2 Raja-raja 2:16

2:16 They said to him, “Look, there are fifty capable men with your servants. Let them go and look for your master, for the wind sent from the Lord ¹  may have carried him away and dropped him on one of the hills or in one of the valleys.” But Elisha ²  replied, “Don’t send them out.”

2 Raja-raja 4:1

Elisha Helps a Widow and Her Sons

4:1 Now a wife of one of the prophets ³  appealed ⁴  to Elisha for help, saying, “Your servant, my husband is dead. You know that your servant was a loyal follower of the Lord. ⁵  Now the creditor is coming to take away my two boys to be his servants.”

2 Raja-raja 6:17

6:17 Then Elisha prayed, “O Lord, open his eyes so he can see.” The Lord opened the servant’s eyes and he saw that ⁶  the hill was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

2 Raja-raja 7:9

7:9 Then they said to one another, “It’s not right what we’re doing! This is a day to celebrate, but we haven’t told anyone. ⁷  If we wait until dawn, ⁸  we’ll be punished. ⁹  So come on, let’s go and inform the royal palace.”

2 Raja-raja 8:21

8:21 Joram ¹⁰  crossed over to Zair with all his chariots. The Edomites, who had surrounded him, attacked at night and defeated him and his chariot officers. ¹¹  The Israelite army retreated to their homeland. ¹² 

2 Raja-raja 9:6

9:6 So Jehu ¹³  got up and went inside. Then the prophet ¹⁴  poured the olive oil on his head and said to him, “This is what the Lord God of Israel says, ‘I have designated you as king over the Lord’s people Israel.

2 Raja-raja 9:27

9:27 When King Ahaziah of Judah saw what happened, he took off ¹⁵  up the road to Beth Haggan. Jehu chased him and ordered, “Shoot him too.” They shot him while he was driving his chariot up the ascent of Gur near Ibleam. ¹⁶  He fled to Megiddo ¹⁷  and died there.

2 Raja-raja 11:2

11:2 So Jehosheba, the daughter of King Joram and sister of Ahaziah, took Ahaziah’s son Joash and sneaked ¹⁸  him away from the rest of the royal descendants who were to be executed. She hid him and his nurse in the room where the bed covers were stored. ¹⁹  So he was hidden from Athaliah and escaped execution. ²⁰ 

2 Raja-raja 14:28

14:28 The rest of the events of Jeroboam’s reign, including all his accomplishments, his military success in restoring Israelite control over Damascus and Hamath, are recorded in the scroll called the Annals of the Kings of Israel. ²¹ 

2 Raja-raja 17:21

17:21 He tore Israel away from David’s dynasty, and Jeroboam son of Nebat became their king. ²²  Jeroboam drove Israel away ²³  from the Lord and encouraged them to commit a serious sin. ²⁴ 

2 Raja-raja 17:24

The King of Assyria Populates Israel with Foreigners

17:24 The king of Assyria brought foreigners ²⁵  from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and settled them in the cities of Samaria ²⁶  in place of the Israelites. They took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities.

2 Raja-raja 17:27

17:27 So the king of Assyria ordered, “Take back one of the priests whom you ²⁷  deported from there. He must settle there and teach them the requirements of the God of the land.” ²⁸ 

2 Raja-raja 18:14

18:14 King Hezekiah of Judah sent this message to the king of Assyria, who was at Lachish, “I have violated our treaty. ²⁹  If you leave, I will do whatever you demand.” ³⁰  So the king of Assyria demanded that King Hezekiah of Judah pay three hundred talents ³¹  of silver and thirty talents of gold.

2 Raja-raja 18:31

18:31 Don’t listen to Hezekiah!’ For this is what the king of Assyria says, ‘Send me a token of your submission and surrender to me. ³²  Then each of you may eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink water from his own cistern,

2 Raja-raja 19:26

19:26 Their residents are powerless, ³³ 

they are terrified and ashamed.

They are as short-lived as plants in the field,

or green vegetation. ³⁴ 

They are as short-lived as grass on the rooftops ³⁵ 

when it is scorched by the east wind. ³⁶ 

2 Raja-raja 22:20

22:20 ‘Therefore I will allow you to die and be buried in peace. ³⁷  You will not have to witness ³⁸  all the disaster I will bring on this place.’”’” Then they reported back to the king.

2 Raja-raja 23:27

23:27 The Lord announced, “I will also spurn Judah, ³⁹  just as I spurned Israel. I will reject this city that I chose – both Jerusalem and the temple, about which I said, “I will live there.” ⁴⁰ 

[2:16]  ¹ tn Or “the spirit of the Lord.”

[2:16]  ² tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[4:1]  ³ tn Heb “a wife from among the wives of the sons of the prophets.”

[4:1]  ⁴ tn Or “cried out.”

[4:1]  ⁵ tn Heb “your servant feared the Lord.” “Fear” refers here to obedience and allegiance, the products of healthy respect for the Lord’s authority.

[6:17]  ⁶ tn Heb “and he saw, and look.”

[7:9]  ⁷ tn Heb “this day is a day of good news and we are keeping silent.”

[7:9]  ⁸ tn Heb “the light of the morning.”

[7:9]  ⁹ tn Heb “punishment will find us.”

[8:21]  ¹⁰ sn Joram is a short form of the name Jehoram.

