2 Kings 1:17

1:17 He died just as the Lord had prophesied through Elijah. ¹  In the second year of the reign of King Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat over Judah, Ahaziah’s brother Jehoram replaced him as king of Israel, because he had no son. ² 

2 Kings 7:8

7:8 When the men with a skin disease reached the edge of the camp, they entered a tent and had a meal. ³  They also took some silver, gold, and clothes and went and hid it all. ⁴  Then they went back and entered another tent. They looted it ⁵  and went and hid what they had taken.

2 Kings 7:17

7:17 Now the king had placed the officer who was his right-hand man ⁶  at the city gate. When the people rushed out, they trampled him to death in the gate. ⁷  This fulfilled the prophet’s word which he had spoken when the king tried to arrest him. ⁸ 

2 Kings 8:5

8:5 While Gehazi ⁹  was telling the king how Elisha ¹⁰  had brought the dead back to life, the woman whose son he had brought back to life came to ask the king for her house and field. ¹¹  Gehazi said, “My master, O king, this is the very woman and this is her son whom Elisha brought back to life!”

2 Kings 9:12

9:12 But they said, “You’re lying! Tell us what he said.” So he told them what he had said. He also related how he had said, ¹²  “This is what the Lord says, ‘I have designated you as king over Israel.’”

2 Kings 9:21

9:21 Jehoram ordered, “Hitch up my chariot.” ¹³  When his chariot had been hitched up, ¹⁴  King Jehoram of Israel and King Ahaziah of Judah went out in their respective chariots ¹⁵  to meet Jehu. They met up with him ¹⁶  in the plot of land that had once belonged to Naboth of Jezreel.

2 Kings 13:23

13:23 But the Lord had mercy on them and felt pity for them. ¹⁷  He extended his favor to them ¹⁸  because of the promise he had made ¹⁹  to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He has been unwilling to destroy them or remove them from his presence to this very day. ²⁰ 

2 Kings 17:4

17:4 The king of Assyria discovered that Hoshea was planning a revolt. ²¹  Hoshea had sent messengers to King So ²²  of Egypt and had not sent his annual tribute to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria arrested him and imprisoned him. ²³ 

2 Kings 17:15

17:15 They rejected his rules, the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and the laws he had commanded them to obey. ²⁴  They paid allegiance to ²⁵  worthless idols, and so became worthless to the Lord. ²⁶  They copied the practices of the surrounding nations in blatant disregard of the Lord’s command. ²⁷ 

2 Kings 18:4

18:4 He eliminated the high places, smashed the sacred pillars to bits, and cut down the Asherah pole. ²⁸  He also demolished the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for up to that time ²⁹  the Israelites had been offering incense to it; it was called Nehushtan. ³⁰ 

2 Kings 21:3

21:3 He rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he set up altars for Baal and made an Asherah pole just like King Ahab of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky ³¹  and worshiped ³²  them.

2 Kings 21:7

21:7 He put an idol of Asherah he had made in the temple, about which the Lord had said to David and to his son Solomon, “This temple in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, will be my permanent home. ³³ 

2 Kings 23:12

23:12 The king tore down the altars the kings of Judah had set up on the roof of Ahaz’s upper room, as well as the altars Manasseh had set up in the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple. He crushed them up ³⁴  and threw the dust in the Kidron Valley.

2 Kings 23:24

23:24 Josiah also got rid of ³⁵  the ritual pits used to conjure up spirits, ³⁶  the magicians, personal idols, disgusting images, ³⁷  and all the detestable idols that had appeared in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. In this way he carried out the terms of the law ³⁸  recorded on the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the Lord’s temple.

2 Kings 24:13

24:13 Nebuchadnezzar ³⁹  took from there all the riches in the treasuries of the Lord’s temple and of the royal palace. He removed all the gold items which King Solomon of Israel had made for the Lord’s temple, just as the Lord had warned.

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¹ tn Heb “according to the word of the Lord which he spoke through Elijah.”

² tn Heb “Jehoram replaced him as king…because he had no son.” Some ancient textual witnesses add “his brother,” which was likely added on the basis of the statement later in the verse that Ahaziah had no son.

³ tn Heb “they ate and drank.”

⁴ tn Heb “and they hid [it].”

⁵ tn Heb “and they took from there.”

⁶ tn Heb “the officer on whose hand he leans.”

⁷ tn Heb “and the people trampled him in the gate and he died.”

⁸ tn Heb “just as the man of God had spoken, [the word] which he spoke when the king came down to him.”

