2 Raja-raja 3:27

3:27 So he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him up as a burnt sacrifice on the wall. There was an outburst of divine anger against Israel, ¹  so they broke off the attack ²  and returned to their homeland.

2 Raja-raja 6:26

6:26 While the king of Israel was passing by on the city wall, a woman shouted to him, “Help us, my master, O king!”

2 Raja-raja 18:26

18:26 Eliakim son of Hilkiah, Shebna, and Joah said to the chief adviser, “Speak to your servants in Aramaic, ³  for we understand it. Don’t speak with us in the Judahite dialect ⁴  in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”

[3:27]  ¹ tn Heb “there was great anger against Israel.”

[3:27]  sn The meaning of this statement is uncertain, for the subject of the anger is not indicated. Except for two relatively late texts, the noun קֶצֶף (qetsef) refers to an outburst of divine anger. But it seems unlikely the Lord would be angry with Israel, for he placed his stamp of approval on the campaign (vv. 16-19). D. N. Freedman suggests the narrator, who obviously has a bias against the Omride dynasty, included this observation to show that the Lord would not allow the Israelite king to “have an undiluted victory” (as quoted in M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings [AB], 52, n. 8). Some suggest that the original source identified Chemosh the Moabite god as the subject and that his name was later suppressed by a conscientious scribe, but this proposal raises more questions than it answers. For a discussion of various views, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 47-48, 51-52.

[3:27]  ² tn Heb “they departed from him.”

[18:26]  ³ sn Aramaic was the diplomatic language of the empire.

[18:26]  ⁴ tn Or “Hebrew.”