2 Kings 7:10

7:10 So they went and called out to the gatekeepers 1  of the city. They told them, “We entered the Syrian camp and there was no one there. We didn’t even hear a man’s voice. 2  But the horses and donkeys are still tied up, and the tents remain up.” 3 

2 Kings 18:4

18:4 He eliminated the high places, smashed the sacred pillars to bits, and cut down the Asherah pole. 4  He also demolished the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for up to that time 5  the Israelites had been offering incense to it; it was called Nehushtan. 6 

2 Kings 20:20

20:20 The rest of the events of Hezekiah’s reign and all his accomplishments, including how he built a pool and conduit to bring 7  water into the city, are recorded in the scroll called the Annals of the Kings of Judah. 8 

2 Kings 25:16

25:16 The bronze of the items that King Solomon made for the Lord’s temple – including the two pillars, the big bronze basin called “The Sea,” the twelve bronze bulls under “The Sea,” 9  and the movable stands – was too heavy to be weighed.

1 tn The MT has a singular form (“gatekeeper”), but the context suggests a plural. The pronoun that follows (“them”) is plural and a plural noun appears in v. 11. The Syriac Peshitta and the Targum have the plural here.

2 tn Heb “and, look, there was no man or voice of a man there.”

3 tn Heb “but the horses are tied up and the donkeys are tied up and the tents are as they were.”

4 tn The term is singular in the MT but plural in the LXX and other ancient versions. It is also possible to regard the singular as a collective singular, especially in the context of other plural items.

sn Asherah was a leading deity of the Canaanite pantheon, wife/sister of El and goddess of fertility. She was commonly worshiped at shrines in or near groves of evergreen trees, or, failing that, at places marked by wooden poles. These were to be burned or cut down (Deut 12:3; 16:21; Judg 6:25, 28, 30; 2 Kgs 18:4).

5 tn Heb “until those days.”

6 tn In Hebrew the name sounds like the phrase נְחַשׁ הַנְּחֹשֶׁת (nÿkhash hannÿkhoshet), “bronze serpent.”

7 tn Heb “and he brought.”

8 tn Heb “As for the rest of the events of Hezekiah, and all his strength, and how he made a pool and a conduit and brought water to the city, are they not written on the scroll of the events of the days of the kings of Judah?”

9 tc The MT lacks “the twelve bronze bulls under ‘the Sea,’” but these words have probably been accidentally omitted by homoioarcton. The scribe’s eye may have jumped from the וְהָ (vÿha-) on וְהַבָּקָר (vÿhabbaqar), “and the bulls,” to the וְהָ on וְהַמְּכֹנוֹת (vÿhammÿkhonot), “and the movable stands,” causing him to leave out the intervening words. See the parallel passage in Jer 52:20.