Jotham or Yotam (Hebrew: יוֹתָם, Modern: Yōtam, Tiberian: Yōṯām; Greek: Ιωαθαμ, romanized: Ioatham; Latin: Joatham)[1] was the eleventh king of Judah, and son of Uzziah and Jerusha, daughter of Zadok.

He himself is said to have built the upper gate of the house of Yhwh and to have avoided the rashnesswhich allowed his father to enter the Temple (II Chron.

Thiele maintained that the key to understanding these records lies in a proper appreciation of the growing threat from Assyria that both kingdoms faced.

[9] In face of this threat, Rezin of Damascus made an alliance with Pekah of Israel, and the two were therefore enemies of the pro-Assyrian king of Judah, Ahaz (Isaiah 7:1).

Meanwhile, Menahem, ruling in Samaria, sent tribute to Tiglath-Pileser (Biblical Pul)[10] to "strengthen his hold on the kingdom," (2 Kings 15:19), apparently against his anti-Assyrian rival Pekah.

[12]In Judah, the growing Assyrian pressure strengthened the hand of those who sought accommodation to the enemy from the north, resulting in a change of leadership: In 736 and 735 Tiglath-pileser was again in the northwest, in the regions of Mount Nal and Urartu.

In 735 it is altogether likely that a pro-Assyrian group felt itself strong enough to force Jotham into retirement and to place Ahaz on the throne.

[7]Thiele therefore explained the reason for the complexity of the chronological data for this time by taking into account the historical background.

He then found that the regnal years for Judah and Israel that can be constructed from the Biblical texts fit into the known movements of the Assyrian kings during this time.

For Jotham, the Scriptural data allow the narrowing of the beginning of his coregency with Uzziah as occurring some time in the six-month interval on or following Nisan 1, 750 BCE.

In the mid-1990s, an inscribed bulla seal belonging to Jotham's son, Ahaz, showed up on the antiquities market.