Only Kir Hareseth was left intact, 2 but the slingers surrounded it and attacked it.
7:12 The king got up in the night and said to his advisers, 3 “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.’” 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!) 4 Let’s send them out so we can know for sure what’s going on.” 5
10:15 When he left there, he met 8 Jehonadab, son of Rekab, who had been looking for him. 9 Jehu greeted him and asked, 10 “Are you as committed to me as I am to you?” 11 Jehonadab answered, “I am!” Jehu replied, “If so, give me your hand.” 12 So he offered his hand and Jehu 13 pulled him up into the chariot.
10:25 When he finished offering the burnt sacrifice, Jehu ordered the royal guard 14 and officers, “Come in and strike them down! Don’t let any escape!” So the royal guard and officers struck them down with the sword and left their bodies lying there. 15 Then they entered the inner sanctuary of the temple of Baal. 16
23:8 He brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and ruined 18 the high places where the priests had offered sacrifices, from Geba to Beer Sheba. 19 He tore down the high place of the goat idols 20 situated at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the city official, on the left side of the city gate.
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 Heb “servants” (also in v. 13).
4 tn 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.”
5 tn Heb “and let us send so we might see.”
6 tn Heb “and the king asked the woman and she told him.”
7 tn Heb “and he assigned to her an official, saying.”
8 tn Heb “found.”
9 tn Heb “and he went from there and found Jehonadab son of Rekab [who was coming] to meet him.”
10 tn Heb “and he blessed him and said to him.”
11 tn Heb “Is there with your heart [what is] right, as my heart [is] with your heart?”
12 tc Heb “Jehonadab said, ‘There is and there is. Give your hand.’” If the text is allowed to stand, there are two possible ways to understand the syntax of וָיֵשׁ (vayesh), “and there is”: (1) The repetition of יֵשׁ (yesh, “there is and there is”) could be taken as emphatic, “indeed I am.” In this case, the entire statement could be taken as Jehonadab’s words or one could understand the words “give your hand” as Jehu’s. In the latter case the change in speakers is unmarked. (2) וָיֵשׁ begins Jehu’s response and has a conditional force, “if you are.” In this case, the transition in speakers is unmarked. However, it is possible that וַיֹּאמֶר (vayyo’mer), “and he said,” or וַיֹּאמֶר יֵהוּא (vayyo’mer yehu), “and Jehu said,” originally appeared between יֵשׁ and וָיֵשׁ and has accidentally dropped from the text by homoioarcton (note that both the proposed וַיֹּאמֶר and וָיֵשׁ begin with vav, ו). The present translation assumes such a textual reconstruction; it is supported by the LXX, Syriac Peshitta, and Vulgate.
13 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Jehu) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
14 tn Heb “runners.”
15 tn Heb “and they threw.” No object appears. According to M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 116), this is an idiom for leaving a corpse unburied.
16 tn Heb “and they came to the city of the house of Baal.” It seems unlikely that a literal city is meant. Some emend עִיר (’ir), “city,” to דְּבִיר (dÿvir) “holy place,” or suggest that עִיר is due to dittography of the immediately preceding עַד (’ad) “to.” Perhaps עִיר is here a technical term meaning “fortress” or, more likely, “inner room.”
17 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.”
18 tn Heb “defiled; desecrated,” that is, “made ritually unclean and unusable.”
19 sn These towns marked Judah’s northern and southern borders, respectively, at the time of Josiah.
20 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.
21 tn Heb “the city was breached.”
22 tn The Hebrew text is abrupt here: “And all the men of war by the night.” The translation attempts to capture the sense.
23 sn The king’s garden is mentioned again in Neh 3:15 in conjunction with the pool of Siloam and the stairs that go down from the city of David. This would have been in the southern part of the city near the Tyropean Valley which agrees with the reference to the “two walls” which were probably the walls on the eastern and western hills.
24 sn Heb “toward the Arabah.” The Arabah was the rift valley north and south of the Dead Sea. Here the intention was undoubtedly to escape across the Jordan to Moab or Ammon. It appears from Jer 40:14; 41:15 that the Ammonites were known to harbor fugitives from the Babylonians.