer 46:25). The deity is named alongside Pharaoh and "her gods" generally as objects of Yahweh's coming judgment on Egypt.