4:8 One day Elisha traveled to Shunem, where a prominent 9 woman lived. She insisted that he stop for a meal. 10 So whenever he was passing through, he would stop in there for a meal. 11
4:42 Now a man from Baal Shalisha brought some food for the prophet 12 – twenty loaves of bread made from the firstfruits of the barley harvest, as well as fresh ears of grain. 13 Elisha 14 said, “Set it before the people so they may eat.” 4:43 But his attendant said, “How can I feed a hundred men with this?” 15 He replied, “Set it before the people so they may eat, for this is what the Lord says, ‘They will eat and have some left over.’” 16
19:28 Because you rage against me,
and the uproar you create has reached my ears; 30
I will put my hook in your nose, 31
and my bridle between your lips,
and I will lead you back the way
you came.”
19:29 32 This will be your confirmation that I have spoken the truth: 33 This year you will eat what grows wild, 34 and next year 35 what grows on its own from that. But in the third year you will plant seed and harvest crops; you will plant vines and consume their produce. 36
1 tn Heb “answered and said to the officer of fifty.”
2 tn Wordplay contributes to the irony here. The king tells Elijah to “come down” (Hebrew יָרַד, yarad), but Elijah calls fire down (יָרַד) on the arrogant king’s officer.
3 tc Two medieval Hebrew
4 tn Or “intense fire.” The divine name may be used idiomatically to emphasize the intensity of the fire. Whether one translates אֱלֹהִים (’elohim) here as a proper name or idiomatically, this addition to the narrative (the name is omitted in the first panel, v. 10b) emphasizes the severity of the judgment and is appropriate given the more intense command delivered by the king to the prophet in this panel.
5 tn Heb “choice” or “select.”
6 tn Elisha places the object first and uses an imperfect verb form. The stylistic shift may signal that he is now instructing them what to do, rather than merely predicting what would happen.
7 tn Heb “good.”
8 tn Heb “and ruin every good portion with stones.”
9 tn Heb “great,” perhaps “wealthy.”
10 tn Or “she urged him to eat some food.”
11 tn Or “he would turn aside there to eat some food.”
12 tn Heb “man of God.”
13 tn On the meaning of the word צִקְלוֹן (tsiqlon), “ear of grain,” see HALOT 148 s.v. בָּצֵק and M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 59.
14 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
15 tn Heb “How can I set this before a hundred men?”
16 tn The verb forms are infinitives absolute (Heb “eating and leaving over”) and have to be translated in light of the context.
17 tn Heb “according to the word of the man of God.”
18 tn Heb “and his skin was restored, like the skin of a small child.”
19 tn The Hebrew text also has “look” here.
20 tn Heb “came down to him.”
21 tn Heb “Look, this is a disaster from the
22 tn Or “you have indeed defeated Edom.”
23 tn Heb “and your heart has lifted you up.”
24 tn Heb “be glorified.”
25 tn Heb “Why get involved in calamity and fall, you and Judah with you?”
26 tn The word “new” is added in the translation for clarification.
27 tn Heb “until.”
28 tn Heb “the
29 tn Heb “just as he said.”
30 tc Heb “and your complacency comes up into my ears.” The parallelism is improved if שַׁאֲנַנְךְ (sha’anankh), “your complacency,” is emended to שַׁאֲוַנְךְ (sha’avankh), “your uproar.” See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 237-38.
31 sn The word picture has a parallel in Assyrian sculpture. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 238.
32 tn At this point the word concerning the king of Assyria (vv. 21-28) ends and the Lord again directly addresses Hezekiah and the people (see v. 20).
33 tn Heb “and this is your sign.” In this case the אוֹת (’ot), “sign,” is a future confirmation of God’s intervention designated before the actual intervention takes place. For similar “signs” see Exod 3:12 and Isa 7:14-25.
34 sn This refers to crops that grew up on their own (that is, without cultivation) from the seed planted in past years.
35 tn Heb “and in the second year.”
36 tn The four plural imperatival verb forms in v. 29b are used rhetorically. The Lord commands the people to plant, harvest, etc. to emphasize the certainty of restored peace and prosperity. See IBHS 572 §34.4.c.
37 tn Heb “returned the king a word and said.”
38 tn Heb “that was found in the house.”
39 sn It is not altogether clear whether this is in the same year that Jerusalem fell or not. The wall was breached in the fourth month (= early July; Jer 39:2) and Nebuzaradan came and burned the palace, the temple, and many of the houses and tore down the wall in the fifth month (= early August; Jer 52:12). That would have left time between the fifth month and the seventh month (October) to gather in the harvest of grapes, dates and figs, and olives (Jer 40:12). However, many commentators feel that too much activity takes place in too short a time for this to have been in the same year and posit that it happened the following year or even five years later when a further deportation took place, possibly in retaliation for the murder of Gedaliah and the Babylonian garrison at Mizpah (Jer 52:30). The assassination of Gedaliah had momentous consequences and was commemorated in one of the post exilic fast days lamenting the fall of Jerusalem (Zech 8:19).
40 tn Heb “[was] from the seed of the kingdom.”
41 tn Heb “and they struck down Gedaliah and he died.”