Hezion

Hezion is named once in scripture, and only as a link in a royal Aramean genealogy. He is the grandfather of the Ben-hadad with whom King Asa of Judah negotiated against Baasha of Israel.

A Name in the Damascene Line

The single mention places Hezion three generations back from Asa's contemporary on the Damascus throne: "King Asa sent them to Ben-hadad, the son of Tabrimmon, the son of Hezion, king of Syria, who dwelt at Damascus" (1 Ki 15:18). The verse identifies him by relation rather than by any deed of his own. He had been king of Syria before Tabrimmon, and Damascus was the seat of the line.

The verse describes Asa stripping the treasures of the temple and the palace and dispatching them through his slaves to Ben-hadad, in order to buy a Syrian intervention against the northern kingdom. Hezion's name surfaces here only as part of fixing which Ben-hadad is meant — the one whose dynastic memory still ran back to him at Damascus.