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 3:13

3:13 Elisha said to the king of Israel, “Why are you here? ²  Go to your father’s prophets or your mother’s prophets!” The king of Israel replied to him, “No, for the Lord is the one who summoned these three kings so that he can hand them over to Moab.”

2 Kings 7:10

7:10 So they went and called out to the gatekeepers ³  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. ⁴  But the horses and donkeys are still tied up, and the tents remain up.” ⁵ 

2 Kings 7:12

7:12 The king got up in the night and said to his advisers, ⁶  “I will tell you what the Syrians have done to us. They know we are starving, so they left the camp and hid in the field, thinking, ‘When they come out of the city, we will capture them alive and enter the city.’”

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, ⁷  “This is what the Lord says, ‘I have designated you as king over Israel.’”

2 Kings 11:9

11:9 The officers of the units of hundreds did just as ⁸  Jehoiada the priest ordered. Each of them took his men, those who were on duty during the Sabbath as well as those who were off duty on the Sabbath, and reported ⁹  to Jehoiada the priest.

2 Kings 12:7

12:7 So King Jehoash summoned Jehoiada the priest along with the other priests, and said to them, “Why have you not repaired the damage to the temple? Now, take no more silver from your treasurers unless you intend to use it to repair the damage.” ¹⁰ 

2 Kings 15:20

15:20 Menahem got this silver by taxing all the wealthy men in Israel; he took fifty shekels of silver from each one of them and paid it to the king of Assyria. ¹¹  Then the king of Assyria left; he did not stay there in the land.

2 Kings 17:6

17:6 In the ninth year of Hoshea’s reign, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the people of Israel ¹²  to Assyria. He settled them in Halah, along the Habor (the river of Gozan), and in the cities of the Medes.

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. ¹³  They paid allegiance to ¹⁴  worthless idols, and so became worthless to the Lord. ¹⁵  They copied the practices of the surrounding nations in blatant disregard of the Lord’s command. ¹⁶ 

2 Kings 17:26

17:26 The king of Assyria was told, ¹⁷  “The nations whom you deported and settled in the cities of Samaria do not know the requirements of the God of the land, so he has sent lions among them. They are killing the people ¹⁸  because they do not know the requirements of the God of the land.”

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. ¹⁹  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.” ²⁰ 

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 ²¹  and worshiped ²²  them.

2 Kings 23:4

23:4 The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the high-ranking priests, ²³  and the guards ²⁴  to bring out of the Lord’s temple all the items that were used in the worship of ²⁵  Baal, Asherah, and all the stars of the sky. ²⁶  The king ²⁷  burned them outside of Jerusalem in the terraces ²⁸  of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. ²⁹ 

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 ³⁰  and threw the dust in the Kidron Valley.

2 Kings 23:15

23:15 He also tore down the altar in Bethel ³¹  at the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who encouraged Israel to sin. ³²  He burned all the combustible items at that high place and crushed them to dust; including the Asherah pole. ³³ 

2 Kings 25:24

25:24 Gedaliah took an oath so as to give them and their troops some assurance of safety. ³⁴  He said, “You don’t need to be afraid to submit to the Babylonian officials. Settle down in the land and submit to the king of Babylon. Then things will go well for you.”

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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 “What do we have in common?” The text reads literally, “What to me and to you?”

³ 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.

⁴ tn Heb “and, look, there was no man or voice of a man there.”

⁵ tn Heb “but the horses are tied up and the donkeys are tied up and the tents are as they were.”

⁶ tn Heb “servants” (also in v. 13).

⁷ 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.

⁸ tn Heb “according to all that.”

⁹ tn Heb “came.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “Now, do not take silver from your treasurers, because for the damages to the temple you must give it.”

¹¹ tn Heb “and Menahem brought out the silver over Israel, over the prominent men of means, to give to the king of Assyria, fifty shekels of silver for each man.”

¹² tn The Hebrew text has simply “Israel” as the object of the verb.

¹³ tn Or “and his warnings he had given them.”

¹⁴ 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).

¹⁵ 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.

¹⁶ tn Heb “and [they walked] after the nations which were around them, concerning which the Lord commanded them not to do like them.”

¹⁷ tn Heb “and they said to the king of Assyria, saying.” The plural subject of the verb is indefinite.

¹⁸ tn Heb “Look they are killing them.”

¹⁹ tn Heb “To your master and to you did my master send me to speak these words?” The rhetorical question expects a negative answer.

²⁰ 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.

²¹ sn See the note at 2 Kgs 17:16.

²² tn Or “served.”

²³ tn Heb “the priests of the second [rank],” that is, those ranked just beneath Hilkiah.

²⁴ tn Or “doorkeepers.”

²⁵ tn Heb “for.”

²⁶ tn Heb “all the host of heaven” (also in v. 5).

²⁷ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

²⁸ tn Or “fields.” For a defense of the translation “terraces,” see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 285.

²⁹ map For location see Map4-G4; Map5-C1; Map6-E3; Map7-D1; Map8-G3.

³⁰ 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.

³¹ map For location see Map4-G4; Map5-C1; Map6-E3; Map7-D1; Map8-G3.

³² tn Heb “And also the altar that is in Bethel, the high place that Jeroboam son of Nebat who encouraged Israel to sin, also that altar and the high place he tore down.” The more repetitive Hebrew text is emphatic.

³³ tn Heb “he burned the high place, crushing to dust, and he burned the Asherah pole.” High places per se are never referred to as being burned elsewhere. בָּמָה (bamah) here stands by metonymy for the combustible items located on the high place. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 289.

³⁴ tn The words “so as to give them…some assurance of safety” are supplied in the translation for clarification.