2 Raja-raja 9:4

9:4 So the young prophet ¹  went to Ramoth Gilead.

2 Raja-raja 10:5

10:5 So the palace supervisor, ²  the city commissioner, ³  the leaders, ⁴  and the guardians sent this message to Jehu, “We are your subjects! ⁵  Whatever you say, we will do. We will not make anyone king. Do what you consider proper.” ⁶ 

2 Raja-raja 17:15

17:15 They rejected his rules, the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and the laws he had commanded them to obey. ⁷  They paid allegiance to ⁸  worthless idols, and so became worthless to the Lord. ⁹  They copied the practices of the surrounding nations in blatant disregard of the Lord’s command. ¹⁰ 

2 Raja-raja 21:6

21:6 He passed his son ¹¹  through the fire ¹²  and practiced divination and omen reading. He set up a ritual pit to conjure up underworld spirits, and appointed magicians to supervise it. ¹³  He did a great amount of evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. ¹⁴ 

[9:4]  ¹ tc Heb “the young man, the young man, the prophet.” The MT is probably dittographic, the phrase “the young man” being accidentally repeated. The phrases “the young man” and “the prophet” are appositional, with the latter qualifying more specifically the former.

[10:5]  ² tn Heb “the one who was over the house.”

[10:5]  ³ tn Heb “the one who was over the city.”

[10:5]  ⁴ tn Or “elders.”

[10:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “servants.”

[10:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “Do what is good in your eyes.”

[17:15]  ⁷ tn Or “and his warnings he had given them.”

[17:15]  ⁸ tn Heb “They went [or, ‘followed’] after.” This idiom probably does not mean much if translated literally. It is found most often in Deuteronomy or in literature related to the covenant. It refers in the first instance to loyalty to God and to His covenant or His commandments (1 Kgs 14:8; 2 Chr 34:31) with the metaphor of a path or way underlying it (Deut 11:28; 28:14). To “follow other gods” was to abandon this way and this loyalty (to “abandon” or “forget” God, Judg 2:12; Hos 2:13) and to follow the customs or religious traditions of the pagan nations (2 Kgs 17:15). The classic text on “following” God or another god is 1 Kgs 18:18, 21 where Elijah taunts the people with “halting between two opinions” whether the Lord was the true God or Baal was. The idiom is often found followed by “to serve and to worship” or “they served and worshiped” such and such a god or entity (Jer 8:2; 11:10; 13:10; 16:11; 25:6; 35:15).

[17:15]  ⁹ tn Heb “they followed after the worthless thing/things and became worthless.” The words “to the Lord” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit from the context. There is an obvious wordplay on the verb “became worthless” and the noun “worthless thing”, which is probably to be understood collectively and to refer to idols as it does in Jer 8:19; 10:8; 14:22; Jonah 2:8.

[17:15]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and [they walked] after the nations which were around them, concerning which the Lord commanded them not to do like them.”

[21:6]  ¹¹ tc The LXX has the plural “his sons” here.

[21:6]  ¹² sn See the note at 2 Kgs 16:3.

[21:6]  ¹³ tn Heb “and he set up a ritual pit, along with conjurers.” The Hebrew אוֹב (’ov), “ritual pit,” refers to a pit used by a magician to conjure up underworld spirits. In 1 Sam 28:7 the witch of Endor is called a בַעֲלַת אוֹב (ba’alat ’ov), “owner of a ritual pit.” See H. Hoffner, “Second millennium Antecedents to the Hebrew ’OñBù,” JBL 86 (1967), 385-401.

[21:6]  ¹⁴ tc Heb “and he multiplied doing what is evil in the eyes of the Lord, angering.” The third masculine singular pronominal suffix (“him”) has been accidentally omitted in the MT by haplography (note the vav that immediately follows).