2 Kings 9:15

9:15 But King Joram had returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds he received from the Syrians ¹  when he fought against King Hazael of Syria. ²  Jehu told his supporters, ³  “If you really want me to be king, ⁴  then don’t let anyone escape from the city to go and warn Jezreel.”

2 Kings 11:2

11:2 So Jehosheba, the daughter of King Joram and sister of Ahaziah, took Ahaziah’s son Joash and sneaked ⁵  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. ⁶  So he was hidden from Athaliah and escaped execution. ⁷ 

---

¹ tn Heb “which the Syrians inflicted [on] him.”

² sn See 2 Kgs 8:28-29a.

³ tn The words “his supporters” are added for clarification.

⁴ tn Heb “If this is your desire.” נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) refers here to the seat of the emotions and will. For other examples of this use of the word, see BDB 660-61 s.v.

⁵ tn Heb “stole.”

⁶ 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.

⁷ 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.