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. ¹  They stopped up every spring and chopped down every productive tree.

Only Kir Hareseth was left intact, ²  but the slingers surrounded it and attacked it.

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 ³  to Assyria. He settled them in Halah, along the Habor (the river of Gozan), and in the cities of the Medes.

2 Kings 17:26

17:26 The king of Assyria was told, ⁴  “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 ⁵  because they do not know the requirements of the God of the land.”

2 Kings 23:5

23:5 He eliminated ⁶  the pagan priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to offer sacrifices ⁷  on the high places in the cities of Judah and in the area right around Jerusalem. (They offered sacrifices ⁸  to Baal, the sun god, the moon god, the constellations, and all the stars in the sky.)

2 Kings 23:8

23:8 He brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and ruined ⁹  the high places where the priests had offered sacrifices, from Geba to Beer Sheba. ¹⁰  He tore down the high place of the goat idols ¹¹  situated at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the city official, on the left side of the city gate.

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¹ 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.

² tn Heb “until he had allowed its stones to remain in Kir Hareseth.”

³ tn The Hebrew text has simply “Israel” as the object of the verb.

⁴ tn Heb “and they said to the king of Assyria, saying.” The plural subject of the verb is indefinite.

⁵ tn Heb “Look they are killing them.”

⁶ tn Perhaps, “destroyed.”

⁷ tn Or “burn incense.”

⁸ tn Or “burned incense.”

⁹ tn Heb “defiled; desecrated,” that is, “made ritually unclean and unusable.”

¹⁰ sn These towns marked Judah’s northern and southern borders, respectively, at the time of Josiah.

¹¹ tc The Hebrew text reads “the high places of the gates,” which is problematic in that the rest of the verse speaks of a specific gate. The translation assumes an emendation to בָּמוֹת הַשְּׁעָרִים (bamot hashÿ’arim), “the high place of the goats” (that is, goat idols). Worship of such images is referred to in Lev 17:7 and 2 Chr 11:15. For a discussion of the textual issue, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 286-87.