[8:21]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and he arose at night and defeated Edom, who had surrounded him, and the chariot officers.” The Hebrew text as it stands gives the impression that Joram was surrounded and launched a victorious night counterattack. It would then be quite natural to understand the last statement in the verse to refer to an Edomite retreat. Yet v. 22 goes on to state that the Edomite revolt was successful. Therefore, if the MT is retained, it may be better to understand the final statement in v. 21 as a reference to an Israelite retreat (made in spite of the success described in the preceding sentence). The translation above assumes an emendation of the Hebrew text. Adding a third masculine singular pronominal suffix to the accusative sign before Edom (reading אֶתוֹ [’eto], “him,” instead of just אֶת [’et]) and taking Edom as the subject of verbs allows one to translate the verse in a way that is more consistent with the context, which depicts an Israelite defeat, not victory. There is, however, no evidence for this emendation.

[8:21]  ¹² tn Heb “and the people fled to their tents.”

[9:6]  ¹³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Jehu) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[9:6]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the prophet) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[9:27]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and Ahaziah king of Judah saw and fled.”

[9:27]  ¹⁶ tn After Jehu’s order (“kill him too”), the MT has simply, “to the chariot in the ascent of Gur which is near Ibleam.” The main verb in the clause, “they shot him” (וַיִּכְהוּ, vayyikhhu), has been accidentally omitted by virtual haplography/homoioteleuton. Note that the immediately preceding form הַכֻּהוּ (hakkuhu), “shoot him,” ends with the same suffix.

[9:27]  ¹⁷ map For location see Map1 D4; Map2 C1; Map4 C2; Map5 F2; Map7 B1.

[11:2]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “stole.”

[11:2]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “him and his nurse in an inner room of beds.” The verb is missing in the Hebrew text. The parallel passage in 2 Chr 22:11 has “and she put” at the beginning of the clause. M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 126) regard the Chronicles passage as an editorial attempt to clarify the difficulty of the original text. They prefer to take “him and his nurse” as objects of the verb “stole” and understand “in the bedroom” as the place where the royal descendants were executed. The phrase בַּחֲדַר הַמִּטּוֹת (bakhadar hammittot), “an inner room of beds,” is sometimes understood as referring to a bedroom (HALOT 293 s.v. חֶדֶר), though some prefer to see here a “room where the covers and cloths were kept for the beds (HALOT 573 s.v. מִטָּת). In either case, it may have been a temporary hideout, for v. 3 indicates that the child hid in the temple for six years.

[11:2]  ²⁰ tn Heb “and they hid him from Athaliah and he was not put to death.” The subject of the plural verb (“they hid”) is probably indefinite.

[14:28]  ²¹ tn Heb “As for the rest of the events of Jeroboam, and all which he did and his strength, [and] how he fought and how he restored Damascus and Hamath to Judah in Israel, are they not written on the scroll of the events of the days of the kings of Israel?” The phrase “to Judah” is probably not original; it may be a scribal addition by a Judahite scribe who was trying to link Jeroboam’s conquests with the earlier achievements of David and Solomon, who ruled in Judah. The Syriac Peshitta has simply “to Israel.” M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 162) offer this proposal, but acknowledge that it is “highly speculative.”

[17:21]  ²² tn Heb “and they made Jeroboam son of Nebat king.”

[17:21]  ²³ tc The consonantal text (Kethib) assumes the verb is נָדָא (nada’), an alternate form of נָדָה (nadah), “push away.” The marginal reading (Qere) assumes the verb נָדָח (nadakh), “drive away.”

[17:21]  ²⁴ tn Heb “a great sin.”

[17:24]  ²⁵ tn The object is supplied in the translation.

[17:24]  ²⁶ sn In vv. 24-29 Samaria stands for the entire northern kingdom of Israel.

[17:27]  ²⁷ tc The second plural subject may refer to the leaders of the Assyrian army. However, some prefer to read “whom I deported,” changing the verb to a first person singular form with a third masculine plural pronominal suffix. This reading has some support from Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic witnesses.

[17:27]  ²⁸ tc Heb “and let them go and let them live there, and let him teach them the requirements of the God of the land.” The two plural verbs seem inconsistent with the preceding and following contexts, where only one priest is sent back to Samaria. The singular has the support of Greek, Syriac, and Latin witnesses.

[18:14]  ²⁹ tn Or “I have done wrong.”

[18:14]  ³⁰ tn Heb “Return from upon me; what you place upon me, I will carry.”

[18:14]  ³¹ tn The Hebrew term כִּכָּר (kikkar, “circle”) refers generally to something that is round. When used of metals it can refer to a disk-shaped weight made of the metal or to a standard unit of weight, generally regarded as a talent. Since the accepted weight for a talent of metal is about 75 pounds, this would have amounted to about 22,500 pounds of silver and 2,250 pounds of gold.

[18:31]  ³² tn Heb “make with me a blessing and come out to me.”

[19:26]  ³³ tn Heb “short of hand.”

[19:26]  ³⁴ tn Heb “they are plants in the field and green vegetation.” The metaphor emphasizes how short-lived these seemingly powerful cities really were. See Ps 90:5-6; Isa 40:6-8, 24.

[19:26]  ³⁵ tn Heb “[they are] grass on the rooftops.” See the preceding note.

[19:26]  ³⁶ tc The Hebrew text has “scorched before the standing grain” (perhaps meaning “before it reaches maturity”), but it is preferable to emend קָמָה (qamah), “standing grain,” to קָדִים (qadim), “east wind” (with the support of 1Q Isa^a in Isa 37:27).

[22:20]  ³⁷ tn Heb “Therefore, look, I am gathering you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your tomb in peace.”

[22:20]  ³⁸ tn Heb “your eyes will not see.”

[23:27]  ³⁹ tn Heb “Also Judah I will turn away from my face.”

[23:27]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “My name will be there.”