2 Kings 1:3

1:3 But the Lord’s angelic messenger told Elijah the Tishbite, “Get up, go to meet the messengers from the king of Samaria. Say this to them: ‘You must think there is no God in Israel! That explains why you are on your way to seek an oracle from Baal Zebub the god of Ekron. ¹ 

2 Kings 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 ²  may have carried him away and dropped him on one of the hills or in one of the valleys.” But Elisha ³  replied, “Don’t send them out.”

2 Kings 3:25

3:25 They tore down the cities and each man threw a stone into every cultivated field until they were covered. ⁴  They stopped up every spring and chopped down every productive tree.

Only Kir Hareseth was left intact, ⁵  but the slingers surrounded it and attacked it.

2 Kings 6:32

6:32 Now Elisha was sitting in his house with the community leaders. ⁶  The king ⁷  sent a messenger on ahead, but before he arrived, ⁸  Elisha ⁹  said to the leaders, ¹⁰  “Do you realize this assassin intends to cut off my head?” ¹¹  Look, when the messenger arrives, shut the door and lean against it. His master will certainly be right behind him.” ¹² 

2 Kings 7:2

7:2 An officer who was the king’s right-hand man ¹³  responded to the prophet, ¹⁴  “Look, even if the Lord made it rain by opening holes in the sky, could this happen so soon?” ¹⁵  Elisha ¹⁶  said, “Look, you will see it happen with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of the food!” ¹⁷ 

2 Kings 7:9-10

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. ¹⁸  If we wait until dawn, ¹⁹  we’ll be punished. ²⁰  So come on, let’s go and inform the royal palace.” 7:10 So they went and called out to the gatekeepers ²¹  of the city. They told them, “We entered the Syrian camp and there was no one there. We didn’t even hear a man’s voice. ²²  But the horses and donkeys are still tied up, and the tents remain up.” ²³ 

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, ²⁴  “This is what the Lord says, ‘I have designated you as king over Israel.’”

2 Kings 9:15

9:15 But King Joram had returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds he received from the Syrians ²⁵  when he fought against King Hazael of Syria. ²⁶  Jehu told his supporters, ²⁷  “If you really want me to be king, ²⁸  then don’t let anyone escape from the city to go and warn Jezreel.”

2 Kings 10:19

10:19 So now, bring to me all the prophets of Baal, as well as all his servants and priests. ²⁹  None of them must be absent, for I am offering a great sacrifice to Baal. Any of them who fail to appear will lose their lives.” But Jehu was tricking them ³⁰  so he could destroy the servants of Baal.

2 Kings 13:23

13:23 But the Lord had mercy on them and felt pity for them. ³¹  He extended his favor to them ³²  because of the promise he had made ³³  to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He has been unwilling to destroy them or remove them from his presence to this very day. ³⁴ 

2 Kings 14:6

14:6 But he did not execute the sons of the assassins. He obeyed the Lord’s commandment as recorded in the law scroll of Moses, ³⁵  “Fathers must not be put to death for what their sons do, ³⁶  and sons must not be put to death for what their fathers do. ³⁷  A man must be put to death only for his own sin.” ³⁸ 

2 Kings 18:22

18:22 Perhaps you will tell me, ‘We are trusting in the Lord our God.’ But Hezekiah is the one who eliminated his high places and altars and then told the people of Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You must worship at this altar in Jerusalem.’

2 Kings 18:27

18:27 But the chief adviser said to them, “My master did not send me to speak these words only to your master and to you. ³⁹  His message is also for the men who sit on the wall, for they will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine along with you.” ⁴⁰ 

2 Kings 19:29

19:29 ⁴¹ This will be your confirmation that I have spoken the truth: ⁴²  This year you will eat what grows wild, ⁴³  and next year ⁴⁴  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. ⁴⁵ 

2 Kings 23:35

23:35 Jehoiakim paid Pharaoh the required amount of silver and gold, but to meet Pharaoh’s demands Jehoiakim had to tax the land. He collected an assessed amount from each man among the people of the land in order to pay Pharaoh Necho. ⁴⁶ 

2 Kings 25:25

25:25 But in the seventh month ⁴⁷  Ishmael son of Nethaniah, son of Elishama, who was a member of the royal family, ⁴⁸  came with ten of his men and murdered Gedaliah, ⁴⁹  as well as the Judeans and Babylonians who were with him at Mizpah.