⁹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Gehazi) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹⁰ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹¹ tn Heb “and look, the woman whose son he had brought back to life was crying out to the king for her house and her field.”

sn The legal background of the situation is uncertain. For a discussion of possibilities, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 87-88.

¹² tn Heb “So he said, ‘Like this and like this he said to me, saying.’” The words “like this and like this” are probably not a direct quote of Jehu’s words to his colleagues. Rather this is the narrator’s way of avoiding repetition and indicating that Jehu repeated, or at least summarized, what the prophet had said to him.

¹³ tn The words “my chariot” are added for clarification.

¹⁴ tn Heb “and he hitched up his chariot.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “each in his chariot and they went out.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “they found him.”

¹⁷ tn Or “showed them compassion.”

¹⁸ tn Heb “he turned to them.”

¹⁹ tn Heb “because of his covenant with.”

²⁰ tn Heb “until now.”

²¹ tn Heb “and the king of Assyria found in Hoshea conspiracy.”

²² sn For discussion of this name, see HALOT 744 s.v. סוֹא and M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 196.

²³ tn Heb “and bound him in the house of confinement.”

²⁴ tn Or “and his warnings he had given them.”

²⁵ tn Heb “They went [or, ‘followed’] after.” This idiom probably does not mean much if translated literally. It is found most often in Deuteronomy or in literature related to the covenant. It refers in the first instance to loyalty to God and to His covenant or His commandments (1 Kgs 14:8; 2 Chr 34:31) with the metaphor of a path or way underlying it (Deut 11:28; 28:14). To “follow other gods” was to abandon this way and this loyalty (to “abandon” or “forget” God, Judg 2:12; Hos 2:13) and to follow the customs or religious traditions of the pagan nations (2 Kgs 17:15). The classic text on “following” God or another god is 1 Kgs 18:18, 21 where Elijah taunts the people with “halting between two opinions” whether the Lord was the true God or Baal was. The idiom is often found followed by “to serve and to worship” or “they served and worshiped” such and such a god or entity (Jer 8:2; 11:10; 13:10; 16:11; 25:6; 35:15).

²⁶ tn Heb “they followed after the worthless thing/things and became worthless.” The words “to the Lord” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit from the context. There is an obvious wordplay on the verb “became worthless” and the noun “worthless thing”, which is probably to be understood collectively and to refer to idols as it does in Jer 8:19; 10:8; 14:22; Jonah 2:8.

²⁷ tn Heb “and [they walked] after the nations which were around them, concerning which the Lord commanded them not to do like them.”

²⁸ tn The term is singular in the MT but plural in the LXX and other ancient versions. It is also possible to regard the singular as a collective singular, especially in the context of other plural items.

sn Asherah was a leading deity of the Canaanite pantheon, wife/sister of El and goddess of fertility. She was commonly worshiped at shrines in or near groves of evergreen trees, or, failing that, at places marked by wooden poles. These were to be burned or cut down (Deut 12:3; 16:21; Judg 6:25, 28, 30; 2 Kgs 18:4).

²⁹ tn Heb “until those days.”

³⁰ tn In Hebrew the name sounds like the phrase נְחַשׁ הַנְּחֹשֶׁת (nÿkhash hannÿkhoshet), “bronze serpent.”

³¹ sn See the note at 2 Kgs 17:16.

³² tn Or “served.”

³³ tn Heb “In this house and in Jerusalem, which I chose from all the tribes of Israel, I will place my name perpetually (or perhaps “forever”).”

³⁴ tc The MT reads, “he ran from there,” which makes little if any sense in this context. Some prefer to emend the verbal form (Qal of רוּץ [ruts], “run”) to a Hiphil of רוּץ with third plural suffix and translate, “he quickly removed them” (see BDB 930 s.v. רוּץ, and M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings [AB], 289). The suffix could have been lost in MT by haplography (note the mem [מ] that immediately follows the verb on the form מִשֳׁם, misham, “from there”). Another option, the one reflected in the translation, is to emend the verb to a Piel of רָצַץ (ratsats), “crush,” with third plural suffix.

³⁵ tn Here בִּעֵר (bi’er) is not the well attested verb “burn,” but the less common homonym meaning “devastate, sweep away, remove.” See HALOT 146 s.v. בער.

³⁶ sn See the note at 2 Kgs 21:6.

³⁷ sn See the note at 1 Kgs 15:12.

³⁸ tn Heb “carrying out the words of the law.”

³⁹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Nebuchadnezzar) has been specified in the translation for clarity.