2:7 “Treat fairly 2 the sons of Barzillai of Gilead and provide for their needs, 3 because they helped me 4 when I had to flee from your brother Absalom.
4:20 The people of Judah and Israel were as innumerable as the sand on the seashore; they had plenty to eat and drink and were happy.
14:22 Judah did evil in the sight of 12 the Lord. They made him more jealous by their sins than their ancestors had done. 13 14:23 They even built for themselves high places, sacred pillars, and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree. 14:24 There were also male cultic prostitutes 14 in the land. They committed the same horrible sins as the nations 15 that the Lord had driven out from before the Israelites.
1 tn Heb “through all the territory of Israel.”
2 tn Heb “do loyalty with”; or “act faithfully toward.”
3 tn Heb “and let them be among the ones who eat [at] your table.”
4 tn Heb “drew near to.”
5 tn Heb “the wisdom of Solomon.”
6 tn Heb “and you, hear [from] heaven and act and judge your servants by declaring the guilty to be guilty, to give his way on his head, and to declare the innocent to be innocent, to give to him according to his innocence.”
7 tn Heb “every prayer, every request for help which will be to all the people, to all your people Israel.”
8 tn Heb “which they know, each the pain of his heart.”
9 tn Or “for.”
10 tn Heb “inheritance.”
11 tn The Hebrew term כּוּר (kur, “furnace,” cf. Akkadian ku„ru) is a metaphor for the intense heat of purification. A כּוּר was not a source of heat but a crucible (“iron-smelting furnace”) in which precious metals were melted down and their impurities burned away (see I. Cornelius, NIDOTTE 2:618-19). Thus Egypt served not as a place of punishment for the Israelites, but as a place of refinement to bring Israel to a place of submission to divine sovereignty.
sn From the middle of the iron-smelting furnace. The metaphor of a furnace suggests fire and heat and is an apt image to remind the people of the suffering they endured while slaves in Egypt.
12 tn Heb “in the eyes of.”
13 tn Heb “and they made him jealous more than all which their fathers had done by their sins which they sinned.”
14 tc The Old Greek translation has “a conspiracy” rather than “male cultic prostitutes.”
15 tn Heb “they did according to all the abominable acts of the nations.”
16 tn Heb “walked in all the way of Jeroboam son of Nebat and in his sin which he made Israel sin.”
17 tn Heb “angering the
18 tn Or “as was their custom.”
19 tn Heb “until blood poured out on them.”
sn mutilated…covered with blood. This self-mutilation was a mourning rite designed to facilitate Baal’s return from the underworld.
20 tn Heb “drinking and drunken.”
21 tn Heb “in the temporary shelters.” This is probably referring to tents.
22 map For location see Map2-B1; Map4-D3; Map5-E2; Map6-A4; Map7-C1.
23 tn Heb “now the prostitutes bathed.”
24 tn Heb “according to the word of the