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 Lord¹ may have carried him away and dropped him on one of the hills or in one of the valleys.” But Elisha² replied, “Don’t send them out.”

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 it⁵ and went and hid what they had taken.

2 Kings 7:13

7:13 One of his advisers replied, “Pick some men and have them take five of the horses that are left in the city. (Even if they are killed, their fate will be no different than that of all the Israelite people – we’re all going to die!)⁶ Let’s send them out so we can know for sure what’s going on.”⁷

2 Kings 8:12

8:12 Hazael asked, “Why are you crying, my master?” He replied, “Because I know the trouble you will cause the Israelites. You will set fire to their fortresses, kill their young men with the sword, smash their children to bits, and rip open their pregnant women.”

2 Kings 10:6

10:6 He wrote them a second letter, saying, “If you are really on my side and are willing to obey me,⁸ then take the heads of your master’s sons and come to me in Jezreel at this time tomorrow.”⁹ Now the king had seventy sons, and the prominent¹⁰ men of the city were raising them.

2 Kings 11:9

11:9 The officers of the units of hundreds did just as¹¹ 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 reported¹² to Jehoiada the priest.

2 Kings 13:21

13:21 One day some men¹³ were burying a man when they spotted¹⁴ a raiding party. So they threw the dead man¹⁵ into Elisha’s tomb. When the body¹⁶ touched Elisha’s bones, the dead man¹⁷ came to life and stood on his feet.

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.¹⁸ Then the king of Assyria left; he did not stay there in 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 25:25

25:25 But in the seventh month²¹ Ishmael son of Nethaniah, son of Elishama, who was a member of the royal family,²² came with ten of his men and murdered Gedaliah,²³ as well as the Judeans and Babylonians who were with him at Mizpah.

¹tn Or “the spirit of the Lord.”

²tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³tn Heb “they ate and drank.”

⁴tn Heb “and they hid [it].”

⁵tn Heb “and they took from there.”

⁶tn Heb “Let them take five of the remaining horses that remain in it. Look, they are like all the people of Israel that remain in it. Look, they are like all the people of Israel that have come to an end.” The MT is dittographic here; the words “that remain in it. Look they are like all the people of Israel” have been accidentally repeated. The original text read, “Let them take five of the remaining horses that remain in it. Look, they are like all the people of Israel that have come to an end.”

⁷tn Heb “and let us send so we might see.”

⁸tn Heb “If you are mine and you are listening to my voice.”

⁹sn Jehu’s command is intentionally vague. Does he mean that they should bring the guardians (those who are “heads” over Ahab’s sons) for a meeting, or does he mean that they should bring the literal heads of Ahab’s sons with them? (So LXX, Syriac Peshitta, and some mss of the Targum) The city leaders interpret his words in the literal sense, but Jehu’s command is so ambiguous he is able to deny complicity in the executions (see v. 9).

¹⁰tn Heb “great,” probably in wealth, position, and prestige.

¹¹tn Heb “according to all that.”

¹²tn Heb “came.”

¹³tn Heb “and it so happened [that] they.”

¹⁴tn Heb “and look, they saw.”

¹⁵tn Heb “the man”; the adjective “dead” has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

¹⁶tn Heb “the man.”

¹⁷tn Heb “he”; the referent (the dead man) has been specified in the translation for clarity. Otherwise the reader might think it was Elisha rather than the unnamed dead man who came back to life.

¹⁸tn 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.”

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

²⁰tn 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.

²¹sn 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).

²²tn Heb “[was] from the seed of the kingdom.”

²³tn Heb “and they struck down Gedaliah and he died.”