---

¹ tn Heb “Is it because there is no God in Israel [that] you are going to inquire of Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron?” The translation seeks to bring out the sarcastic tone of the rhetorical question.

² tn Or “the spirit of the Lord.”

³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁴ tn Heb “and [on] every good portion they were throwing each man his stone and they filled it.” The vav + perfect (“and they filled”) here indicates customary action contemporary with the situation described in the preceding main clause (where a customary imperfect is used, “they were throwing”). See the note at 3:4.

⁵ tn Heb “until he had allowed its stones to remain in Kir Hareseth.”

⁶ tn Heb “and the elders were sitting with him.”

⁷ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁸ tn Heb “sent a man from before him, before the messenger came to him.”

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

¹⁰ tn Heb “elders.”

¹¹ tn Heb “Do you see that this son of an assassin has sent to remove my head?”

¹² tn Heb “Is not the sound of his master’s footsteps behind him?”

¹³ tn Heb “the officer on whose hand the king leans.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “man of God.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “the Lord was making holes in the sky, could this thing be?” Opening holes in the sky would allow the waters stored up there to pour to the earth and assure a good crop. But, the officer argues, even if this were to happen, it would take a long time to grow and harvest the crop.

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

¹⁷ tn Heb “you will not eat from there.”

¹⁸ tn Heb “this day is a day of good news and we are keeping silent.”

¹⁹ tn Heb “the light of the morning.”

²⁰ tn Heb “punishment will find us.”

²¹ tn The MT has a singular form (“gatekeeper”), but the context suggests a plural. The pronoun that follows (“them”) is plural and a plural noun appears in v. 11. The Syriac Peshitta and the Targum have the plural here.

²² tn Heb “and, look, there was no man or voice of a man there.”

²³ tn Heb “but the horses are tied up and the donkeys are tied up and the tents are as they were.”

²⁴ 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.

²⁵ tn Heb “which the Syrians inflicted [on] him.”

²⁶ sn See 2 Kgs 8:28-29a.

²⁷ tn The words “his supporters” are added for clarification.

²⁸ tn Heb “If this is your desire.” נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) refers here to the seat of the emotions and will. For other examples of this use of the word, see BDB 660-61 s.v.

²⁹ tn Heb “and now, all the prophets of Baal, all his servants and all his priests summon to me.”

³⁰ tn Heb “acted with deception [or, ‘trickery’].”

³¹ tn Or “showed them compassion.”

³² tn Heb “he turned to them.”

³³ tn Heb “because of his covenant with.”

³⁴ tn Heb “until now.”

³⁵ tn Heb “as it is written in the scroll of the law of Moses which the Lord commanded, saying.”

³⁶ tn Heb “on account of sons.”

³⁷ tn Heb “on account of fathers.”

³⁸ sn This law is recorded in Deut 24:16.

³⁹ tn Heb “To your master and to you did my master send me to speak these words?” The rhetorical question expects a negative answer.

⁴⁰ tn Heb “[Is it] not [also] to the men…?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Yes, it is.”

sn The chief adviser alludes to the horrible reality of siege warfare, when the starving people in the besieged city would resort to eating and drinking anything to stay alive.

⁴¹ 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).

⁴² 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.

⁴³ sn This refers to crops that grew up on their own (that is, without cultivation) from the seed planted in past years.

⁴⁴ tn Heb “and in the second year.”

⁴⁵ 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.

⁴⁶ tn Heb “And the silver and the gold Jehoiakim gave to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land to give the silver at the command of Pharaoh, [from] each according to his tax he collected the silver and the gold, from the people of the land, to give to Pharaoh Necho.”

⁴⁷ 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).

⁴⁸ tn Heb “[was] from the seed of the kingdom.”

⁴⁹ tn Heb “and they struck down Gedaliah and he died.”