18:26 Eliakim son of Hilkiah, Shebna, and Joah said to the chief adviser, “Speak to your servants in Aramaic, 6 for we understand it. Don’t speak with us in the Judahite dialect 7 in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.” 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. 8 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.” 9
1 tn Heb “there was great anger against Israel.”
sn The meaning of this statement is uncertain, for the subject of the anger is not indicated. Except for two relatively late texts, the noun קֶצֶף (qetsef) refers to an outburst of divine anger. But it seems unlikely the Lord would be angry with Israel, for he placed his stamp of approval on the campaign (vv. 16-19). D. N. Freedman suggests the narrator, who obviously has a bias against the Omride dynasty, included this observation to show that the Lord would not allow the Israelite king to “have an undiluted victory” (as quoted in M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings [AB], 52, n. 8). Some suggest that the original source identified Chemosh the Moabite god as the subject and that his name was later suppressed by a conscientious scribe, but this proposal raises more questions than it answers. For a discussion of various views, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 47-48, 51-52.
2 tn Heb “they departed from him.”
3 tc The MT has the plural form of the verb, but the final vav (ו) is virtually dittographic. The word that immediately follows in the Hebrew text begins with a yod (י). The form should be emended to the singular, which is consistent in number with the verb (“he broke down”) that follows.
4 tn Heb “came to.”
5 tn Heb “four hundred cubits.” The standard cubit in the OT is assumed by most authorities to be about eighteen inches (45 cm) long.
6 sn Aramaic was the diplomatic language of the empire.
7 tn Or “Hebrew.”
8 tn Heb “To your master and to you did my master send me to speak these words?” The rhetorical question expects a negative answer.
9 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.