25:5 Amaziah assembled the people of Judah 1 and assigned them by families to the commanders of units of a thousand and the commanders of units of a hundred for all Judah and Benjamin. He counted those twenty years old and up and discovered there were 300,000 young men of fighting age 2 equipped with spears and shields. 3
27:5 He launched a military campaign 4 against the king of the Ammonites and defeated them. That year the Ammonites paid him 100 talents 5 of silver, 10,000 kors 6 of wheat, and 10,000 kors 7 of barley. The Ammonites also paid this same amount of annual tribute the next two years. 8
1 tn Heb “Judah.” The words “the people of” are supplied in the translation for clarity. The Hebrew text uses the name “Judah” by metonymy here for the people of Judah.
2 tn Heb “young men going out to war.”
3 tn Heb “holding a spear and a shield.”
4 tn Heb “he fought with.”
5 tn The Hebrew word כִּכַּר (kikar, “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, by extension, to a standard unit of weight. According to the older (Babylonian) standard the “talent” weighed 130 lbs. (58.9 kg), but later this was lowered to 108.3 lbs. (49.1 kg). More recent research suggests the “light” standard talent was 67.3 lbs. (30.6 kg). Using this as the standard for calculation, the weight of the silver was 6,730 lbs. (3,060 kg).
6 sn As a unit of dry measure a kor was roughly equivalent to six bushels (about 220 liters).
7 tn Heb “10,000 kors of wheat and 10,000 of barley.” The unit of measure of the barley is omitted in the Hebrew text, but is understood to be “kors,” the same as the measures of wheat.
8 tn Heb “This the sons of Ammon brought to him, and in the second year and the third.”
9 tn Heb “in addition enrolling them by males from a son of three years and upwards, to everyone who enters the house of the