2 Kings 4:13

4:13 Elisha said to Gehazi, ¹  “Tell her, ‘Look, you have treated us with such great respect. ²  What can I do for you? Can I put in a good word for you with the king or the commander of the army?’” She replied, “I’m quite secure.” ³ 

2 Kings 11:2

11:2 So Jehosheba, the daughter of King Joram and sister of Ahaziah, took Ahaziah’s son Joash and sneaked ⁴  him away from the rest of the royal descendants who were to be executed. She hid him and his nurse in the room where the bed covers were stored. ⁵  So he was hidden from Athaliah and escaped execution. ⁶ 

2 Kings 11:14-15

11:14 Then she saw ⁷  the king standing by the pillar, according to custom. The officers stood beside the king with their trumpets and all the people of the land were celebrating and blowing trumpets. Athaliah tore her clothes and screamed, “Treason, treason!” ⁸  11:15 Jehoiada the priest ordered the officers of the units of hundreds, who were in charge of the army, ⁹  “Bring her outside the temple to the guards. ¹⁰  Put the sword to anyone who follows her.” The priest gave this order because he had decided she should not be executed in the Lord’s temple. ¹¹ 

2 Kings 22:14

22:14 So Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Acbor, Shaphan, and Asaiah went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shullam son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, the supervisor of the wardrobe. ¹²  (She lived in Jerusalem in the Mishneh ¹³  district.) They stated their business, ¹⁴ 

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¹ tn Heb “he said to him.”

² tn Heb “you have turned trembling to us with all this trembling.” The exaggerated language is probably idiomatic. The point seems to be that she has taken great pains or gone out of her way to be kind to them. Her concern was a sign of her respect for the prophetic office.

³ tn Heb “Among my people I am living.” This answer suggests that she has security within the context of her family.

⁴ tn Heb “stole.”

⁵ tn Heb “him and his nurse in an inner room of beds.” The verb is missing in the Hebrew text. The parallel passage in 2 Chr 22:11 has “and she put” at the beginning of the clause. M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 126) regard the Chronicles passage as an editorial attempt to clarify the difficulty of the original text. They prefer to take “him and his nurse” as objects of the verb “stole” and understand “in the bedroom” as the place where the royal descendants were executed. The phrase בַּחֲדַר הַמִּטּוֹת (bakhadar hammittot), “an inner room of beds,” is sometimes understood as referring to a bedroom (HALOT 293 s.v. חֶדֶר), though some prefer to see here a “room where the covers and cloths were kept for the beds (HALOT 573 s.v. מִטָּת). In either case, it may have been a temporary hideout, for v. 3 indicates that the child hid in the temple for six years.

⁶ tn Heb “and they hid him from Athaliah and he was not put to death.” The subject of the plural verb (“they hid”) is probably indefinite.

⁷ tn Heb “and she saw, and look.”

⁸ tn Or “conspiracy, conspiracy.”

⁹ tn The Hebrew text also has, “and said to them.” This is redundant in English and has not been translated.

¹⁰ tn Heb “ranks.”

¹¹ tn Heb “for the priest had said, ‘Let her not be put to death in the house of the Lord.’”

¹² tn Heb “the keeper of the clothes.”

¹³ tn Or “second.” For a discussion of the possible location of this district, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 283.

¹⁴ tn Heb “and they spoke to her.”